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.
Maybe forming an alliance with the biggest mass-murderer in History before WW II began was repugnant to them.
If Chamberlin was not the British idol of the day, and the English had shown some balls in the Rhineland take over, WW2 might not have happened.
Most Britons had contempt for Neville Chamberlain, it was only the NAZI sympathisers like Lord Halifax, Mosely and, of course, Edward the VIII, who encouraged him.
Yes, WW II need not have happened. Hitler should have been stepped on when he first violated the treaty of Versailles. But that wasn't an excuse for the USSR to join up with Hitler and occupy Poland. Britain declared war on Germany because of the invasion of Poland, which your lot aided Germany with.
P.S. I was amused by the behaviour of your Russian youth after you were beaten by Japan the other week. It looks like the wonderful discipline and nationalism (military training for school children and conscription) you have in Russia and which you often boast about, have some unfortunate side effects.
Yes, hundreds of years ago, but we've moved on, whereas Russia still uses torture on a routine basis - as you're well aware. One of the Russians I know has a relative in the Militia and he admits that the Militia often torture suspects. The methods the Russian army uses against Chechen detainees are pretty unpleasant too. Again you're well aware of this, but like most Russians you couldn't care less.
Look- I have no doubt that our half westernized brothers in Russia are brutal. But look what they have to deal with! And when it comes down to brass tacs they are western and nominally Christian and the Chechynans are of Islam. Bush will not say that- but I am- It is a religious war. Christians, Jews, Hindus, and everyone else against a faith that preaches slaughter of non believers.
The problem is that by exercising collective punishment against the Chechen civilian population, the Russians are actually facilitating support for these sadistic maniacs. Look at how much support and how many more recruits the IRA got after the 'Bloody Sunday' massacre. The oppressive methods used by the Soviets in Afghanistan didn't make them popular with the Afghans either.
Even if the rebel Chechen government are psychopathic fanatics, torturing and killing civilians will just be counter-productive for the Russians in the long run.
A good rule of thumb is this- where do the refugees flow? That is how you tell the good guys from the bad. Do they flow to Iran or Afghanistan? No- they flow North into Russian or partial western lands. Just as they did in VietNam.
I'm not "defending" Chechen terrorists. I'm defending civilians whose nationality happens to be Chechen. The Russia 'zachistka' operations detain and often torture all men in an area of 'rebel activity' above the age of 10. Probably some of them are involved with Chechen rebels. But not all of them are, and those of them who are tortured are likely to resent the Russians and sympathise with the rebels.
Ignoring atrocities against civilians because they are committed by the side you sympathise with is wrong. I am aware of the sick cruelty of certain Chechen rebels/terrorists like Khattab, Shamil Basayev and Arbi Barayev. However, the fact that atrocities were committed by Chechens does not mean that the whole Chechen population support those incidents, nor does it mean that we should ignore atrocities committed against Chechen civilians.
The Russians are dealing with them in the same way they have dealt with the Russians. A year ago, I might have agreed with you, but not now. Putin is pulling the reins on the troops where he can, but there is a deep and abiding hatred for the barbarity of these people and I'm beginning to understand that.
Russians, Ukrainians, and other former Soviet bloc countries, even those that are ashamed of their government's past record, agree near unanimously that the way to be rid of the Islamic fanatics is to exterminate every last one of them.
They have history as their teacher. We have some notion of idealistic morality translated into geospeak as human rights.
When Americans think of Russian human rights abuses, they should remember that they have had the benefit of being isolated by two oceans. During the war between the states, one need only recall Vicksberg, Sherman's march to the sea and so forth, to realize that Americans are just as capable of such brutality.
By the way, we are not "nominally" Christian but overwhelmingly Orthodox Christian.
I was making the point that the Russian government's fostering of nationalism and disciplinarianism seems to create unexpected problems. Also being English doesn't mean I am involved in, or support, football hooliganism. Just like your attitude towards Chechens is dictated by the existence of Chechen terrorists, you assume I have certain characteristics because of my nationality, what sloppy thinking.
As for David Hunter's bs about torture, it is a proven fact that the Brits use torture in N. Ireland....all those little details, like the violence of british disarmed society, like a good socialist, he ignores
First of all, I am not a Socialist, no doubt you think labelling me as one will cause other people to support your arguements. Second the British government specifically swore in the mid 1970s not to use torture in any circumstances. Unfortunately, individuals sometimes break the rules. But the idea that the British army use torture even a hundredth as much as the Russian army, is just ludicrous. As for the violence of British disarmed society, the murder rate in Russia is the second highest in the World after South Africa.
BS, you conviniently ignore, again, the fact that 1. Most Chechins don't live in Chechnya and don't want to. 2. That they had 3 years of independence and in that time kidnapped 1,500 people...
I've got one word for you - Wahabis. These people kill their own for ridiculous reasons like having the misfortune to be raped or not wearing their burkhas etc. Their expansionist ambitions meant that Chechnya under them was either preparing for war, or fighting a war.
The fact that these psychos exist is not an excuse for Russia to pick on innocent civilians because they have the same nationality.
Well, if they don't like being part of the terrorists, then they'd turn them in not give them comfort. At that point they become part of the combatent support infrastructure.
What usually happens to people who collaborate with the Russians? They get assassinated by the Chechen rebels. Its all very well us saying that locals should turn in terrorists, but we don't know the details of the situation they are actually in. You've often say how brutal these Shariah muslim led rebels are, don't you think they might threaten the families of people they need help from?
D.Hunter is a socialist/liberatarian (leans both ways) idealist, still in college. From previous conversations, I've gathered he has not been out in the real world much.
Again you label me a Socialist because I'm not prepared to give Russia a free hand to torture and murder Chechen civilians with impunity.
Your using a common political method, if you can't defeat someone's arguements, then launch a personal attack upon them. For your information I am not "still in college". I am a research scientist with a PhD who works in a University. I realise that when I mention being in a University you immediately assume I must be in my early 20s and studying for a first degree, due to your limited experience of higher education.
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