Stubbornly ignorant and unwilling to investigate the jihad doctrine, State Department officials led the U.S. into war to support jihadists in Bosnia and Kosovo. Now the same mistake is being repeated. "U.S. Supports Islamic Terror Against Russia," by Julia Gorin at Republican Riot, March 29 (thanks to Pamela):
We don't yet know the whole story behind the two female suicide bombers who killed 38 people in Moscow and injured scores of others. Although their affiliation is unclear, the working assumption is that the bombers were tied to the Chechen rebel movement in the North Caucasus.There is, however, something which we do know for sure, and which we paid no attention to despite its clear connection to the kind of terror Moscow witnessed yesterday morning.
There was a little-noted meeting that took place in December 2009, in Tbilisi, the capital of U.S. ally Georgia. That month Georgia hosted a conference of jihadists to plan "operations" against Russia. There was no news coverage of the event, and so it took a paid advertisement in the Washington Times to make it known. Stubbornly, still no news organization or blog picked up on it. And so here we are.
Below are the relevant parts of the paid-for article from last month, titled "The Georgian Imbroglio -- And a Choice for the United States." (Original emphasis preserved.) It was penned by James George Jatras, a former U.S. Foreign Service officer as well as foreign policy analyst for the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee.
Americans must be made aware of Saakashvili's extending refuge to jihadists responsible for countless acts of terror in southern Russia and his regime's extraordinary coordination efforts to permit them to step up attacks in the Caucasus region.Specifically, according to reliable sources [with lines to two foreign intel services], in December 2009 a secret meeting took place in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, with representatives of numerous jihad groups based in various Islamic and European countries for the purpose of coordinating their activities on Russia's southern flank. The meeting was organized under the auspices of high officials of the Georgian government; while Saakashvili himself was not present, officials of his ministry of internal affairs (allegedly G. Lordkipanidze) and others acted as hosts and coordinators. Georgian Ambassador to Kuwait Mayering-Mikadze purportedly facilitated travel for participants from the Middle East. In addition to "military" operations (i.e., attacks in southern Russia) special attention was given to ideological warfare, for example, the launching of the Russian-language TV station "First Caucasian."
Are we to believe that U.S. intelligence agencies were unaware of this meeting and other similar actions? The question then is unavoidable: has Washington decided to turn a blind eye -- or even worse, to encourage our "ally" Saakashvili to play the "jihad card" against Russia? Could such a thing be possible at a time when the world's media are filled with reports of jihad attacks in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, India, Israel, Philippines, and other countries -- not least the United States (Fort Hood, Fort Dix)? The threat comes from the same ideology that motivated the 9/11 attacks against our country and which seeks to create through violence a worldwide Islamic caliphate governed by Sharia law....
There is much more. Be sure to read it all.
Americans are constantly given bad choices, esp. for president. For 2008, genuine Americans were presented, once again, with voting for the lesser of two evils. Most of these Americans voted for McCain; the more knowledgeable of them made positive votes for Chuck Baldwin or Ron Paul.
In Obama, the country got the whole leftist enchilada. With McCain, it would have gotten leftist-lite.
This story brought back to memory a quote of McCain, from August 2008, when Russia made military moves on Georgia. McCain, in obvious pandering mode, reported that he had spoken with Saakashvili and "that the thoughts and prayers and support of the American people are with that brave little nation [Georgia] as they struggle today for their freedom and independence. He [Saakashvili] wanted me to say thank you, to give you his heartfelt thanks for the support of the American people."
McCain further reported he told Saakashvili "that I know I speak for every American when I say to him today, we are all Georgians.''
McCain did not speak for this American, then or now.
Good, now we're in on both sides of the game.
*** 8:12 ***
I had no idea there were sentient State Dept foreign service officiers any more. But I notice that this fellow is a former officer, so maybe he awoke from his Rip Van Winkle and knew that he had to get the hell out of Hillary's delusional agency.
I know, I know: in fairness State went all delusional long before poor Hillary took over.
As I recall, the United States didn't exactly support Jihadists in Bosnia. More like it permitted thousands of helpless Bosnian Muslims to be murdered by their Orthodox Serb and Catholic Croat countrymen. The guilt from this inactivity later led to some support of the Kosovars, the wisdom of which is certainly arguable, though it's difficult to see that keeping them under the domination of Serbs would have been a better solution. Since the slaughter of the Bosnian Muslims, some Bosnians have indeed shown antipathy to the United States and the West in general. In this one case I would partially blame history.
Karl,
Here are your "helpless Bosnian Muslims":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYYbCq6tg5c
The phoney Bosnian 'Death Camp'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xox7TR11evI
Well, this is depressing. I have generally been very supportive of Georgia and Saakashvili against Russian depredations.
That they are now hosting *Jihadists*, though, is entirely insane. If Georgians are going for the old "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", they certainly have another thing coming with any support for Jihad.
Notice the way this Muslim marauder is trying to paint these bombings as economic or other revenge, rather than simply a religious mandate of his death cult:
[from Fox News @ http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/03/31/chechen-rebel-leader-says-ordered-moscow-bombings/]
"The Chechen leader of the Islamist 'Emirate of the Caucasus' Doku Umarov, (aka Dokka Abu Usman) has claimed responsibility for this week's Moscow metro bombings...
