Posted on 06/17/2002 3:57:51 PM PDT by zapiks44
Bush and Putin unite against a common 'foe'
http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_home.html
By ERIC MARGOLIS -- Contributing Foreign Editor
GENEVA -- If you can't beat them, join them. Russia has wisely decided to accept junior membership in NATO and link itself to Europe at last week's Rome summit rather than challenge the overwhelming might of the United States and its allies.
As former president Lyndon Johnson pithily noted, it's better to have someone inside your house spitting out, than someone outside spitting in. The George Bush administration has followed this sensible dictum and is to be congratulated for steering Russia into Europe's arms. The alternative would be a sullen, isolated, dangerous Russia.
So far, so good. But a cloud hung over the heavily guarded Rome meeting. The new U.S.-Russian entente may be more a temporary liaison of convenience driven by sharing a mutual enemy - Islamic militancy (known as "terrorism" to its enemies) - rather than common goals or ideals. As the Arabs say, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
In 1999, George Bush denounced Russia for its savagery in Muslim Chechnya thus: "When the Russian government attacks civilians, killing women and children ... it can no longer expect aid. The Russian government will discover it cannot build a stable and unified nation on the ruins of human rights." Now, in May, 2002, Bush lauds Russia's leader, Vladimir Putin, as a friend and ally in the war against terrorism, man of peace and respecter of human rights. The same Putin whose forces invaded independent Chechnya, razed its cities, killed over 70,000 civilians and continue to destroy it. This week, Amnesty International again accused Russia of ongoing torture and human rights violations in Chechnya.
Just as Chechens fighting 300 years of brutal Russian occupation are now branded "Islamic terrorists" by the Bush administration, so, too, are Muslim Kashmiris struggling against Indian rule. As India and Pakistan teeter on the verge of war, the White House, whose ham-handed diplomacy helped ignite this latest Kashmir crisis, has swallowed India's claim that militants fighting its occupation of Kashmir are "Islamic terrorists."
Short memory
Any armed resistance by Muslims to oppression or denial of their basic rights is now deemed "terrorism" by Washington, which has conveniently forgotten America's creation of Cuban rebels, Nicaraguan Contra guerrillas, and Afghan mujahedin. India accuses Pakistan of terrorism while forgetting its support for Bangladeshi insurgents, Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers, and the dispatching of saboteurs to Pakistan.
As a result of 9/11, Chechen and Kashmir independence fighters have now joined Palestinians in a triumverate of evil. According to the new Bush interpretation, any Muslims who resist the status quo, no matter how unjust, may be terrorists - especially if they use their own bodies or bombs as weapons.
Political militants who blow up buildings and airliners, or slaughter civilians, are terrorists. Unfortunately, revolutionary warfare always involves a certain degree of terrorism. Let's recall Jews who waged a campaign of terrorism against the British in Palestine; India's bloody suppression of Sikh separatists; the Irish uprising against British rule, and so on.
There is no clear line between "clean" legitimate resistance and terrorism. Terrorism remains the weapon of the poor, the unarmed, the oppressed. If Muslim militants had tanks and helicopter gunships like the Russians, Indians and Israelis, they would use them instead of suicide attacks. But they do not. How is an oppressed people without arms to resist?
Pakistan has armed and supported many of the Kashmiri mujahedin operating against India. But India is a major violator of human rights in the Kashmir Valley, as Amnesty International also reported last week.
In 1948, the UN mandated that India and Pakistan hold plebiscites in their portions of divided Kashmir to determine the wishes of the population, 80% of whom were Muslims. India has persistently refused to hold the vote and instead annexed its portion of Kashmir, insisting the disputed state is purely an internal matter. India's claims that the latest uprising in Kashmir is entirely due to Pakistani machinations are as false as Pakistan's claims it gives nothing but "moral support" to Kashmiri militants.
Legitimate grievances
In fact, the Kashmir uprising spontaneously ignited in 1989 and caught Pakistan as much by surprise as India. But India, like Israel and Russia, has jumped on George Bush's anti-terrorism bandwagon in order to crush enemies who are fighting as much for land and freedom as they are for Islam. Trying to demonize and dismiss the legitimate grievances of Palestinians, Muslim Kashmiris and Chechen by branding them terrorists is immoral and will ensure that even more terrorist acts become the norm.
