Yesterday’s New York Times editorial on the Opinion > Deadly Stalemate in Chechnya” href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/04/opinion/04sat1.html”>Deadly Stalemate in Chechnya could not be more predictable in its call for a negotiated settlement of the Chechen conflagration, but it is still worth commenting on because its argument is at the heart of the debate about terrorism. The Times is urging Russian President Putin to find some Chechen leaders who are not “Moscow-backed” puppets with whom to negotiate and settle this thing once and for all.
Well, here we are again, back at the Politics of Pirandello — “It is So!, If You Think So.” Just whom do the editors of the Times recommend? Actually I would like to believe the paper, but it almost seems they are yearning nostalgically for another era, perhaps one that never was. Considering that the attacks at the school were long planned and staged by Arab fighters from many countries, we must assume that national identity is only a part (maybe just a small part) of the question here. This is no longer just about Chechen rights, I’m afraid to say, if it ever was. It’s about jihad — a word that infrequently graces the editorial page of The New York Times because a very grim reality would have to be faced that might necessitate the newspaper reevaluating its policy.
Meanwhile, in the same editorial, the Times, believe it or not, is bemoaning Putin’s lack of “nuance.” [That's what the Russians need.--ed. John Kerry..] Sure, the Russians ought to… and we ought to… look for more sane voices in Chechen and Islamic communities, but to think that that alone will even begin to solve things in the present world is not only absurd, it’s a cruel joke on those children who got shot in the back.
UPDATE: Debka has disturbing report on the Beslan school horrors in which their sources indentify a “decentralization” in Al Qaeda operations, which would make negotiation of any sort absolutely impossible. I doubt the NYT editors read Debka, probably too propagandistic for them. I used to be suspicious myself. Then I weighted them fifty-fifty. Now, on terror issues, I would prefer Debka to the NYT any time.
MORE: The redoubtable Van Der Leun and the Sofia Sideshow both read the NYT editorial the way I did.
Roger,
Someone (and I think it was someone on one of the threads of this forum) cited the other day, and moved me to reread after a year or so, Lee Harris’ superb “Our World-Historical Gamble”, in which Mr. Harris demonstrates how we need to leave behind the categories of thinking that the NY Times piece you are citing relies on. He sets out the difficulties of dealing with actors who have left behind the (formerly) settled notions of prudence in international affairs. He tries to show how we might think about, and deal with, this changed world.
Jamie Irons
Yes, Lee Harris has been one of the sanest voices I’ve come across in the past couple of years, in regard to the world situation. He can both see things clearly, and set them across clearly.
shel
From today’s New York Times:
“Azamat amd Emma [two hostages who managed to escape] said that a woman offered the hostage takers all of the town’s money, but one of their captors said: ‘We don’t need money. We have come here to die.’”
How do you negotiate with people like this? What do you negotiate about?
Roger:
These people are not communists or el presidentes from some banana republic. They are fanatics devoted to jihad.
How can anyone, even the editors of the NYT doubt that? No matter what Putin might say or do they will never tolerate anyone other than themselves in control. As far as they are concerned there is nothing to negotiate.
Juan Williams and Mara Liasson completely missed it on FNS as well. Much fumfumfery about what Putin should have done, what Bush should be doing… not one word about the simple fact that there are people who are willing to rape and butcher children to achieve their secular and religious needs and they must be confronted.
Old School. Old News. Old Hat.
“Strategy Page” has carried very good material on the historical backgroud of the turmoil in Chechnya.
Link..
Jamie Irons
OT to shel
Did you see my reply to your very kind reply to me on a thread yesterday?
Link..
Jamie Irons
OT to Jamie:
Lovely!
Thank you!
I hadn’t even been back to that thread so had missed it.
shel
[That's what the Russians need.--ed. John Kerry..]
Lovely idea. I’ll buy the stamps.
I have a very small box I an contribute to the cause … we can punch air holes in it, and everything!
From a 2003 interview with one Amir Ramzen, an Al-Qaeda commander in Chechnya:
Q: Those in Russia who say that you want to create a caliphate in the Caucasus from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea are right?
A: Yes, it is so.
What is there to negotiate about?
Russia’s very survival is at stake.
There will be a bitter war in the Caucasus.
