We should offer help to Russia in their war against terrorism

[Lefty48197]

Just like the world offered us help and support following 9/11, we too should act with compassion, and offer our help. If the Russians want us to offer troops, intelligence, or weaponry to go help fight in Chechnya, then we should do it.
Of course, if they decide to invade Bulgaria instead, then I would expect to hear the Russians criticizing us for being "old America".

[ilyashl]

1. www.MoscowHelp.org

The least we can do is help victims of Russia's 9/11 in Beslan. The main fund for this is at http://www.MoscowHelp.org

[reorg]

2. The Chechens' American friends

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


(...) 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.

(...)

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.

(...)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,2763,1299408,00.html

[Aidoneus]

3. do you know who John Laughland is?

or his British Helsinki Human Rights Group? most people around here don't. I happen to, but that's neither here nor there.

[reorg]

5. don't know him personally

He seems to write interesting articles for The Guardian.

The activities and objectives of the BHHRG are presented at their website, the group is apparently well informed on the goings-on in the former Warsaw Pact states.

I'm not sure what to make of your remark, are you questioning the veracity of the information provided in Laughland's article?

[Aidoneus]

4. weaponry to go help fight in Chechnya..

ha, fucking insane.

What help they would need is satellite imagery, in order to find a building they haven't already blasted at least once. On the other hand, considering how many bombs they dropped on practically every school, house, apartment, market, and hospital in Chechnya outside of Znamenskoyie (their magick Potemkin Village right on the border where the photo-ops take place) previously, they may indeed be in need of weapons to do more of it.

On the other hand, they might want to think about what a group of Ingushes, Ossets, Kabardas, Daghestanis, Tatarstanis, Korean(s), Uzbekhs, Russians, Kazakhs, a Ukrainian, some giant black guy, and a couple Chechen women were doing there. Personally, I'm stumped and that is not through any lack of effort. Yes, all of those nationalities of the gunmen have been claimed at once or at various points by Russian officials.

Three poisoned darts to the most typical lies told of this so far: Aushev couldn't talk to them in the native Chechen-Ingush language (Putin's other top mediator on the matter confirms this as well, adding that they all spoke only Russian--confirmed by the witnesses inside), Ivanov doesn't know of any Chechen found dead (strange comment, since he's a loyal Putinist functionary), and Dr. Roshal most interestingly contradicts the sheepish media in saying that Russian occupation forces leaving Chechnya WAS NOT one of the demands of the people inside.

[NNadir]

6. The trouble with so called "Wars on Terrorism" is that they are nebulous

and involve secret and ususally extra-legal activity.

It is becoming increasingly clear that governments cannot be trusted to focus on "terrorism" and simply use the screen for unjustifiable and often unrelated agendas.

Actually the risk of being killed in terrorism is extremely small, rather comparable to the risk of being killed in a hurricane. Why not a "War on Anthropogenic Climate Change Agents?" I'll bet my war stops more terrorism than their wars.

[wolfuncle]

7. The Bush Error On Terror

The Bush Blunder Of Thunder

http://marketingtheworld.com/bush/bushbillboard.php

When I found out that George W. Bush deserted his military post during the Viet Nam war, it made me wonder about his integrity. Don't get me wrong George W. Bush was not in a critical position; he never faced hostile fire so his desertion did not really endanger any military effort. It is nice for him that his dad was influential so he wasn’t prosecuted as a deserter like anyone else in America would have been. But it does bring into question his commitment to the military, at least at that time in his life. Everyone does grow and after many years the party animal George W. Bush has passed his years of drug and alcohol abuse and is now Commander In Chief of the most powerful military organization in the world. It is at this very critical time that having such a man in charge of serious military planning that I become even more concerned and his record as Commander In Chief is beginning to look like a dismal failure.

Since the attacks of 911 were carried out by an organization centered in Afghanistan, and that most of the 911 hijackers were nationals form Saudi Arabia the massive military invasion and destruction of Iraq defines any rational military thinking.

Since the invasion of Iraq the following things have taken place:

1. The Iraqi military has basically been destroyed and as a result Iraq has been destabilized and open to terrorist infiltration even though American soldiers are dying everyday in an attempt to occupy the country.

2. The swift moving tactic used to overrun the Iraqi military failed to take into account the necessary number of men it would take to hold the country once the initial massive bombing raids and invasion were complete. For this reason widespread looting took place and the a number of the numerous caches of weapons left behind by the Iraqi military fell into the hands of the insurgents as the remaining loyalist members of the Iraqi military melted into the general population creating an insurgent force that is inflicting casualties on our occupying force daily.

3. Saddam Hussein's insane refusal to maintain important services for his own people and the massive destruction brought on my the heavy bombing of Iraq by the US leaves the country in a dismal state, making it difficult to provide the basic services for the Iraqi people and requiring the United States to commit billions of dollars to repair the damage.

4. Iraqi oil production has still not been brought to pre war levels, which was limited by UN sanctions that were still in place when Bush invaded Iraq. Not a good thing for an oil-consuming world.

Wouldn’t it have been smarter to leave Iraq under the scrutiny of the UN, allowing the weapons inspectors to continue their search (even though there were no WMDs there) thus leaving Iraq protected from invasion by terrorist elements that Hussein did not support?

Wouldn’t it have made more since to use 25% of what is being spent in Iraq in the war in Afghanistan and instead of allowing Osama bin Laden and a large number of his terrorist organization to escape but capture them.

And then wouldn’t it make more sense to use United States intelligence information (however suspect that might be at this time) and do precision raids, rather than massive bombings and with extreme prejudice remove one terrorist cell after another. Rather than allowing the world terror that continues to take place on a large scale in the world even though George W Bush Claims he has done something about?

Bush has failed, its time for a change.

Jorn

[Aidoneus]

8. Commander Basayev apparently denying all responsibility for this

It is not his style, no matter the consequences, to distance himself from matters which he is responsibile for; he should be taken at his word on this.

Reportedly, his verdict on the raid: "an inhuman act for which there can be no justification."

I have not seen this at KC or Daymohk yet, but it is reported.

[Aidoneus]

9. I take it back--this is not a true statement

Far from the truth, actually. Those were probably Zakayev's words.

This is very difficult for me.. I will say more when/if I have translated some of Shamil's most recent words. It is as usual a remarkable experience to read and consider, though I see it differently than I would have before and it is thus more difficult (or easier, in another sense).

[leesa]

10. Unless, of course, their government pulled it off like ours did on 9-11

There were no Chechnyans found among the "terrorist" dead. It was a scam to allow Putin to invade Chechnya just like 9-11 was a scam by Cheney and Bush to allow us to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.