Posted on 02/20/2007 8:58:10 AM PST by Mrs. Don-o
Russian President Vladimir Putin showed two faces toward Islam last week. In ...Riyadh, Putin announced that "Russia is determined to enhance cooperation with the Islamic world"...In an equally historic but little-reported action, on Thursday Putin installed as acting president of Chechnya the strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, whose private army allegedly murders and abducts enemies of the regime with impunity....
Russia does not propose to ally with the Muslim world against the United States. Putin's initiative is a hudna, a brief truce in a long war. [Russia]has been fighting on its southern border for 300 years and now stands at the frontier between Islam and the Western world. Chechnya offers a likelier model for the new Middle East than the Bush administration's delusional pursuit of democracy. Russian troops killed between 35,000 and 100,000 civilians in the Chechen war of 1994-96, and half a million were driven from their homes...
...Putting Kadyrov in charge of what remains of Chechnya adds insult to injury.
Putin's [brutality] detracted not a whit from the festivities in Riyadh, because issues of principle have no place whatever in Middle Eastern politics. "I see in Putin a statesman and a man of peace and fairness," said King Abdullah...
Loyalties do not extend beyond clan and family, and the rest is a matter of opportunity, guile and maneuver. That is how business is done in that part of the world. You embrace your worst enemy when you are too weak to fight him, and you annihilate him when opportunity presents itself. When you have winnowed his ranks sufficiently to convince him that he is too weak to fight you, you embrace him once again. It is the sort of dirty work to which Americans are unaccustomed, but for which the Russians have had centuries of practice...
(Excerpt) Read more at atimes.com ...
Something to think about.
If they don't have more children it won't matter; Moscow is already about 25% Islamic.
Ping?
Russia will do what's good for Russia...
I thought Putin would be a useful ally in the WOT. Unfortunately, Putin doesn't seem to agree. He may have crushed Chechnya, or tried to, but he armed Saddam and he is arming Iran. And he has regularly backed the tyrants of Syria and the Palestinians.
Historically, Russia was the great Christian bulwark against the invading Muslim hordes. But Putin seems to have forgotten that role.
Our Lady of Fatima called on the Church way back at the beginning of the twentieth century to pray for the Conversion of Russia. The Wall fell, but it's still not clear that the country has been converted. Let us pray that it will be.
Dec. 21, 2006 update: Joseph A. D'Agostino, a demographer at the Population Research Institute, writes in "Motherless Russia - Muslims and Chinese Vie For Huge Assets of Dying Nation":
In 2015, less than ten years from now, Muslims could make up a majority of the Russian military. Military service is compulsory for young Russian men, though only 10% actually serve due to college deferments, bribes to escape duty, and the like. Given the famously brutal Russian military, perhaps avoiding military service is forgivable. But will the generals be able to avoid having a Muslim military if most young men who haven't fled Russia are Muslim? Will such a military operate effectively given the fury that many domestic Muslims feel toward the Russian military's tactics in the Muslim region of Chechnya? What if other Muslim regions of Russia—some of which contain huge oil reserves—rebel against Moscow? Will Muslim soldiers fight and kill to keep them part of the Russian motherland? …
With birthrates, death rates, and emigration rates the way they are now, it is highly plausible that Russia could be majority Muslim by 2040.
Russia is doomed.
Fertility rate among Slavs is 1.2
70% of their pregnancies end in abortion.
By 2015 1/2 of Russian military will be Muslim.
Life expectancy of men is 58 years, lower then in Bangladesh.
Putin is hated in Muslim countries, make no mistake. If a Chechen had the ability to carry out a nuclear bomb attack in the heart of Moscow, they would do it with glee. Thanks, but I'll stay on the side of democracy and trying to free enslaved peoples as opposed to putting your foot on Democracy's throat, as Putin has done in his own back yard.
Furthermore, there are more secular threats in the world than Muslim extremists--though they can be at the top of the list.
From the PRC, to Iran, to pressuring Westernizing former Communist states (i.e. Georgia, the Ukraine, the Baltic states, etc.) with oil/gas restrictions and economic warfare, to giving speeches denouncing the United States, the Russian Federation has sure suggested that it does not want to be an ally with the United States and the "West."
If you're still here and still have your Russia/Eurasia pinglist, ping.
And also suggesting an axis of Russia, the PRC and India to counter American influence in the world.
Russia will end up nuking the liberals on the coasts and the inner cities since it is the liberals who will unleash Iran from its containment. Instability in the US foreign policy, support of Islamic terrorists in Kosovo, Kurdistan and anywhere else they are to be found will do more to upset the global balance of power than any wars in the 20th century. Russia is benefiting from our war on terror. They have their own war on terror. If we policy shift into some liberal utopian version of the future the Russians will have to contend with islamicized Europe, Belligerant China and unpredictable USA. God Bless George Bush for buying us a few more years of peace.
Thant Daniel Pipes link is excellent. Thank you.
Thant Daniel Pipes link is excellent. Thank you.
By this logic, China is an even better ally. Stories of their own brutal suppression of Muslim rebels inside China are evidence of their attitude towards Islam. I only wish we would have treated Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan as brutally after 9/11.
He takes the tough action in Chechnya and extrapolates in ways that are not justified. Putin quacking about mutliethnicity and religion is proof that at heart he suffers from the same disease as the West. Holding on to Chechnya isn't a sign of strength and determination, it's a sign of stupidity. Russia needs Chechnya like it needs a gangrenous toe, and its determination to hold onto it runs counter to everything the author of this piece is claiming. If Putin were really determined to save the Russian nation he'd cut these little Bantustans loose and ruthlessly boot their citizens out of Russia.
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