Possibly in Georgia as well.
I think Maria Horvath’s post above gets right to the heart of the matter–the Jihadists are willing to die for what they believe–The New York Times, and many others in the MSM and the democratic party generally simply dont understand that people are willing to die for what they believe–The regard jihadism as simply a failure to communicate–And it says much about the proponents of negotiation that they simply dont have a value structure that even permits them to understand that people are willing to die for their beliefs.
RogerA
Are you channeling Cool Hand Luke? “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”
I would say that is at the heart of the matter. And the Jihadis speak only one language.
“Sure, the Russians ought to… and we ought to… look for more sane voices in Chechen and Islamic communities…”
As soon as those sane voices are identified, and especially if we attempt to negotiate with them, the Islamists will kill them.
The Islamists are driving us relentlessly toward the point where the world will ultimately have no choice but to suppress, delegitimize and outlaw Islam as a whole, the same way we have Nazism.
The New York Times and others misunderstand root causes. This continuing misunderstanding in the face of available evidence causes a lot of peripheral irrational behavior. Example: Matthew Yglesias’ meltdown after Glenn Reynolds copied and pasted this summary sentence from an MY post:
Click here http://instapundit.com/archives/017601.php to see why it’s not a good idea to get into a pissing contest with Instapundit.
Matt’s a little confused because he assumes the root cause of the Russian school masacre is politics in Chechnya. The facts on the ground don’t support that, though, and Matt’s smart enough that the conflict is causing him some cognitive dissonance. So, he lashes out. (I think the depth of Bush hatred by many comes from the same cognitive dissonance. It’s easier to think of Bush as Satan than to believe x thousands of fanatics want to off us all. No one is really viscerally scared of Bush, no matter what they chant at the protests. Angry young Arabs who aren’t afraid to die scare the piss out of us, though.)
The root cause of 9/11, Madrid, Bali, and now Beslan isn’t politics. The root cause is Jihad. Whether people like Matt and the editors at the NYTimes believe in Jihad is irrelevant; Jihad believes in them, and us. And unless countered and fought, eventually Jihad will find us all.
The Islamists are driving us relentlessly toward the point where the world will ultimately have no choice but to suppress, delegitimize and outlaw Islam as a whole, the same way we have Nazism.
LMG, with all due respect, if the actions of a few thousand zealots was enough to do this, Christianity wouldn’t have survived the 10th century.
Sadly, the historical fact is that this kind of thing is very common; we like to think we’re above it now, but the last century of political progress can’t overwhelm millions of years of evolution.
Nor does it seem likely that exterminating a couple billion people, or putting them to “conversion or the sword”, is at all practical.
We’ll just have to come up with something else.
Sorry for the language above. Think I’ve just been drinking too much water this afternoon….
Another huge philosophical difference between the Bush doctrine and those trying to influence the opposition.
Trying to negotiate between fundamental world views has seldom worked. The obvious examples from our history:
The American Revolution – Independence vs. British Colonial Rule.
The Civil War – Slavery and State Sovereignty over same or not.
World War II between Fascism and The rest of the world.
The Cold War between Communism and the rest of the world
I submit the current war between Islamic Fundamentalism and the rest of the world is of the same character as those described above. The Bush administration and its supporters agree with that view.
The editors of the New York Times disagree. I am not sure where Kerry stands, but that uncertainty alone is enough to question his judgment on the central problem our nation faces today.
Mark,
Should Yglesias ever rise above infantile rant he still lacks the intelligence to make a coherent argument. Why bring him up here? Making fun of fools is cruel.
The words chosen by MSM journalists to describe the Breslan story are illuminating.
Start with the lede. This was not an act of terror; it was a siege. Y’know, like the Nazi siege of Leningrad. Or maybe the FBI’s siege of the Branch Davidians in Waco. In any case, the active, aggressive role belongs not to the combatants in the school–they were “besieged”– but to the Russian security forces.
Then look at the sequence of events. Here I focus on the BBC’s coverage ( Inever use the US press for breaking news because, unlike non-US sources, they almost never have reporters on-site. The BBC, as shitty as their reporting is, at least had three reporters on the scene as it unfolded).