...
"Umarov said the attack was to avenge 'the massacre by Russian invaders of the poorest residents of Chechnya and Ingushetia, who were picking wild garlic in the Arshty village on February 11, 2010, to feed their families.'
Umarov, whose claim was also confirmed by the SITE monitoring group, warned of fresh strikes against Russia, saying the troops stabbed their victims to death and then "mocked" their corpses.
He warned Russians that the 'war will come to your streets, and you will feel it with your own lives and skins.'"
###
Are Muslim propagandists going to attempt to disguise the American jihad, cultural and otherwise, in economic terms as well?
Here are the words of one @ the Houston Chronicle:
"Muslims are committing terrorism today, not because of their religion, but because of the position in the global socio-economic hierarchy."
HINT: IT'S ALWAYS AND EVERYWHERE ABOUT ISLAMIC SUPREMACY.
The notion of using Moslems for hegemonic games is akin to playing with sticks of dynamite.
*** 66:2 ***
Except that these sticks blow up in your face, sooner or later.
(the hint was mine -- not his)
The US support of the Balkan Muslims was done for alleged moral reasons, as there was no discernable strategic benefit.
That is not the case in the Caucasus. Opposing Russia is a strategic imperative since Russia is a supplier of Iran's nuclear project and sells advanced weaponry to Syria and other jihadist elements. Russia is driven by an anti-Western animus, thinking like the imperialists that they have always been, viewing the West as an obstacle to their hegemony. That's why Russia was aligned with Nazi Germany during WWII, until attacked. Russia will do anything, morality be damned, to advance its imperial interests, and in that sense is like Islam.
I think that as distasteful as it is, we need to support the Chechens against Russia. Let's remember that Osama bin Laden(pbuh) did a great job in Afghanistan, which helped bring down the Soviet Union.
Without Russian and Chinese technology, the global jihad will be a lot less dangerous. Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.
I know, it's very risky and somewhat cynical, but sometimes you have use chemo to kill cancer.
Thank you for posting this news item. I find it amazing that so many Americans still do not fully understand what the situation was in Bosnia and Kosovo.
Lazar and livingengine, I am not saying the Bosnian Muslims were saints, but of the Bosnian conflict's civilian death toll Muslims made up more than 80%. Shrugging this away as "They're Muslims so it's a lie" is something that gives this excellent site a slightly questionable odor. Christians as well as Muslims can be swine (as part of my own ancestral homeland Ireland was demonstrating until relatively recently, with Christians victimizing each other as has been their historical preference), and Muslims are sometimes the victims of Christian swinishness.
I shouldn't have to add that the Kosovars are a different can of beans. Lumping the Bosnians and the Kosovars together as Balkan Muslims is highly misleading.
Shame on you, Robert (and Pamela and Julia). This is so blatantly a Putinesque "deza" (disinformation). Not to idealize Saakashvili, but he knows these guys much better than the CIA does. He just has too much to lose and he has a very good idea of how uncontrollable these guys are. I can buy the general CIA-jihad link - perfectly in sync with the current US administration - but that Saakashvili would sponsor such a meeting? Grow up already.
Look at the inconsistencies or, rather, dubious syntax in your own text.
That month Georgia hosted a conference of jihadists to plan "operations" against Russia. There was no news coverage of the event, and so it took a paid advertisement in the Washington Times to make it known.
Who is "it" here? Georgia? No - it was a certain Mr. Jatras who runs a certain america-russia alliance that has "Gazprom $" written all over it.
Even in Russia, when one of Putin's ministers hinted at the "Georgian hand" in the bombings, most sober-minded people took it as a sign of despair, rather than something to be taken seriously
Karl,
You numbers are not correct (probably came from Muslim propaganda). ICTY investigator came up with civilian casualties: 38,000 Muslims and Croats and 16,700 Serbs. In 1991. Muslims and Croats were 60% of the population and Serbs 31%. That means each side in the war suffered civilian casualties proportionally to its population.
So, the war was definitely very brutal and bloody, but Serbs were not worse than their enemies.
Second thing, there is no nation called "Kosovars". There is an geographic area called Kosovo and Metohija and there live Serbs, Albanians and other nations. I don't know what you mean by saying they are "a different can of beans", but it looks like you are not very familiar with the situation in Kosovo.
As always, Julia is absolutely right. She is a heroine, pride of the Jewish race. And the neoliberal-neocons are disgrace of the Jewish race.
This is what I have been posting here all-along: The US is Cantakuzening jihadists against Russia and China, trying to turn the Global Jihad against those 2 nations. By doing so, it digs its own grave. To say that the sociopaths who are in charge of owr government had not learned the lesson of Afghanistan (where our soldiers, led by Robert Gates, are fighting the same Mujaheddin Gates had armed and trained), is a vast understatement.
