Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Michael M who wrote (56208)	9/28/1999 12:11:00 AM
From: jbe	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 108807

Well, I can say that Talbott gave me the pip before I read the article -- and now that I have read it, he STILL gives me the pip...<g> The problem, of course, is not -- "who lost Russia?" -- because it was never ours to lose. The problem is that life in the State Department seems generally to have a deleterious effect on the brain. Talbott is not the only one whose brainpan seems stuffed with cotton wool...The only thing that really surprises me about Talbott in particular that he was, after all, a journalist, before entering the Mortuary (my pet name for the SD), and yet his style has degenerated into the usual bureaucratese. What happens to these folks is that they come to believe that the PR Pap they have to spout actually means something; that the abstractions they deal in are realities. Words, words, words, words (all BORING words, of course) -- and when life hits them right in the snoot they can only deal with it by pouring out more words, words, words, words... Of course, Talbott had a false picture of the region of the world he was responsible for (because his head was full of words, words, boring words) -- but isn't that true of just about everyone else in the Mortuary? But I would say he was not so much "soft" on Russia, as condescending towards it, like a "good parent" towards a fractious child. And the way he tried to wheedle Russia into accepting NATO expansion! How could anyone ever have thought that the Russians would not have perceived NATO expansion as aimed against them? (As it was, between you, me, the lamp post, and Mr. Talbott.) What I remember most about Talbott is the "major" speech he gave on U.S. policy towards the Caucasus & Central Asia back in 1997. As was to be expected, he made the usual pitch about the virtue of "territorial integrity" vs. the evil of "separatism." (This is not the Wilson Administration, you will recall.) Afterwards, an Abkhaz woman journalist beat me to the mike to ask the very question that I was planning to pose: "Why do you always support the principle of territorial integrity when it comes in conflict with the principle of self-determination?" Well, his answer came out nice and smooth and bureaucratic and weaselly. The gist of it was: "Well, we have nothing against the principle of self-determination. It is just that we oppose people who try to achieve self-determination by force." Right-o.... Georgia sent an army into "breakaway" Abkhazia, not the other way around. Russia sent an army into "breakaway" Chechnya, not the other way aound. And so forth. The moral: you can't use force to achieve self-determination, but it's okay to use force if you are trying to preserve your territorial integrity. What a crock! Don't recall whether Talbott had all that much to do with shaping our "Kosovo policy", but if he did, he needs his head examined, and the cotton wool laundered. But the Russians have proven to be good students; they actually say that their present bombardment of Chechnya is based on the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia precedent (i.e.,spare your own men, but bomb the bejeezus out of the other guy, from a safe distance). They also learned a "lesson" about how to deal with terrorists from the US-bin Laden "confrontation": aim zillions of rockets at your terrorist(s), and even if you hit the wrong people, still, you have made a statement!!! Now that I think about that bin Laden business, it seems to me more bizarre than ever. The mightiest nation on earth, hurling all that ordinance at a single individual!! Maybe if bin Laden actually DOES show up in Chechnya, the Russians hope we'll do the job for them: aim our rockets once again at bin Laden, and kill off (oops! coordinates just a bit off there!) every last Chechen instead. I wonder whether Strobe would fall for THAT one... Joan