During the crisis, the BBC reported the shooting by the Russian forces but failed to mention that this was only inresponse to, first, the bombs set off by the terrorists, and second, the semi-automatic turkey shoot of fleeing children by the terrorists. Not even mentioned, let alone with proper sequence.
And now we have the final version: a “siege”, with the following key phases (verbatim as per the BBC’s website, news.bbc.co.uk):
Standoff|Plight|Flashpoint|Assault|Escape|End
No mention of slaughter, killing, terror. Instead we have the hostages’ (or maybe the hostage-takers’?) “plight.” Detonation of bombs, suicide bombings by two female terrorists, spray-shooting of children with autmatic weapons? That’s a “flashpoint.”
Ah, but the Russians’s defensive response? That’s an “assault.”
My point here is that European elites still, after four years of unspeakable atrocities, after so much sacrifice, sweat, blood tears, do not get it. Screw those morons. We must and will find allies who recognize that this is war and that the adveersary seeks a fight to the finish.
Flashpoint, my ass.
I don’t know how the jihadist goal is mixed with some kind of Chechnyan natonalism. The answer is important to Russian response.
They have already clobbered Chechnya pretty badly in the last decade.
Putin has to do something for domestic political reasons. I question whether it will be effective, or it will go after skapegoats.
Furthermore, there may be more to come in the near future. After all, we had 4 attacks, we could have more.
Roger,
A sad spectacle, this.
The NY Times editors are linking the handling of this specific hostage crisis, the handling of the so-called “rebels” in Chechnya, with Bush’s WOT.
Do the editors not know that the terrorists in the school had made no real negotiable demands? Yesterday, I linked to a translated timeline of the events, Here.
Rather, the goal of the terrorists was in fact to murder as many of the hostages, after sufficient anguish and outcry had been produced. Simply put, terrorize then murder. Seems pretty clear, no?
Yet the Times complains only of the “tactics” of the hostage takers, as leading to the “hardening” of opposition against them.
Unbelievable.
And then the editors have temerity (or chutzpah) to call on Putin to “negotiate” with the “rebels”. And surrender to them what exactly? A mini-Caliphate?
Is there any evidence at all, any, anywhere, that demonstrates that giving in to terroists’ demands for statehood would lead to peace?
The characterization of these horrific events in this editorial and the call for a Putin nuanced analysis under these circumstances, is both churlish and transparent.
First, the editors of the NY Timeshad the chance to call Evil by its name, and they refused. If they can’t recognize it, name it, and say it outloud after Breslan, they never will.
Second, to use, out of desperation this atrocity to take a venal swipe at Bush in hopes of helping their pet, John Forbes Kerry, is disgusting.
Mark Steyn raises a very frightening point:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,10677436^7583,00.html
We need to do better than the NYT, etal, scolding Putin, and looking for ways to negotiate.
thibaud:
Fox had a guy there. By the time this was over he looked exhausted. I can’t hink of his name.
He described it as chaotic and [if I remember correctly] he referred to the terrorists as terrorists.
I noticed at last night’s World Cup hockey game between Russia and Canada the Toronto arena announcer called for a moment’s silence in tribute to those killed during “the recent tragedies” in Russia. Slaughtering children at school, planting bombs in airliners and suicide bombings outside subway entrances are certainly tragic events but they certainly weren’t acts of nature like Hurricane Frances. I wonder why the word “terrorism” was not used. I hope it was just an oversight and not a case of political correctness. If shooting schoolchildren in the back cannot, without hesitation, be called “terrorism” then I’m afraid the West is done for.
I think the whole problem in a nutshell, is that outlets like the NYT and the frightful Eurpoean media (and their devout followers); if they admitted that this incident was terrorism – or that Al Qaeda was involved in any way, etc., etc., they would then have to get down off their horses and admit that GWB is, in fact, correct.
******************
A little OT – When the French media replayed highlights of the MTV Video Awards, they edited out the boos that the Kerry twins were getting during their plea to the crowd to vote for their father.
And, did you know that Bush’s 11 point lead coming out of the convention is being termed a *bump*? Not good enough to use the word “bounce”???
BUMP. heh.
Dr StrangeKerry
(or how I learned to quit worrying about getting elected and love the BUMP)
Truly amazine article posted via LGF
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/09/05/wosse605.xml
Could there be hope?
jdwill
Thanks for that surprising editorial link; that is the first such utter renunciation of the terrorists that I am aware of coming from a Muslim.
