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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bela_ghoulashi who wrote (83285)	3/18/2003 8:02:53 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Good article in "Reason" on the open sore we are ignoring in Russia. Lindybill@somanybuttstokicksolittletime.com March 18, 2003 America's unsavory alliances Making the wrong friends in the fight against terrorism By Cathy Young As pro- and antiwar voices around the world vie for our attention, one extraordinary statement that doesn't fall squarely on either side of the divide comes out of Russia: an "Open Letter to President Bush" by Vladimir Bukovsky and Elena Bonner. Bukovsky, a noted Soviet-era dissident, former political prisoner, and author, and Bonner, the widow of the great scientist and human rights activist Andrei Sakharov and a prominent activist in her own right, are both veterans of the struggle against Soviet tyranny. They have no sympathy with the antiwar movement. Their conclusion, from their own experience of life under a totalitarian regime, is that military action against the rule of Saddam Hussein in Iraq is long overdue, and that it would free the Iraqi people from brutal oppression. And yet they pose the question: "Why is the US government not as smart as its weapons are? Why does it always make it so difficult to support it, even when it fights for a just and noble cause?" Bukovsky's and Bonner's harsh words are directed at the unsavory alliances that they believe the United States is entering in the war against terrorism, and, specifically, at our new friendship with Russia. Their letter, which appeared 216.239.53.100 in the conservative Web magazine FrontPage on March 10, has received virtually no publicity. Yet its message is worth hearing. Bukovsky and Bonner paint a troubling picture of Russia in 2003. "The KGB has won," they write startlingly. "After 10 years of some hesitant, half-hearted attempts at reform, the power was handed back to them, once again, and they were very quick to reestablish their authority throughout the country." They cite the crackdown on the independent media and the prosecutions of whistleblowers who have spoken out against military abuses. They also point to Chechnya, where, they assert, Russia is waging nothing less than a genocidal war. "The danger of 'partnership' with criminal regimes," write Bukovsky and Bonner, "is that they never stop until they make you an accomplice in their crimes. Slowly but surely, the Russian rulers force their Western partners to accept their crimes in Chechnya as a part of common struggle with terrorism." Before Sept. 11, they note, criticism from the West exerted at least some restraint on Russia's rampant abuses in Chechnya; now, even that is gone. And the Bush administration, they say, had blacklisted Chechen groups as "terrorist organizations" solely on the word of the Russian security service, the FSB (the KGB's successor). REST AT:http://www.reason.com/cy/cy031803.shtml