Posted on 09/09/2004 1:29:43 AM PDT by konijn
The Chechens' American friends
The Washington neocons' commitment to the war on terror evaporates in Chechnya, whose cause they have made their own
John Laughland Wednesday September 8, 2004 The Guardian
An enormous head of steam has built up behind the view that President Putin is somehow the main culprit in the grisly events in North Ossetia. Soundbites and headlines such as "Grief turns to anger", "Harsh words for government", and "Criticism mounting against Putin" have abounded, while TV and radio correspondents in Beslan have been pressed on air to say that the people there blame Moscow as much as the terrorists. There have been numerous editorials encouraging us to understand - to quote the Sunday Times - the "underlying causes" of Chechen terrorism (usually Russian authoritarianism), while the widespread use of the word "rebels" to describe people who shoot children shows a surprising indulgence in the face of extreme brutality. On closer inspection, it turns out that this so-called "mounting criticism" is in fact being driven by a specific group in the Russian political spectrum - and by its American supporters. The leading Russian critics of Putin's handling of the Beslan crisis are the pro-US politicians Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Ryzhkov - men associated with the extreme neoliberal market reforms which so devastated the Russian economy under the west's beloved Boris Yeltsin - and the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow Centre. Funded by its New York head office, this influential thinktank - which operates in tandem with the military-political Rand Corporation, for instance in producing policy papers on Russia's role in helping the US restructure the "Greater Middle East" - has been quoted repeatedly in recent days blaming Putin for the Chechen atrocities. The centre has also been assiduous over recent months in arguing against Moscow's claims that there is a link between the Chechens and al-Qaida.
Advertiser links Jupiter Group PLC - ISA Investments Jupiter Group PLC provide investment management services for...
jupiteronline.co.uk
Request Free ISA Brochures for 2004/2005 Looking to invest your 2004/2005 ISA allowance? Request your...
isabrochures.co.uk
Compare ISAs Use our product finders to identify the right savings...
moneyexpert.com These people peddle essentially the same line as that expressed by Chechen leaders themselves, such as Ahmed Zakaev, the London exile who wrote in these pages yesterday. Other prominent figures who use the Chechen rebellion as a stick with which to beat Putin include Boris Berezovsky, the Russian oligarch who, like Zakaev, was granted political asylum in this country, although the Russian authorities want him on numerous charges. Moscow has often accused Berezovsky of funding Chechen rebels in the past.
By the same token, the BBC and other media sources are putting it about that Russian TV played down the Beslan crisis, while only western channels reported live, the implication being that Putin's Russia remains a highly controlled police state. But this view of the Russian media is precisely the opposite of the impression I gained while watching both CNN and Russian TV over the past week: the Russian channels had far better information and images from Beslan than their western competitors. This harshness towards Putin is perhaps explained by the fact that, in the US, the leading group which pleads the Chechen cause is the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC). The list of the self-styled "distinguished Americans" who are its members is a rollcall of the most prominent neoconservatives who so enthusastically support the "war on terror".
They include Richard Perle, the notorious Pentagon adviser; Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra fame; Kenneth Adelman, the former US ambassador to the UN who egged on the invasion of Iraq by predicting it would be "a cakewalk"; Midge Decter, biographer of Donald Rumsfeld and a director of the rightwing Heritage Foundation; Frank Gaffney of the militarist Centre for Security Policy; Bruce Jackson, former US military intelligence officer and one-time vice-president of Lockheed Martin, now president of the US Committee on Nato; Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, a former admirer of Italian fascism and now a leading proponent of regime change in Iran; and R James Woolsey, the former CIA director who is one of the leading cheerleaders behind George Bush's plans to re-model the Muslim world along pro-US lines.
The ACPC heavily promotes the idea that the Chechen rebellion shows the undemocratic nature of Putin's Russia, and cultivates support for the Chechen cause by emphasising the seriousness of human rights violations in the tiny Caucasian republic. It compares the Chechen crisis to those other fashionable "Muslim" causes, Bosnia and Kosovo - implying that only international intervention in the Caucasus can stabilise the situation there. In August, the ACPC welcomed the award of political asylum in the US, and a US-government funded grant, to Ilyas Akhmadov, foreign minister in the opposition Chechen government, and a man Moscow describes as a terrorist. Coming from both political parties, the ACPC members represent the backbone of the US foreign policy establishment, and their views are indeed those of the US administration.
Although the White House issued a condemnation of the Beslan hostage-takers, its official view remains that the Chechen conflict must be solved politically. According to ACPC member Charles Fairbanks of Johns Hopkins University, US pressure will now increase on Moscow to achieve a political, rather than military, solution - in other words to negotiate with terrorists, a policy the US resolutely rejects elsewhere.
Allegations are even being made in Russia that the west itself is somehow behind the Chechen rebellion, and that the purpose of such support is to weaken Russia, and to drive her out of the Caucasus. The fact that the Chechens are believed to use as a base the Pankisi gorge in neighbouring Georgia - a country which aspires to join Nato, has an extremely pro-American government, and where the US already has a significant military presence - only encourages such speculation. Putin himself even seemed to lend credence to the idea in his interview with foreign journalists on Monday.
Proof of any such western involvement would be difficult to obtain, but is it any wonder Russians are asking themselves such questions when the same people in Washington who demand the deployment of overwhelming military force against the US's so-called terrorist enemies also insist that Russia capitulate to hers?
· John Laughland is a trustee of the British Helsinki Human Rights Group www.oscewatch.org
When all else fails - blame the "neo-cons". Ronald Reagan and Nixon were strict "neo-cons", apparently people are unaware what the term means and what it entails.
Before you dig yourself in too deep, you should be aware that there's a good bit of truth in this article.
Russia took the position that the war in Iraq was "all about oil", so a tit for tat policy that Chechnya was just a Russian land grab wasn't too hard to understand, before the terrorists blew up the school.
The future depends on Russia. If they keep playing hardball with the US, supplying nuclear technology to Iran, and opposing the war on terror, then you aren't likely to see the US take any strong positions supporting Russia's fight against terrorism either.
Make no mistake, the world's reaction to the terrorist attack on the school has raised numerous policy questions, on all sides. Right now you see silence as everybody scrambles to figure out how to adjust to this, and to the populist pressure to "do something". It'll take time for the pendulum to settle on this one.
I sense the subtle hand of Ayman al Zawahiri in all this, including the Australian Embassy bombing.
Walking a very fine line to swing support for Kerry, or against Bush, by demonstrating that AQ can attack any time, any where, by not directly attacking the US which would weaken Kerry, and by exploiting subtle seams of potential inconsistency in our policies and alliances.
Way too early to draw conclusions, I merely offer this for consideration.
btttttttttttttt
Bump for the truth!!!!
Note it was their idea to go to Lebanon. The neocons still do not forgive Reagan for leaving that theater of operations, and Reagan's adoption of Carter's Afghanistan policy not only did not help end the USSR (cheap oil did it) it created the basis for this new war we wage and Nixon allied himself to evil that is Red China. That is neoconisim in a nutshell.
You will know the tree by it's fruit....
Bump
bump
Ping to an interesting article.
Neo cons bear their share--as intellectual support. I invite you to google up " balkans" and "neoconservative"--It's a real hard read, and an eye-opener. McVain, Albright, Biden, Waco Wesley--they were supported by neos such as Kristol and Krauthammer in getting the US on the wrong side, and empowering the Albanian Islamists.
Ping
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.