That statement was humble and courageous, and I salute Abdel Rahman al-Rashed.
It will be interesting to see what reaction he gets in his own religious community. Keep us posted if you learn anything.
Jamie Irons
We’re now at a turning point. Breslan and islamicization of the Chechen rebellion; the nuclearization of Iran and the complete failure of EU appeasement there; France’s shameless claim to side with the “resistance” against Allawi and the Bush admin; and Bush’s imminent re-election signal that we are entering a Phase II in this war.
Phase I saw the US overturn a decade of half-measures, appeasement of Iran and coaxing the Saudis and replace it with aggressive pre-emption to remove terror-sponsoring states directly to the west and the east of Iran. In this effort we recived half-hearted EU support in Afghan and outright resistance from France and Germany over Iraq.
The next target is clearly Iran. We have 130,000 troops next door; they have opened their borders to Al Qaeda and have already sent hundreds of their own provocateurs and jihadists into Iraq.
Can we count on the EU to help us? Clearly not. The IAEA, the UN? Get real.
Assuming Bush is re-elected, we will soon have to choose between
1) continuing a phony war with Iraq in which they continue to make a mockery of our diplomatic proxies, the Three EU Dwarves, and start to arm their own military proxies, Hezbollah, AQ and their own jihadists, for direct strikes against the US
or
2) recognizing the fact that we are indeed fighting a cold war with a terror-sponsoring, soon to be nuclear-armed islamist state and that this war requires a new, forward-based alliance structure and strategy focused on powerful neighboring swing states that heretofore have assisted Iran.
If # 2 occurs, then we will see the end of NATO and its replacement by an alliance of realpolitik states which seek jointly to contain Iraq and crush Al Qaeda and the other jihadists.
Would Maria Theresa’s boytoy have the intelligence, the vision and the courage to let NATO die and move this nation forward into the Asian Century?
Is there anyone among this joker’s foreign policy handlers who grasps that France is on the other side, that Germany’s unreliable and that we desperately need Russia and India’s active support to win, hell, even to survive, Phase II of this war?
If he can’t take the heat of the Swifties, how on earth can he handle the pressure of a new cold war with nuclear-armed islamists?
A personal aside, relevant to this thread…
My wife, Nina, is the smartest person I know. She is fair-minded to a fault, perceptive, witty — and she is one of those rare people whose every act is in some way creative.
Anyhow, in spite of all these stellar attributes, Nina has suffered from (a mild case of) Bush Derangement Syndrome. I have despaired of persuading her that her support of Kerry was irrational.
When I read the news of the Besla horror, I immediately thought: “The jihadis have made a crtitical, and typically stupid, mistake here. This is going to push every woman and mother in this country, no matter how much she hates Bush, a few degrees toward the tipping point, and changing her mind in his favor.”
On a hike on the mountain where we live this morning, I asked Nina if she thought my conjecture was correct. To my surprise she replied:
“It pushed me closer to voting for him.”
Wow.
Jamie Irons
Jamie Irons
Thanks for sharing that. I remember reviewing the speeches of the GOP convention and seeing many references to protecting families – especially Zell Miller’s speech. My wife has made this point to me about Bush before – he is a protector.
thibaud
Not to worry. Kerry is toast.If only I had had the foresight (and wit) to post This on July 29, 2004.
jdwill
You wrote:
Interesting. Nina tells me that in the enneagram psychological type system (I’m not sure I buy this typing, but FWIW) I am a “type 8,” a “protector” or “challenger.”
Maybe that’s why I am drawn to Bush.
Jamie Irons
The religion of these thugs (however bastardized theirs appears to be) considers these acts to be acceptable, nay, laudable. Also, if in the commission of these foul deeds they should perish, they will become martyrs to the cause and welcomed in heaven and showered with gifts (70 or so virgins last I heard). In the religion I follow, Christianity, we tend to emphasize non-violence; ìThou shall not killî, ìLove thy neighborî, ìTurn the other cheekî, etc. Many in our society feel that we should ìTurn the other cheekî and forgive these miscreants because it must be something we have said or done. Well, I too, have come to believe that we should embrace the act of forgiveness. Yes, I believe we should be prepared to forgive every soldier, sailor, airman, policeman, or, for that matter, anyone that dispatches one (or more) of these animals to his/her paradise (hopefully prior to any despicable act). To those of you who want to act like a mouse in a meadow filled with sheep but no shepard, you should remember, eventually the wolf will have eaten all the sheep. Who’s next?