Now, a new, ominous factor has entered this imbecillinc "Great Game" against Russia: the Georgian role. Suppose, Russia has obtained hard proof of Georgia's complicity. Suppose, Russia has launched an all-out invasion of Georgia to effect a much-needed "regime change" there. Then what? Our United States, fulfilling the pledge to "stand by Georgia's side" enters the war? A total war between the US and Russia? Nukie-nukie? Iran will be a joyous spectator, apploading. The "infidels" will do the job for it themselves, exterminating each other and creating the conditions for the return of Mahdi.
Our ruling sociopaths' imperial games against Russia have always aided the Global Jihad, but now, it has raised the specter of total mutual extermination between Russia and the West, to the Muslims total global triumph.
Russia and China are not perfect Re: the Global Jihad, but our United States of America is the unquestioned global leader in criminal imbecility. Helping jihad against ANYBODY helps jihad against EVERYBODY. The world had callously excused suicide bombings in Israel for years, confident that those are only Israel's problem. Now, ironically, suicide bombings are happening everywhere in the world except ... Israel. What starts with the Jews does not end with the Jews. NOBODY, not Russia, not China, not the United States will ever be safe from jihad unless and untill they all unite against it around Israel. Total, total, total, unconditional support for Israel. This is Zionism. Unite in Zionism. This is the only way. We in the US don't have a national ideology, only thousands of greedy special interests, pulling our country in thousands of different directions, tearing it into thousands of pieces. We need a national ideology above all those special interests, to provide guidance and direction to our country. And why try to invent one, if by far the greatest, most righteous ideology of all times is already available, that of glorious Zionism? Zionism is not "Jewish religion" as many mistakenly think. It is a modern political ideology. It is inspired by the Bible, but it is not the Bible. And since it dovetails with both the Jewish and Christian religions, all the better. No single religion is a substitute for it. There are different Christianities, and they divide Christians, sometimes severely. But Zionism is unifying, and it echoes the biblical truths. The Bible: "Through thy seed shall I bless other nations". Zionism: "This world will be liberated through our liberty". And this happens to be a manifest truth to me: only uniting in Zionism can the civilized humankind save itself from the Global Jihad. There is no other way. Zionism is not for the Jews only. It is the only way to salvation for everybody. Such is the will of God. Russia should go fully Zionist. China should go fully Zionist. Japan should go fully Zionist. And our United States of America should go fully Zionist. In the absence of Zionism, insanity reigns. Total insanity. Just look what is happening in our country. The Republican primary voters flocking to the totally unqualified Rev. HolyBee and the Insane McCain, instead of votiong for hero Rudy Giuliani. Rudy, fscarn, Rudy, not Ron Paul (!!!). What is the matter with you?!
Zionism and only Zionism can save this country. Zionism and only Zionism can save this world.
Ruslan Tokhchukov, EnragedSince1999.
@jewdog
I think that as distasteful as it is, we need to support the Chechens against Russia. Let's remember that Osama bin Laden(pbuh) did a great job in Afghanistan, which helped bring down the Soviet Union.
Bad as marxism run states are, and they can get extremely bad, they are still infinitely better than the Islamic hells on Earth run under laws supposedly devised by that psychopath, Muhammad.
Thanks to George idiot Bush and his idiotic State Department approved sharia based constitution for Afghanistan, the lives of women in Afghanistan have returned to the usual state of hell that is endured by women in far too many Islamic countries.
The Marxist run universities of Afghanistan, to take one example, represented the best period of near equality ever experienced by women in that country.
No, I oppose marxism and its ridiculous economic and political theories. That does not mean that I feel the need to automatically side with something obscenely vile in order to attack something that's merely highly unpleasant but, in the long run, reformable.
Lazar, I think you replied to the wrong poster. I like the Serbs and could care less about those statistics.
US has always supported the most virulent / violent / murderous forces against it's political enemies. This was true of the British too before US replaced Britain as the global hegemon.
US has recently annoyed India too with it's atrocious behavior in protecting a Mumbai terror plotter just so India does not get upper hand in dealings with Pakistan. This after all US diplomats thumped their chests in New Delhi in the immediate aftermath of Mumbai attack saying they will do all to bring perpetrators to justice.
US has lost it's credibility already and it is on the wrong side of history now, vis a vis Russia and India both. India has the opportunity to take the driving seat now and emerge as a nation of much higher stature but we too need to replace our dhimmified leaders with those who have better sense of right and wrong.
Jewdog, I have replied to "Karl Pov" with actual numbers since he copied some Muslim propaganda and we know how "reliable" it is.
But I have a comment for you also - there was actually strategic benefit for the USA in the Balkans: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Bondsteel
And I think supporting Chechens would be a suicidal policy for the US, like supporting bin Laden was.
Ahem,
I agree with your points; it's a matter of choose your poison. I just happen to think that Russia, with its high-tech support to the jihadis is actually the more dangerous entity right now, and so must be further weakened and broken up if possible.
Well, you know - people have to eat and they sell what they have to who wants to buy. How much dollars has the USA poured into Saudi Arabia and Pakistan?
I think the real solution would be for USA and Russia to finally stop stupid Cold War and start cooperating.
Anyway... :)
I have only been enraged since 2009 -- may mass enragement ensue.
Well-said:
"Zionism = this world will be liberated through our liberty."
