[Second Issue of the Day]

#10
From: "Robert Bruce Ware" <bruce@brick.net>
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001
Subject: Terror in America and Russia

I'm still waiting for editorials in the Washington Post, the Boston Globe,
the Guardian, and the Independent demanding that the US negotiate and reach
a political settlement with the Taliban, Bin Laden, and Sadam Hussein. All
of these publications, and many others, have repeatedly run editorials
demanding that Russia negotiate and reach a political settlement with
Chechen militants. If civilians suffer in American reprisals, what will we
hear from HRW and AI? As several JRL features recently have observed there
are numerous similarities in the terrorist attacks sustained by Russia and
the United States. Nor is it necessary to include the equivocal cases of
the Moscow apartment blasts in these comparisons. The indisputable facts
of the multiple invasions of Dagestan, the apartment blast in Buinaksk, and
the horrific depredations of the Chechnya-based hostage industry are more
than sufficient to make the comparison. Why are there neither
editorialists nor human rights organizations demanding that the US
negotiate? What's the difference between the Russian case and the American
case? The difference is that in the cases of Afghanistan and Iraq, and
even in the case of Bin Laden's organization, there is someone in charge
with whom it would be possible to negotiate, and who would be in a position
to guarantee any agreements that might be reached. In the case of the
Chechnya, Aslan Maskhadov, from the earliest days of his presidency to the
present, has never had control over many of the Chechen warlords, nor have
any of them had control over all of the others. So unlike Afghanistan,
Iraq, and Bin Laden, in Chechnya there is no one who could guarantee any
agreements that might be reached. That's the difference. The difference
is that it would be even more difficult and even more fruitless for the
Russians to reach a political settlement than it would for the Americans to
reach a political settlement. The difference is that the people of
Dagestan have not been recognized as human beings, at least in the same
sense that bankers and brokers are recognized as human beings. I must
emphasize that I am emphatically not in favor of negotiations with Taliban,
Hussein, or Bin Laden. But I'm also not in favor of hypocrisy and double
standards. I am equally outraged and horrified by what happened in
Dagestan and by what happened in New York and Washington and equally
committed to measures that are necessary to ensure that such things should
never happen again.

 
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