The term “moral clarity” shows up everywhere these days. I take it to be code for deciding not to try to understand the minds of people who shoot down little kids trying to run away — their culture, their grievances, their anger and humiliation. Who cares? I suppose Kerry condemned the massacre, but what is it about the man that makes you think he privately wonders whether he’s got the nuance right?
Apologies if this makes anyone ill – on a Fantasia Toadstool near you Norman Mailer (and son)…
jamie:
Today I heard that medicare payments will go up in January. Well obviously it is not free and someone has to pay for the expanded benefits everyone wanted. I know I work in health care myself and people have no idea what administrative costs are. Right now my social security and medicare tax are almost as much as my income tax. I have no doubt Kerry will condemn this and women will respond favorably to his condemnation. But I also have no idea what his alternative is.
I think the problem Bush will have with women is the same one he will have with older people. They tend to want government to take care of people.
Bush has a good record on education. But he pissed off the Dems by stealing their issue on help with drugs for the elderly and they paid him back by making sure the elderly hate the program.
They tend to blame the Republicans for not doing more socially and pitch a fit when they do.
But none of that matters if one of our schools is taken by these people and our children slaughtered.
Terrye:
I wouldn’t want to derail the thread too far into the medical care issue, but I do have a modest expertise in this area, and I can say with some assurance that the basic problem is that everybody wants everything and everybody wants someone else to pay for it.
G_d help us if the government tries to solve the problem. Only an alliance of physicians and other “providers” (G_d, how I despise that word!) and patients or prospective patients (i.e., all of us), can decide what needs to be done and how to make it happen.
I haven’t the slightest idea in practice how to bring that about.
***
Back to the topic of the thread: “Power Line” directed me to the stunningly frank, perceptive and even moving speech Putin gave to the Russian people:
Translation in the NYT
Jamie Irons
We could have interesting discussion on the health payments system some day. My comment: an alliance of providers and patients isn’t enough.
BTW… I work in the health care payments field and am also a skilled consumer of same.
Jamie:
I understand. It was not my intent to throw off the thread simply to point out that women tend to worry aobut providing care to people.
This is not universal but I think it goes a long way toward the idea that many women don’t support Bush for the same reason why women often don’t support Republicans, social issues. It is not always about BDS, sometimes it is good old fasioned partisan politics. Fear trumps that.
Jdwill:
Norman Mailer is a parasite. If he hates it here so much he can go find some Utopia where he will be appreciated. And what is more he can take Michael Moore with him. No doubt they have hid away enough loot with the help of the evil capitalist society that has enslaved them that they can find some nice little island kingdom somewhere and live like kings.
John Moore and Terrye
But what about Putin?
;-(
I think what he says is cause for hope: he seems to “get” that terrorism is driven/funded in some systematic way that we don’t quite understand.
However it is driven/funded, he seems to want to fight it, and to be on our side.
I have a tremendous affection for Russia, the Russian language and the Russian people. I’d like to help them
Jamie Irons
I find the rationalising and equivocation by much of the MSM concerning this appalling atrocity to be utterly despicable.
Events are still confused, but blame is being apportioned before the poor little innocents are cold in their graves,nowhere does the MSM find it in their hearts to condemn this murderous Islamic Einsatzgruppen which it seems was there for one purpose and one purpose only to slaughter little children.
This wasn’t a target of opportunity it was the premeditated slaughter of the innocents,those that committed this barbarity should burn in the bowels of Hell along with their handmaidens in the MSM and international corps of lily livered appeasers.
Terrye ó Norman Mailer is also another lefty war fraud, a total REMF who convinced gullible NY litteratoors he was writing gritty and realistic war stories. In fact, he had a long-running feud with Gore Vidal because Vidal had more medals than Mailer did and had come by them honestly…
NYT on Chechnya, a dollar short and ten years late
The time for following the prescription of the NYT regarding Chechnya was ten years ago when Yeltsin first attacked the de-facto independant state of Chechnya. Now it is too late to negotiate because the Russians have already killed everyone worth negotiating with. The only Chechnyans left are embittered by ten years of murderous war and the indifference of the world to their plight.