###
~Perceptions of Jews by renowned Gentiles~
John Adams, the second president of the United States, in an 1809 letter to Judge F. A. Van der Kemp:
"I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations. If I were an atheist of another sect...I should still believe that chance had ordered the Jews to preserve and propagate for all mankind the doctrine of a supreme, intelligent, wise almighty sovereign of the universe, which I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization...They are the most glorious nation that ever inhabited this earth. The Romans and their Empire were but a bauble in comparison to the Jews. They have given religion to three quarters of the globe and have influenced the affairs of mankind more, and more happily than any other nation, ancient or modern."
This could bode real trouble for Georgia if it turns out that the Jihadi terrorists were supported by by Georgia.
It will not take much for Russia to finish what they term as unfinished business.
A couple of years ago Daniel Pipes, in a debate with the Dhimmi mayor of London made a very good case that England is approaching the status of #1 exporter of Jihad in the world. Perhaps the same might be true of the U.S. if one extends this story to include Kosovo, military support for Islamic dictatorships in the middle east, the historical business drummed up by funding OBL, propping up Islamist regimes, supporting the beating down of the Turkish army (the sole remaining guardian of its secular constitution), abandoning Somalia and Sudan, funding the Saudis and, now, Obama's rapid dismembering of fraternal ties with Israel.
I'm not in the least anti-American, you guys are the last hope of what remains of the Free World, but we must admit that something is rotten in high places given this consistent slide into Dhimmitude and collaboration with enemies.
It leads me to wonder if it is not high time that a completely separate intelligence network is started -- something a bit more coordinated than the webcrawling loosely-organized antijihadist movement we've got right now, in which freedom-lovers of good faith operate outside of government mandates, carry out broad intelligence gathering on a level that is either legal or works within legal grey areas, to anticipate movements of the Jihadist movement, identify weaknesses in world defenses against it, and through timely use of this information provide police and government agencies with information necessary to carry out their mandates successfully?
I propose this because it is clear that our existing intelligence networks, being too beholden to governments, are bound by diplomatic pieties that constrain them to the point that they miss such things altogether. Bad decisions follow from poorly assembled and incomplete information. We need a truth-gatherer that is both willing and able to deliver the goods and tell the government, the CIA, or the PEOPLE, whichever is appropriate, what is really going down with jihad.
I don't mean that Jihadwatch, Pipes, and a myriad other bases in this battle are not effective, I'm saying that these make a great public face, but there needs to be a larger core -- an "Army of Davids", as you will, who can take the mission of gathering information to a much higher level, and spreads the work around.
Imagine, for example, something like MEMRI, that broadcasts the Friday prayers sermon from every mosque in North America and Europe, with English translations of Arabic, in one place, even with helpful summaries. This cannot be done by ten, or even a thousand, laborers. It requires a vast network of agents with sophisticated (but not necessarily expensive) equipment, well trained and highly disciplined. These are ordinary people with ordinary lives aside from a small amount of discretionary time that they devote to the cause.
The rest is not hard to imagine.
Thanks, Lazar.
Of course, using a Balkan base, say in Kosovo, is strategic, but Kosovo could be run by the Muslims as well. Case in pint: We have bases in Turkey. I just think that helping expand Islamic power in the Balkans is immoral and idiotic.
Yes, supporting bin Laden is sort of like supporting Hannibal Lecter to get rid of Al Capone; once Capone is gone he may eat you next. Nevertheless, whacking the Soviets in Afghanistan paid big dividends.
Re the Chechens: They are bad news, but they don't have the high-tech kno-whow to affect the strategic balance in the Mideast as the Russians do. The Russians have cynically decided to materially support the Mideast jihadis, thereby making themselves effectively a jihadist ally.
Obviously a plot of that anti-Communist Reactionary, G.W. Bush. Wait...December 2009? Never mind! ;)
Was that Jimmah Cahtah's Georgia? Oh, you mean the former Soviet Republic of Georgia? Again, never mind! LOL
You KNOW NOTHING about the conflict in Boania IF you think that the Bosnians were poor little innocent victims.
All around Sarajevo there were almost a hundred little Serbian and Serbian/Croat( mixed marriages) villages!!
When the city of Sarajevo was declared a "safe haven" for Bosnian moslems the Serbs assisted the DUTCH to removed ALL YOUNG CHILDREN ( BOYS AND GIRLS) and ALL women.Nice clean, Bus transport took them away.
The Bosnian men ALSO KNOWN AS SOLDIERS, were allowed to stay. Those Bosnians were "supposed" to stay inside the city and NOT leave and go into the countryside. They were NOT disarmed by the DUTCH troops EVER!
AT night these Bosnians continued to attack the surrounding CIVILIAN villages and BUTCHER thousands, some say as many 10,000 Serbs and Croats ALL WOMEN,children and old men.
The Dutch did nothing to stop the slaughter of these NON-moslem civilians in the villages! NOT one thing!
And by the way, Sarajevo never was JUST a moslem town and it never had more than 8,000 moslem citizens at one time and that included women and kids.
Shame on you for supporting the agression of Georgia's leader SACKASH-Tvilli against the South Ossetian CIVILIANS.
He is a tie eating coward!
