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.
As for the 12 million Russians killed by the Germans? I find that laughable. How many were killed by Russian partisans? How many were killed by the SMERSH? Or the NKVD? How many Russians were killed by "stopping groups". Did you ever ask your uncle how many "cowards" he killed in the Red Army? Russians love denial. They love to deny the 2 million rapes in Germany. How many rapes occured in Poland or in Serbia, or Czech or Slovak lands? I tried to engage you in friendship but to be honest I have nothing but a sickening disgust with Russians- slaves- not capable of self rule or any sort of republic other than direct tyranny or kleptocracy. If it wasnt for the brutal rule of Stalin Russians would have let the Germans win.
You "disgust" with us matters little in the real world and thankfuly ADULTS run the US and not biggoted revisionists like you. The last time I met someone so revisionist he was from the Aryan Nation...maybe you know the guy.
Or read Staligrad by Ballentine Press (I think) says the same thing.
In fact- I would wager that American patriots lynched more Loyalists than did the English Patriots.
But I disagree with you on Stalingrad the movie. It could have been so much better. But - to be honest- I think it was edited very badly.
There is testimoney from German soldiers transferred from the Russian Front to the Western Front about how easy and civilized the fighting was. On the Eastern front- weather Russian or German - if you were captured you would most likely be killed or die slowly in a labor camp. On the Western front both sides knew that if they were captured they had a good chance of life in a cozy camp. And even the fighting was not as brutal. Fire fights tended to die down past 5PM- when the officers on both sides wanted to relax. On the Western front numerous truces were called to gather wounded and dead. That almost never happened on the Eastern front because neither Stalin or Hitler cared about the dead or wounded.
To this day one can find bones of American dead on our Cival War battlefields (more Americans died in 1861- 1865 than in all our wars combined). I understand that they are still finding Russian dead all over your land and the Germans routinely discover Wermacht dead all over Germany.
The part of the old woman trying to get on the boat and being pulled off is bogus.
A lot of the fighting was done with hand grenades. If you read Enemy at the Gates, the Russians were seeing the same thing about the Germans. One Russian platoon held out for a week in a department store. The survivors said that the fountain outside the store was covered with german dead from the body waves they were doing across the square. They finally fell when their recoiless rounds ran out and the Germans did a major tank push.
Should I list more? Much less then this was enough reason for America to bomb away on the Taliban. First off, the Caribian is a Catholic not Islamic area and secondly, why does the US hold on to the Virgin Islands and Peurto Rico? It's US property.
German gains were now measured in yards and inches, as the determined Russians made them fight for every house and building which remained standing. Stuka dive bombers continued to hammer the Russian strong points, inflicting numerous casualties. The survivors, though bloodied, merely found new hiding places in the rubble and continued to fight on. Despite horrendous losses, the Germans systematically leveled the city block by block and relentlessly pressed towards the Volga.
While it was still capable of production, the Krasny Oktyaber plant continued to produce T-34 tanks and drive them directly into battle, often crewed by the workers who built them. Those civilians not cowering in cellars now pitched in to aid in the defense of the city. One German Panzer battalion over-ran a position, only to be sickened when they discovered that the defenders were women.
In spite of the heroic efforts of it's defenders, the 62nd Army was being driven back slowly but surely. Chuikov struggled to maintain communications with his beleaguered forces, but realized that the best he could hope to do was to give general instructions. He later stated that, "In Stalingrad, every man had to be his own General!" Russian positions which were by-passed continued to fight on, without orders, reinforcements, or supplies. Many would hold out for weeks, until finally running out of food and ammunition. All continued to exact a heavy toll of the enemy up to the moment they were over-run and killed.
Lt. Anton Kuzmich Dragan received these orders from Vasily Chuikov in person. Gathering a platoon of less than 50 men, Dragan and his soldiers proceeded to frustrate the Germans in an epic room by room struggle for control of the depot for nearly three weeks. Breaking through walls, crawling over the rafters, and burrowing under the floor boards, the Russians would yield a portion of the building to the Germans only to emerge elsewhere and start the struggle all over again.
Exchanging gunfire down hallways, lobbing grenades back and forth between rooms, Dragan's men inflicted as many casualties as possible on the enemy. In spite of this heroic resistance, Dragan's force was eventually reduced to a handful of men. Running out of ammunition, their rations gone, one of his soldiers took out a bayonet and carved on the wall, "Rodimtsev's Guardsmen fought and died for their country here". Under cover of darkness, Dragan and 5 of his soldiers slipped out of the building, made their way through enemy lines, and later rejoined the fight.
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