But even though negotiations can no longer work at this stage is no excuse for continnuing the barbarity of Russian operations inside Chechnya. Can we really expect to win a war against terrorism inside Chechnya while the Russians murder, torture and extort the inhabitants routinely? How well would following the Russian example work for America in Afghanistan or Iraq?
But don’t all of you know that this is not the fault of the peace loving Muslims? The attack on the school was perpetrated by (you guessed it), THE JEWS!!!
“Ali Abdullah, an Islamic scholar in Bahrain who follows the ultraconservative Salafi stream of Islam, condemned the school attack as ‘un-Islamic,’ but insisted Muslims weren’t behind it. ‘I have no doubt in my mind that this is the work of the Israelis who want to tarnish the image of Muslims and are working alongside Russians who have their own agenda against the Muslims in Chechnya,’ said Abdullah, reviving an old conspiracy theory altered to fit any situation.”
From http://www.chinapost.com.tw/i_latestdetail.asp?id=22713
The Muslim world needs a reality check. This type of thinking must be ruthlessly attacked BY OTHER MUSLIMS. Until that happens, there is no hope. A people cannot be saved from their own illusions as long as those in power continue this type of fraud. The man who made these comments should be immediately denounced and discredited. I won’t hold my breath.
What I fear most of all: the West will win the WoT – the only question is how many Muslims will die in the process. If this sort of terror attack becomes widespread, expect severe repurcussions. We don’t understand the Muslims, but they understand even less about us. Unless this sort of thing is stopped BY MUSLIMS (they are the only ones who can do it), the Muslim world will be treated to the Western concept known as Total War (i.e., slaughter everyone).
This is why Bush must win. Remaking the Muslim world is the last hope to avoid this scenario.
Terrye Norman Mailer is also another lefty war fraud, a total REMF who convinced gullible NY litteratoors he was writing gritty and realistic war stories.
I wouldn’t denigrate his physical prowess, he was pretty good with a knife.
http://partners.nytimes.com/books/97/07/13/reviews/mailer-stabbing.html
Brad:
Have you read any of the accounts of the survivors?
These people did not want to negotiate, they wanted to die. At least that is what they said.
Now I have never been in favor of the Kremlin’s tactics in Chechnya but this is terrorism plain and simple and dragging the likes of AlQaida into this will not help anyone.
They laughed at the children when they wimpered and made them drink their own urine. So far as I know the women and children they deliberately targeted for death had nothing whatsoever to do with politcs in Chechnya and if these terrorists are in any way indicative of the kind of people that Putin is dealing with there then I hope we give them help and assistance.
Becuase this was evil and no amount of rationalizing and displacing blame can change that.
If Russia negotiates and ends up giving Chechnya independence or even autonomy then the Russian Federation is in trouble. There are several other regions which want the same thing. The Russian government may believe that it would lead to the disintegration of the country.
Correct. Putin’s first task upon assuming office was to rein in not just the semi-autonomous republics and the border states but also Russia’s rebellious regional governors, who in the wake of the SU’s collapse have been ruling like semi-autonomous barons from the Tsarist era.
That may already be a hopeless cause in the case of the Far East regions, which are now either de facto Chinese vassal states or else firmly in the grip of lunatic governors who dominate a large chunk of the region’s economy as well as the local councils, courts, and the media.
Chechnya may eventually have some autonomy but the problem now is simply one of restoring some degree of order and a semblance of normal like. The Chechen “rebels” are for the most part bandits who pillage and terrorize their own as much as they terrorize the Russians. And now they’ve been infiltrated by Arab jihadists.
Breslan is Russia’s 9/11: the end of an era. Either Russia gets serious about reversing the criminalization of the Russian state and the crippling of the security forces or it will simply cease to exist as a coherent major power.
I say we give Putin a hand. Screw the EU dwarves.
Jamie:
I have a tremendous affection for Russia, the Russian language and the Russian people. I’d like to help them.
You know, they say in Alcoholics Anonymous that you can’t recover for someone else.
Are you sure we can help them yet?