That monster is responsible for the deaths of THOUSANDS of innocent people and the destruction of a hospital,schools, the oldest Synagogue in the region( 10th century), a Church, the city hall and thousands of homes and apartments (many home to senior citizens).
Children and young people mowed down in tank fire!
The EU has recognized that GEORGIA was WRONG!
dov wrote:
This is so blatantly a Putinesque "deza" (disinformation).
....................
Hmmm—you may be right, dov. Implying Georgia is hosting Jihadists would certainly be a public relations coup for Russia. So far, nothing I have indicates that Saakashvili would be likely to support Jihad.
Here's Saakashvili's press speaker Manana Manjgaladze, in a message following the Moscow bombings:
"The President of Georgia condemns every manifestation of terrorism, especially against civil population. Georgia has always been and remains the opponent of terrorism," Manjgaladze said.
She added that the tragedy is Moscow "one more time confirms terrorism is the problem of the whole world."
That’s one thing I have consistently opposed, that of siding and supporting Islam jihads against anyone. I was a Reagan backer until he and his party gave whole hearted approval to the Islamic thugs and jihads against the soviet backed government. I was telling who ever would listen that we should instead support the soviet puppet government. In that rotten corner of the world a little socialism would be a lot better than an Islamic state. We can do business with the socialist government of Afghanistan. But everyone wanted to create a Vietnam for the soviets by backing jihad. Since then I have never blindly voted Democrat or Republican.
I am also one to think that the soviet Afghan adventure was not the sole reason for the soviet breakup. There were a lot of other factors into play. They could not sustain their economy against the west. The captive nations, led by Poland were opening revolting against their rule. The Russian people had simply tired of waiting for the promises of communism that had never materialized. Communisim was a dinosaur that was bound for extinction.
As for constinapolis I welcome the Russians to retake this city. In fact they take all of turkey and Kosovo also.
I thought I would add this to your post.
Just in case anyone wants to know the type of man Bosnian Serbs were fighting against (Alija Izetbegovic) you should read his thoughts about the type of world he would create.
It takes a bit to download, but here it is, 70+ pages, and you should read it all, the declaration will be heard in a city near you in the future. This document has become an inspiration to all whom would use democracy to install sharia over non-Muslims in the west.
http://infideltheamerican.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/islamic-declaration.pdf
The Bosnian war is complicated, the history of the region is crazy to even begin to comprehend as a yank, it isn't easy, to be honest, to fully understand the people or the events, but it is a tragedy that the Bosnian Muslims were not forced to surrender in the 90's, because this history will repeat itself. It is a shame that Serbs were left yet again to fight a war we should have been helping them with.
Anyways I would rather blow my brains out than live in the type of society the Serbs were resisting .... it would be a fight to the death for me too.
The article above leaves me puzzled, uncertain, with many doubts. And there are several comments above, about the Serbs and the American mistreatment of them, that do not seem to me to be relevant to the subject of Georgia.
Why these doubts? Because Valeriya Novodvorskaya, the most important of the crusading liberal truth-telling journalists left alive in Mat'-Rossiya, Mentovskaya Strana, recently returned from Georgia (she went there with three or four others), and returned to report on what she saw as amazing changes, for the better, for good government and an end to corruption, in Georgia.
If you understand Russian, you can see her on television, and read her remarks below, right here:
http://www.echo.msk.ru/programs/personalno/660696-echo/
Georgia is a Christian republic in a Muslim sea. For centuries Muslims would come, raid, and kidnap Georgian (and Circassian) girls for their Muslim harems. I don't think this has been forgotten and I find it hard to believe that Georgia would ever be in league with those involved in violent Jihad.
What is crazy about Russian foreign policy - among other things -- is the failure of those who make that policy to buttress the Christian nations, Georgia and Armenia, and at the very least, the policy of making life difficult for Georgia should come to an end. Georgian wines, for example, an important source of revenue, can no longer be exported to the natural market, Russia, cannot even be drunk in Georgian restaurants, like the famous "Pirosmani," in Moscow itself. If you want to fly to Tbilisi from Moscow, you can't. You must go by way of Kiev. And that is only a sample. Does this make sense, given the mighty contest already underway with Islam, not only in Chechnya, where what began as a nationalist uprising has mutated into a Muslim-against-Russian-Infidels-and-their-collaborators war, not only in the whole Caucasus subdued in the last century by General Gorchakov, but in all of southern Russia and even in Moscow, where there are far too many Muslims already for the safety and security of the non-Muslims.
I wish I knew more, knew who was who in Georgia, knew what was really going on, knew even what happened to that attractive Franco-Georgian lady, once a member of the French diplomatic corps and subsequently a member of the Georgian Foreign Ministery, Salome Zourabashvil. But as I don't then I'm not sure what to think, except that I have faith in Valeria Novodvorskaya and her recent report on Georgia, though I have to keep firmly in mind that even the most decent and truth-telling of journalists can, though not often, sometimes be fooled or not see the whole picture.
That's quite a letter from John Adams. Who was the recipient, Judge van der Kemp? No early ancestor, I take it, of the "van der Kamp"or now "van de Kamp" family famous for those frozen fish fingers?