To the Muslim world, America has now joined Russia as its main oppressor. As the Israeli thinker Uri Avnery observed, the U.S. is now acting like the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 1830s by ruthlessly enforcing an unjust, repressive and politically reactionary status quo.
Three decades ago, America was regarded as a friend and saviour by the Muslim world. In the 1990s, the United States saved the Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo from genocide - a noble act insufficiently recognized by the world's Muslims. Today, after 9/11, America is now seen as the leading enemy and oppressor of Muslims, a fact underlined by the new U.S.-Russian entente. Such is the continuing tragic fallout from 9/11.
Hindu Pilgrims Attacked in Kashmir
Posted by Teacher317 On Jun 16 10:42 PM with 6 comments
AP, via Yahoo ^ | 06-16-02 | NEELESH MISRA Hindu Pilgrims Attacked in Kashmir Sun Jun 16,12:36 PM ET By NEELESH MISRA, Associated Press Writer NEW DELHI, India (AP) - Suspected Islamic militants hurled grenades and opened fire on police, sleeping villagers and Hindu pilgrims in Kashmir ( news - web sites), killing 12 people in the first such assaults in three weeks, Indian officials said Sunday. The attacks, which began Saturday afternoon, came as tensions along the border in Kashmir that divides India and Pakistan had appeared to ease. Children, Hindu pilgrims and police officers were among those killed in the grenade explosions and gunfire, a senior security...
Islamic Terrorists Using Fear To Ethnically Cleanse Kashmir
Posted by AM2000 On Jun 16 9:40 PM with 6 comments
hindustantimes.com ^ | Jammu, June 16 2002 | Arun Joshi Fear drives Hindus out of the hillsHindus are no longer safe in the hills. Militants have renewed their campaign against them in Jammu’s forested hills and are maiming them with the objective of making them flee to the plains. This suits their agenda to have liberated zones in the hills — the kinds they have already set up in the upper reaches of Surankote in Poonch and also in Marwah -Dacchan in Doda, the landlocked district north of Jammu . Two massacres of Hindus in less than 24 hours in Doda and Udhampur districts since Saturday afternoon has reinforced the...
Kashmir Attack Leaves 6 People Dead
Posted by Mr. Morals On Jun 16 9:32 AM with 4 comments
Associated Press | June 16, 2002 | AP Kashmir Attack Leaves 6 People Dead By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 3:23 a.m. ET JAMMU, India (AP) -- Suspected Islamic guerrillas threw grenades and fired guns at Hindu pilgrims trudging down from a mountaintop shrine in Jammu-Kashmir, starting a battle that killed three Hindu children and three of the pilgrims' escorts, police said Sunday. Religious tension swept through two towns near the site of the fighting Saturday after rumors spread that the Muslims were actually killed by Hindus avenging the deaths of the children -- two boys and a teen-age girl. Jammu-Kashmir, the Indian-controlled portion of divided Kashmir, is...
Kashmir Rebels Attack Chief Minister, Kill Children
Posted by lyonesse On Jun 15 6:31 PM with 1 comment
Yahoo News ^ | Jun 15,12:24 | Sheikh Mushtaq SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - The chief minister of India's Jammu and Kashmir ( news - web sites) state escaped an attempt on his life on Saturday when two grenades were fired at a government building he was inaugurating in the region's main city, police said. In a separate attack later in the day, two children were killed and two people injured when unidentified militants hurled a grenade and fired on a group of Hindu devotees east of Jammu, the state's winter capital. The attack on Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah came as Indian and Pakistani troops, locked in a tense confrontation...
Three Islamic terrorists, bombed bridge and house in Kashmir
Posted by realteeguru On Jun 14 3:54 PM with 2 comments
hinduston times ^ | Jun 14 | Srinagar Three Muslim terrorists and an policeman were killed in Kashmir where suspected Islamic terrorists also bombed a bridge and a house, police said on Friday. Security forces shot dead the three terrrorists in Doda district on Friday, a police spokesman said. They were killed during a four-hour encounter near Banihal, 100 kilometres Srinagar, he said. Two Kalashnikov assault rifles and one radio receiver set were recovered from the scene of encounter, he said. The three were local terrorists, he said, without identifying the group they belonged to. In another attack, policeman Mohinder Singh was killed in an overnight ambush by...
So, these are the people Margolis says we should be supporting?