Richard Nieporent ó Knifing an unarmed woman. A true manly man of the left. I can wait to see what he writes about Breslan for Harper’s or the Atlantic Monthly.
And let’s not forget his role in getting “Belly of the Beast” Abbott out of jail to kill that waiter…
Terrye
“Now I have never been in favor of the Kremlin’s tactics in Chechnya ”
Good to know.
“… in Chechnya and if these terrorists are in any way indicative of the kind of people that Putin is dealing with there then I hope we give them help and assistance.”
(??Them help?? I presume you meant giving help to Putin.)
So which is it? Are you against Putin’s tactics or do you want to assist him?
Thibaud
“I say we give Putin a hand”
Hmmm. Like Putin gave a hand to America by providing Iraq high ranking generals to devise Saddam’s defense plan and providing GPS jamming equipment to stop American satellite guided bombs? That kind of help?
Putin is a KGB snake who pines for the old Soviet Empire. It isn’t just all of the Russian Federation he wants to hold onto, he also has designs on the Baltic states which are now members of NATO.
Putins’ greatest achievement to date is solidifying his domination over Russia by centralizing information and economic power. Russia is moving backward under Putin.
That doesn’t mean America shouldn’t cooperate with Putin WHERE NECESSARY in order to fight terrorism. But for God’s sake let us not unthinkingly embrace Putin and his awful stewardship of Russia.
Putin is without a doubt a total snake, and Russia’s tactics in Chechnya have been indescribably brutal. All that said, we may be at a point where Putin realizes he needs some help. He needs training and high tech gear to fight the terrorist, and we need him to stop selling nuclear tech to Iran, and tell us exactly what the mullahs have. I think we need to seize this opportunity.
So which is it? Are you against Putin’s tactics or do you want to assist him?
I don’t know, Brad. Which is it? False dichotomy or sloppy thinking?
Floor wax, or dessert topping?
Brad,
If Russia fails, we fail. And Russia means Putin. There is no alternative on the horizon.
Russia is itself part of that Eurasian arc of instability in which AQ and other Saudi and Iranian proxies thrive. Therefore the proper framework for thinking about today’s Russia is to compare it not to Germany or Poland but to Pakistan and India.
Do we refuse to embrace Musharraf because his government is corrupt and brutal? Of course not. We need Musharraf to succeed because the alternative, an ISI-dominated regime, would be horrific.
Likewise the outcomes that confront us regarding Russia are either
a) the collapse of the Russian Federation into a small, western core surrounding Moscow and a constellation of chaotic, independent fiefdoms run by ruthless bandits in the Lukashenko/Aliyev mode; or
b) a stable, coherent Russian Federation that can control its borders, keep its WMD under lock and key and put down internal uprisings with both effectiveness and efficiency ie minimal loss of civilian life.
That may seem like a difficult choice to you, but it’s an easy choice to me.
The policy we’ve actually pursued has been to let the nonproliferation program wither for lack of funding, chastize every move by Russia to put down the Chechen bandits’ “rebellion” and to applaud the wholesale looting by pseudo-businessmen like that thief Khodorkovsky, who should have been imprisoned nine years ago. (Note that the city of Moscow alone has 23 individuals on Forbes’ top billionaire list. New York has 31. These top 23 thieves and their entourage control about 40% of Russia’s GDP. That’s an astonishing degree of theft not equalled by the grandest bandits of Brazil, Mexico or Africa.
Time to get serious about our real interests. Helping Putin is crucial for us– far more important in any case than this grand transatlantic pissing match known as the Atlantic “Alliance.” NATO is useless to us regarding Iran and AQ.
Again, if Putin fails, we fail. End of story.
Brad ó Oh, come now. Surely France, Germany and Belgium could defend the Baltic states…
Hey, folks, it’s either in this thread or some other
but I’ve now read part of Barnett’s The Pentagon’s New Map, and I’ll say this for it: he’s a helluva writer. It’s occassionally laugh-out-loud funny.
Apparently on purpose.
Thibaud
So it’s stability uber alles, eh? That sure reminds me of Bush the Elder who also had a false fixation on stability. Nope, wouldn’t be prudent to do anything about the Vilnius massacre , gotta support Gorbachev, can’t risk instability.