Julia seems to be right on the money. She and a few others cling to the belief that the US keeps 'accidentally' helping genocidal terrorists.
As I've stated before: Edwin Black and Christopher Simpson write about real US policy, as detailed in the National Archives in Suitland, MD. And it's not 'marxist', not 'communist', not 'zionist': it's quite nazi sympathetic and embracing.
And the Carter/Brzezinski inspired love of jihad is just part of all of this policy.
The US government has made a full aboutface since WWII and no longer makes any pretense about supporting what is right, now that it has successfully relabeled support for Islamic naziism as 'left wing' ideology, complete with de reguer whitewashing and re-written history.
In my antepenultimate posting above (this being the ultimate) I garbled the name of Salome Zourabichvili as "Salome Zourabashvil," even leaving off the last "i." For more on this charming lady, you can read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salome_Zourabichvili
She was once foreign minister of Georgia. I have a feeling she reads books, have a feeling she knows men and events. Our foreign minister, Hillary Clinton, reads Position Papers and Policy Papers and loves, simply loves, meetings. Hillary Clinton is monolingual, though Secretary of State, and mediocre in her ability to think through things, to grasp the world, as her recent unspeakable viciousness with Netanyahu demonstrates.
But she's a graduate, like her husband, of Yale Law School. Apparently, that validates her, that's an intellectual version of the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. Exactly why, I don't know. Perhaps someone can explain this to me.
Re Georgia.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the current crop of politicians, I do not accept that Russia has any sort of natural right to imperially 'own' and rule little Georgia in perpetuity. Or, for that matter, Armenia: surely the immense Russian Federation can endure to let go of tiny little Armenia.
I think majority-Christian, non-Muslim Georgia (like Armenia) has every right to be a completely separate nation.
The Georgian language is distinct from Russian. The Georgian Orthodox Church is distinct from the Russian Orthodox Church; completely distinct from it historically and indeed, if my memory serves me correctly, much older in terms of when it was first founded, as is also the Armenian Orthodox Church. The Georgian Orthodox Christians have their own ancient liturgy and their own ancient Bible translation. They stand alongside the Russian Orthodox Christians as a sister church within the broader Eastern Orthodox 'family' of churches.
Russia would cut a more impressive figure on the world stage if instead of transparently seeking to imperially possess and devour smaller non-Muslim near neighbours such as Georgia and Armenia, she were simply willing to stand behind them and help them -as a big guy helps smaller guys tackle bullies - to resist the Muslim jihad that is waged from within (Georgia has a larger Muslim minority presence than does Armenia) and that will certainly, sooner or later, be waged from without.
Georgia has increasingly-sharia-minded Muslim Turkey across its southwest border and Russian-ruled jihad-racked Chechnya to the northeast; while Armenia is most uncomfortably placed, with borders facing onto Muslim Turkey, Muslim Iran, and Muslim Azerbaijan.
Let Russia concentrate on squashing the jihad in Chechnya, Dagestan, and Ossetia, and let the Georgians, if they have sense, grimly close their borders to foreign Muslims fleeing the Russians, and press Russia to evict any and all Muslims that they do evict from those regions, not into Georgia to cause trouble and swell the Muslim population there, but rather, into already-Muslim Azerbaijan.
Perhaps a slight rewording of part of what I just wrote, above:
For "surely the immense Russian Federation can endure to let go of tiny little Armenia.
I think majority-Christian, non-Muslim Georgia (like Armenia) has every right to be a completely separate nation"
read s"urely the immense Russian Federation can endure to let tiny little Armenia remain independent.
I think majority-Christian, non-Muslim Georgia (like Armenia) has every right also to remain a completely separate nation."
Hugh,
Though I do have the greatest respect for you, and though you are correct in most instances, you're completely off on this one. Valeriya Novodvorskaya is complete idiot. She's one of the "liberals" who wants to ruin Russia. She has expressed sympathy for Shamil Basayev, that butcher who masterminded Beslan, amongst other things. That says it all for me.
I think infidels should be supported by other infidels fighting muslim jihad. But in case of Russia and China the muslim terrorists must be supported whether chechens or uighurs by infidels. Russia and China support almost every islamic terrorist nation such as Syria,Iran,Pakistan. Russia and China give support for every pro-islamic resolutions whether defamation of Islam resolution or anti-Israel resolutions at the U.N. We should give them the taste of muslim terrorism which they so much support against other infidels. Only a souring of relationships between Russia, China and jihadi muslims will help the infidels and it can be only achieved by helping the muslim jihadis against Russia and China. Only a change of strategy will help the infidels in achieving the goal of islam's destruction.
What is coming out here is a nebulous consensus that even powers viciously opposed to each other, such as US and Russia, should collude against Jihadi Islamism, for Islamism is a vicious ideology unlike any political ideology that either side supports. Rather like, in a democratic society, different political parties, even though they are at each other's throats normally, should be one when it comes to handling a murderous mafia gang.
This is, though, the classic problem of collusion. If one of the colluders breaks the agreement to collude against a common enemy, others have to do so too. This seems to be happening when USA supports Chechens against Russia, directly or indirectly and Russia props up Iran against Israel and USA.
