← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · JimX
Thread ID: 14931 | Posts: 5 | Started: 2004-09-08
2004-09-08 17:30 | User Profile
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.
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. [URL=http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5010448-103610,00.html]LINK[/URL]
2004-09-08 18:08 | User Profile
**I saw some so-called Russian expert Steven Cohn telling us how the US need to make Russian President Putan start talks with these murders. Scum! I say ship him to Ossetia let with a tape of what he said. **
2004-09-08 18:43 | User Profile
Southern Russia is VERY rich in both oil and gas. That is precisely why I believe the CIA would love to see Russia broken up into several small "independent:rolleyes:" countries that the U.S. would have much more leverage over. A recent declassified CIA report even predicted that Russia would fall apart at the seams in a decade and split into as many as eight different states. [B][URL=http://agitprop.org.au/nowar/20040430_ao_cia_angers_russia.php][SIZE=2]LINK[/SIZE][/URL] [/B]
Russia should do whatever is necessary to protect it's territorial integrity. I'm sure the U.S. would do the same.
2004-09-09 16:00 | User Profile
[QUOTE]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 Center. 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.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE]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 Center 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.[/QUOTE] [B][URL=http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0908-01.htm]LINK[/URL] [/B] [SIZE=3][B]Membership List of the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC)[/B][/SIZE] [B]Morton Abramowitz Elliott Abrams Kenneth Adelman Bulent Ali-Reza Richard V. Allen Audrey L. Alstadt Vadim Altskan Zeyno Baran Antonio L. Betancourt John Bolsteins John Brademas Zbigniew Brzezinski Richard Burt John Calabrese Eric Chenoweth Walter C. Clemens Eliot Cohen Nicholas Daniloff Ruth Daniloff Midge Decter James S. Denton Larry Diamond Thomas R. Donahue Robert Dujarric John Dunlop Charles Fairbanks Sandra Feldman Geraldine A. Ferraro Catherine A. Fitzpatrick Erwin Friedlander Frank Gaffney Charles Gati Richard Gere Douglas Ginsburg Paul Goble Marshall I. Goldman Orlando Gutierrez Barbara Haig Alexander M. Haig, Jr. Robert P. Hanrahan Paul B. Henze Eleanor Herman Peter J. Hickman Norman Hill Irving Louis Horowitz Glen E. Howard Bruce P. Jackson Robert Kagan Max M. Kampelman Thomas Kean Mati Koiva Guler Koknar Harry Kopp William Kristol Janis Kukainis Saulius V. Kuprys Kenneth D. S. Lapatin Michael A. Ledeen Robert J. Lieber Seymour M. Lipset Robert McFarlane Mihajlo Mijajlov Bronislaw Misztal Joshua Muravchik Julia Nanay Johanna Nichols Jan Nowak William Odom P.J. O'Rourke J. Dimitry Panitza Richard Perle Richard Pipes Norman Podhoretz Moishe Pripstein Arch Puddington Peter Reddaway Peter R. Rosenblatt David Saperstein Gary Schmitt William Schneider Alexey Semyonov Andrew M. Sessler Philip Siegelman Sophia Sluzar Stephen J. Solarz Helmut Sonnenfeldt Gregory H. Stanton Leonard R. Sussman Barry Tharaud Jack Thomas Tomarchio Sinan Utku George Weigel Caspar Weinberger Curtin Winsor R. James Woolsey Tatiana Yankelevich[/B] [B][URL=http://www.peaceinchechnya.org/about_members.htm]LINK[/URL] [/B]
2004-09-09 17:05 | User Profile
The Bush Adminstration-- Condi Rice and State Dept.-- has met with Chechen "separatists" numerous times over the past 3 years (mostly after 9/11!).
Last month the Bush Administration signed off on asylum in the U.S. for Ilyas Ahkmadov, a Chechen terrorist behind the 1995 Buddenovsk, Russia hosptial seige that left many men, women, and children dead.
And to think these GOP scumbags are pretending to be the enemy of terrorism (yeah, making the world safe for Islamists by taking out secular Baathists).