If only America had put it’s foot down instead of tsk tsking when Russia first plowed into Chechnya ten years ago we wouldn’t be dealing with the Chechnyan terrorist mess we are dealing with today. Those very means that Russia used to enforce ‘stability’ is what gave Islamic terrorists the opportunity to gain a foothold in Chechnya in the first place.
Compare what happened in Bosnia and Chechnya. Two different states, with Islamic histories fighting for independence.
The insane initial Clinton Balkan policy of negotiation and arms embargo permitted the slaughter of the Bosnians at the hands of the Serbs. Into this void creeped Iranian and other muslim extremists to fill the gap, providing arms and support to the Bosnians. If Clinton hadn’t finally reversed policy Bosnia would have turned out just like Chechnya has.
Poor Chechnya never got the kind of concern that the Balkans got. The Balkans were on “Europe’s doorstep”, Chechnya was far away.
It was Western indifference to Chechnya and clinging to preserving the “stability” of Russia that brought us to the point we are at today.
If Russian stability is so great, was the world better off with the Soviet Empire? They sure kept good internal stability didn’t they? Those commies sure knew a thing or two about controlling borders!
Brad:
You obviously missed my many posts on the Balkans. Too many people subscribe to a media picture idealizing the Bosnians and vilifying the Serbs while totally ignoring the brutality of the Croats. The Bosnians became the heros because they were militarily weak and at the same time the darlings of the Arabists and anti-Semites in the State Department and the international media. You may not know this but one the first things the Bosnians did when they declared themselves a state was to go Jew-hunting in Sarejevo. The Bosnians, or more accurately their publicists like Christiana Annnapoure of CNN, created atrocity stories to rival the German “rape of Belgiumî in 1914. It is not like they had to make stuff up either both the Serbs and the Croats, as well as the Muslims committed enough atrocities to make the networks happy . For example, the so-called Serb mortaring of the Sarejevo Market was most likely the work of the Bosnian governement. I recommend you read a book by LTGEN Sir Michael Jackson Rose entitle “Fighting for Peace”. Rose was the last UN peacekeeping commander and he confirms that the Bosnians were responsible for the explosion. I also know the CO of the US MI battalion who conducted the investigation and he told me that there is no doubt in his mind that the Bosnian Government was responsible.
Not only was the Bosnian government willing to commit atrocities and blame on the Serbs to garner international support but they also suppressed information that their primary objective was to create a Sharia based state where Croats and Serbs had Dhimini status. Today, the Bosnian government is a member of the Conference of Islamic Nations and is committed to bring Sharia to the entire country. The fact is that the Muslim government cannot implement their plans without a NATO presence because neither the Bosnian Serbs or Croats would freely accept it.
The Serbian view was that a Muslim state committed to Sharia law in the Balkan is unelectable. Such a state would not only be a threat to Christian Southern Europe but would provide a base to attack Western Europe. Most Europeans and Americans laughed at this in the 1990′s but I doubt anybody is laughing now.
The same goes for the Kosovo situation. It is a product of both a greater Albania movement and Islamic Radicalism. Albanians seek to create a single Albanian state that is racial pure. Their immediate objective is drive all the Serbs out of Kosovo, destroy Macedonia and incorporate those territories into a greater Albania. The reason we supported Albanian Narco-terrorists is because Albright and Clark were fixated on getting Milosevic and did not consider the long term consequence of their actions. KFOR, the NATO occupation force in Kosovo does little more than protect Islamic Radicals and Albanian thugs from countermeasures that the still sovereign Serbian government has a right to take to protect its territory.
Brad:
Oh puhleaze…
The Soviets invaded Afghanistan and killed a million people who gave a rat’s ass? Did hundreds of thousands turn out to protest? Nope.
And when the US went into Iraq the Russians were defended far and wide because they did not support the US.
The point is this is not just about Chechen independence. The men who are doing the killing say it is not about Chechen independence. There have been links between terrorists in Chechnya and AlQaida for years. They say they want a Caliphate and do not believe in democracy nor do they show the slightest concern as to who they kill. Making excuses for their behavior will not make this any less heinous.
So no, I don’t particularly like the Kremlin’s methods but I like these mother fuckers even less.
Terrye–Geez–remind me NEVER to get you mad at me!