I suppose history will need to be played out quite like the rise and fall of Hitler. Until it was obvious that he was against everybody else, everybody tried to play games using him. I suppose we here on this site are right about what needs to happen - an alliance of infidels against Muslims. But we perhaps need to just wait.
Hugh: I'm sorry to say this, but your knowledge about the Caucasus seems very limited.
"What is crazy about Russian foreign policy - among other things -- is the failure of those who make that policy to buttress the Christian nations, Georgia and Armenia"
Russia is Armenia's only defender and without Russia, the Armenians would already have been invaded by islamic turkey and azerbaijan. Armenia is a member of CSTO (the Russian version of NATO), so Russia has already commmitted itself to Armenia's defence. Recently Armenia pulled out of its participation in NATO military exercises because of NATO's support of azerbaijan. The next war in Caucasus will be between Armenia (supported by Russia) and azerbaijan (supported by turkey and USA) and just like in the Balkans the USA is supporting muslims against christians in the Caucasus.
With regards to Georgia: there are 3 Christian nations in the Caucasus: Armenians, Georgians and Ossetians - and it was Saakashvilli's invasion of South Ossetia that triggered Georgias war with Russia. As long as Saakashvilli is the president, Russias economic sanctions against Georgia will remain.
"Or, for that matter, Armenia: surely the immense Russian Federation can endure to let go of tiny little Armenia."
Armenia is almost completely surrounded by hostile islamic neighbors turkey and azerbijan and without Russian support the Armenians would have been genocided just like they were by the turks during world war I. I think that the Armenians are the last nation that wish that Russia let's them go, as without Russia's support they are doomed
I should not have put Georgia and Armenia in the same phrase, because there is a difference: there is no Russian no boycott of Armenia, nor vilification of Georgia, as there is of Georgia. But Armenia does not receive enough economic and other tangible forms of support from Russia, given what it deserves and its exposed position, and the fact that Armenians must find work in Turkey (where Erdogan threatens to expel them because of resolutions passed in the American and Swedish parliaments), and the Armenian government mute its own support for such efforts in order not to offend the Turkish government, surely reflects an Armenian need for economic deals with Turkey. If Armenia were supported by Russia to the hilt, that might make a difference.
But I don't retract my criticism of Russia for imposing an economic boycott (e.g., on Georgian wine), transportation cut-offs (flying to Georgia not possible from Moscow), and other measures, including vilification in the Russian media beyond any conceivable rationale. Common sense suggests that the Russians should be bucking up all the countries that are, or could be, natural allies in a war of self-defense against Jihad.
As for the poster who thinks Valeriya Novodvorskaya is an "idiot" because once, on Ekho Moskvy, she stated things about Basayev that suggested he had once been different -- as in his support for Yeltsin and "democracy" in 1991 and his participation in the Chechen regime of Aslan Maskhadov -- and her charge that the Russian government so mishandled him that he became what he did become -- that is not the same thing as being "sympathetic" to the Shamil Basayev who became what he did indeed become as a result, she says, of that mishandling. .
Those who wish to read more about Novodvorskaya and her outspokenness might wish to start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valeria_Novodvorskaya
with particular attention to "Statements of Novodvorskaya" which must also be understood in the context of her fury, as an old-fashioned "liberal" not to be confused with the other kind, at what the Soviet Union became -- "mentovskaya strana" is the phrase I concocted earlier and used above -- when there was no need, when it might have fulfilled a different destiny sooner. Who knows? Perhaps when Medvedev escapes his povodyr', Russia -- having first suffered from that mishandling by all those idiotic Western economic advisers (e.g., Jeffrey Sachs) who cheered for an instantaneous transformation of the economic system (without a change in the minds of men raised within the Soviet system), and then suffered from a reversion, in the regime, to Soviet type, will come out being something other than what it is now.
And that someting other is what such people as the noble living -- Valeriya Novodvorskaya, or Elena Bonner -- or the noble dead (Keats' formulation: "the Noble Living and the Noble Dead"), such as Andrei Sakharov, Alexander Yakovlev, (Gorbachev's most important adviser), Professor Pavel Miliukov, hoped and believed or, in the case of Novodvorskaya and Bonner, hope and believe, Russia could and should be. This does not require, or imply, any weakness, or Western naivete, or American policy confusion, on the part of this not impossible future Russia in regard to the forces of Islam. Read again what Novodvorskaya says in those "Statements."
Hugh:
We can certainly agree that Armenia needs to receive more support, but why is that only Russian responsibility to provide Armenia economic aid? I can't see how is it Russias fault that the EU and USA allow the turkish blackmail. If the Europeans and Americans can afford to waste billions on the "palestinians", pakistanis, afghans and iraqis, they surely should be able to provide Armenia substantial economic aid. And in the case of Europeans open the borders for Armenian migrant workers instead of the millions of muslims they are letting in.
In the case of Georgia the main question you should try to answer is: "Why did the Americans allow Saakashvilli to order the disastrous invasion of South Ossetia?"
The only logical outcome of that war was a Georgian defeat which left the Georgian army destroyed and the Israeli plans to launch a surprise aerial attack on Iranian nuclear facilities from Georgia spoiled. And if Georgia hadn't started that war, there would not have been any Russian economic sanctions against it today.