We all know the tactics Palestinians use, and don't forget the apartment block bombings in Moscow a few years ago and the recent attack on civilians in Dagestan a few weeks ago on Victory Day. I'm not trying to excuse the behavior of the Russian forces in dealing with Chechnya, but to say that the Chechens rebels shouldn't be called terrorists is absurd. (And so is Margolis, obviously) It's also well known that bin Laden has links to Chechnya.
Guess that's what happens when Muslim terrorists kill over 3,000 innocent Americans.
And when they spout their threats and depraved hatred of the U.S. almost daily.
They make American their enemy. Duh.
The Russian campaign against what is now Chechnya did not really get going till the 1830s, and did not succeed in "occupying" the area till the 1860s. That isn't "300 years of occupation."
This is similar to the same types of numbers tossed around about European occupation of Africa, ignoring the fact that it was limited to the African coasts till the mid-1850s and large parts were not really occupied till the early 20th century.
It didn't have to do with spitting. What
LBJ really said was pithier.
What at first started as a good article quickly sank into Leftist drivel. First of all, the Chechins have not been fighting for 300 years. After their final defeat in the early 1800's, they were peaceful, for the most part right up to the Revolution/Civil War/WW2 era and again, 50 years later. What did we Russians ever bring them? Well besides the alphebat, education, roads, running water and flushing toilets, a lot. As for Kashmir, the Kashmiri leadership had 3 choices: Pakistan, India or independence, they chose India. Leftists never could keep the facts straight.
Oh yes, Russia may have "civilized" Chechnya, but at what cost? Sorry to bring up this inconvenient fact, but the entire population of Chechnya; men, women and children, were packed off to the Siberian Gulags. A third of the population died in those Gulags. Would you like Russia if it had done that to the American people?
Don't get me wrong, I don't support the tactics of Shamil Basayev and the late Khattab. However, the Chechens have good reason to hate the Russians. The fact that senior figures in the pro-Moscow Chechen puppet government resigned last July because of the severity of the Russian army's mistreatment of Chechen civilians, proves that Russia is still happy to employ heavy-handed methods.
What did we Russians ever bring them? Well besides the alphebat, education, roads, running water and flushing toilets, a lot.
Stavka, don't forget mass torture and genocide!
As for the Gulags, they were not shipped to Gulags, Stalin went soft on them and sent them into exile not the Gulags...otherwise there would be a lot less Chechins. As for the transfer, in 24 hours 90% were gone with only 110 fatalities, mostly heart attacks....now as usual, lets do away with the half truths and examine why they were exiled: ACTIVE COOPERATION AND ALLIANCE with Hitler during the Nazi summer '42 campeign. See the interesting things History Brings up.
As for torture, if anything, we learned from them. Don't start the: they're from the third world and are always victems and are otherwise blameless, routine.
Actually, I've also come across some Russians who believe the FSB had a hand in the Moscow bombings, and No, I won't give you their names. Russia's brutal reputation for silencing its critics is richly deserved. I know you are loyal to Putin and the Russian government, so I've no doubt you would follow Putin's example and "rat someone out" for your own benefit.
Stavka, here's a joke devised by a Russian for you to amuse yourself with:
Q: What's the difference between the Russian Constitution and the US Constitution?
A: They both guarantee freedom of speech, but the US Constitution also guarantees freedom after the words are spoken.
So transporting the entire population is a justifiable and proportionate response to the actions of a minority of nationalists is it? Lets look at who else "actively cooperated and allied" themselves to Hitler; the Northern Irish Republicans, the Austrians, the Swedes, the Swiss, the Finns, Henry Ford, Lord Mosely, Lord Halifax and Edward the VIII, to name but a few. The Chechens were not alone, but they were alone in the exceptional punishment they received.
As for torture, if anything, we learned from them. Don't start the: they're from the third world and are always victems and are otherwise blameless, routine.
Are you joking?! Russians were devising new and more sophisticated methods of torture before they ever set foot in Chechnya. Knouting people to death in public, was a favourite method of execution in Russia under the Czar. Oh well, Stavka, I suppose its back to the drawing board if your trying to portray Russia as a compassionate society.
Oh, here's something else which "actively cooperated and allied" itself to Hitler - the USSR, up until the NAZIS invaded in 1941. As I remember it, Germany and the USSR divided up Poland between them and subjugated the Polish population.
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