the corner office

In principle I'm on the side of the separatists, the secessionists, the federalists and independence-seekers and the little guy. So while I know next to nothing about the historical context, I'm not quite sure where all the anti-Russian indignation comes from.

South Ossetia is a small Russian-friendly breakaway state. Georgia invades South Ossetia, wanting to re-annex it. The Russians step in and help South Ossetia, with waaay over the top aggression. While Bush and Brown and Milliband and Rice are getting all huffy, the US and UK are so bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan that there's next to nothing short of dropping nukes on Moscow that they can do, and Russia undoubtedly factored this very neatly into their calculations. In essence, Russia has sent out a very convincing 'don't mess with us' message in a language that everybody understands.

So, the Russians are the bad guys, and I won't argue that they probably are, since I don't for one second think their actions were altruistic, but in this conflict, I don't exactly understand why the Georgians aren't bad guys too?