Kill the Messenger:What Russia taught Syria

Foreign Policy ^ | 3/2/2012 | Robert Young-Pelton

[U-238]

It was a star-filled night in Chechnya's besieged capital of Grozny. The snow crunched under my feet as I walked with the Chechen rebel commander away from the warmth of our safe house. When we entered a bombed-out neighborhood 15 minutes away, I put the battery in my Iridium satellite phone and waited for the glowing screen to signal that I had locked on to the satellites.

I made my call. It was short. Then the commander made a call; he quickly hung up and handed me back the phone. "Enough," he said, motioning for me to remove the battery.

As we walked briskly back to the safe house, it was exactly 10 minutes before the cascade of double wa-whumps announced the Grad rocket batteries pounding the vacant neighborhood we had just left.

It was December 1999, and the Russian assault on Grozny was unfolding in all its gruesome detail. After the dissolution of so much of the former Soviet empire, Chechnya was one country that the newly minted prime minister, Vladimir Putin, refused to let go of. His boss, Boris Yeltsin, and the Russian army had been defeated and then humiliated in the media by Chechen forces in the first war. Five years later, Russia was back. And Putin's new strategy was unbending: silence, encircle, pulverize, and "cleanse." It was a combination of brutal tactics -- a Stalinist purge of fighting-age males plus Orwellian propaganda that fed Russians a narrative wherein Chechen freedom fighters were transformed into Islamist mercenaries and terrorists. More than 200,000 civilians were to die in this war, the echoes of which continue to this day.

[cunning_fish]

Violence brings violence. I’m not telling Russians are saints there but they ‘ve just given muslims their own medicine.

History proved it’s only way to restrain them.

[donozark]

"I hold it a principle in Asia that the duration of peace is in direct proportion to the slaughter you inflict on the enemy."

General M.O Skobelev. Conqueror of Turkmenistan 1881.

[cunning_fish]

We have to miss people who had deep understanding of religion of peace back to a pre-political corectness era.

[ravager]

This article is just plain nonsense written by a jihadi sympathizing liberal.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks U-238.

After the dissolution of so much of the former Soviet empire, Chechnya was one country that the newly minted prime minister, Vladimir Putin, refused to let go of. His boss, Boris Yeltsin, and the Russian army had been defeated and then humiliated in the media by Chechen forces in the first war. Five years later, Russia was back. And Putin's new strategy was unbending: silence, encircle, pulverize, and "cleanse."

[bayouranger]

islam is being destroyed throughout the world and the saudis will fall too for all of their support for these rabid koranimals which they love to call “holy” warriors.

[namvolunteer]

The New World Order which includes Soros, Bush, Clinton, Romney and Obama, the UN, NATO, and the Muslim Brotherhood sponsored the “rebels” who repeatedly sodomized the lifeless body of Khaddify. I abhor their goals.
Today, the US defense secretary and the leader of America's military said our country doesn't recognize the Constitution because the US is subservient under the UN and NATO.
Bugs Bunny said it best: This means war!

[U-238]

The Muslim Brotherhood goals is to have a Pan Arabic Caliphate from the Atlantic Ocean to India.

[U-238]

I should say a Pan Islamic/Arabic Caliphate is the MB goal