You apply here a principle of statutory interpretation, band that principle is: Expressio unius est exclusio alterius, that the expression of one thing necessarily exlcudes another thing. But its application here does not fit. You claim that because I suggest Russia should do far more to support Armenia, that therefore I seem to be denying the need for the United States and Western Europe to better support Armenia. How does that follow? It does not. Of course I think Armenia, and Georgia, should be given much more attention, aid, and sympathy than they currently receive. I am amazed at the reaction of some to my suggestion that Georgia should not be regarded as an enemy but as a natural ally of Russia, and would be, by a Russian government with policies that embraced not a false but a true, a real, realpolitik, a blend, let us say, of Sakharov, Feldgauer, and Novodvorskaya.
By the way, among the people who went to Georgia with Novodvorskaya, saw what she saw, and apparently agreed with her, were several people who can are beyond reproach in both their grasp of Islam and their understanding of the significance of Israel and the need to support it. One is Andrei Ilarionov, a political analyst with the Cato Institute. The other is Vladimir Bukovsky who, in England, has waged a campaign against the BBC and against what he sees as the "totalitarian aspects" of the E.U.
There are people who confuse Russia with the current regime in Russia. Such people --I am familiar with them, I know them -- will justify, for example, the sending of nuclear material and other aid from Russia to Iran as "in the geopolitical interests of Russia." Their definition of what is in "the geopolitical interests of Russia" is whatever the Russian government does.
But like the American government, the Russian government can be, and often is, idiotic. And the war with Georgia was idiotic, and continued Russian hostility to Georgia, and insufficient support for the other Christian republics and peoples to the south of Russia and in southern Russia itself, is neither clever, nor "in the geopolitical interests of Russia."
Similarly, the whole theme of American perfidy and desire to see Russia humiliated is silly and wrong. When non-Russians go marching into Siberia, and seize much of the resource-rich region, those non-Russians will not be Americans.
Desidude - right on! Half-Commie will always be better than full Islam. We and ours have been there, in Afghanistan, for all the phases. My own life and the changes within it are very closely interwoven with events there over the last four decades or so. We did our best to support the Afghans against the soviets with facts, propaganda, art, commercial 'warfare', with everything we could do bar killing folks direct if we could avoid it (with hindsight, this might have been easier and more fun, but in the end one draws one's lines without logic - murdering bored, confused conscript kids seemed sick to me and none of us was physically as fit as the Afghans for mountain warfare against the pro's). Some of our Afghan friends prayed three times a day, some took the 'warfare/journey pass' allowed in the Koran, others seemed lapsed. No-one, but no-one, got in our face with shite Islam or any other religious crap. The women all stopped veilng when we stopped being strangers and the full chadri was only for city visits (I don't blame them, given some of the scum that lurked around Kabul). The puppet state option was well on the road to civilisation AND NOT FAR REMOVED FROM THE PRE-INVASION STATE, just a slight shift of emphasis. Much though some would love to simplify things into 'CIA-supported Taliban backfired; what fools the Yanks are!' America was largely irrelevant to the internal betrayal by Dostam's North, the horrifying attempted genocide of the Shia Hazaras (read 'the lowest of the lower classes) by Massoud, the West's darling 'Lion of the Panshir', the Iranian and Saudi interference (mega-swine Hikmat Yar is worth a look-see...) and most of all the pissheaded idiot Yeltsin who imposed sanctions on Afghanistan because it was 'communist' (heartbreaking irony!) and he wanted to suck up to the west for dollars.
Now back to the thread. it was round this point that Islam started to ooze, wriggle, poison and betray its awful way to the forefront of national Afghan consciousness, with senile cretin Ray-Gun drunk on his fantasy success against the Evil Empire financing the next one with the aid of your friend and mine, Poxbox Pakistan, bane of Asia's civilisation since 1947, and China gleefully supplying weapons and intelligence to undermine the US AND Russia at the same time (as it did so effectively in Yugo later, as well).
Relevance to (dis)information about Georgia? Don't believe all you read in the papers and on the screen. Don't think that more info means right info. There's no substitute for human intelligence services, on the ground and speaking the lingo, breaking 'going native' taboos, finding out what the real score is. We're all becoming slaves to increasingly solipsistic and incompetent mass media, victims of the laziness, cowardice and prejudice of our journalists, the greed of power-hungry spies who couldn't find their arses with both hands and an atlas. As another poster remarked at length, we're going to have to do this ourselves. Russian and Farsi lessons, anyone?
"As for constinapolis [sic] I welcome the Russians to retake this city." -- from a poster ("desidude") above
The seizure by Russia of Constantinople, from the Turks, was one of the express goals of Professor Miliukov, and Russian liberals (in the Kadet --Constitutional Democrats -- Party) during World War I. At the time the city was 50% non-Muslim; this was a goal of liberals, intent on weakening the hold of what was seen, unambiguously, clearly, as the retrograde grip of Islam on the minds of men. A liberal goal then, as it is, or should be, today.
I have many times at this website expressed doubts about the wisdom of the American government helping out the Muhajeedin, being inveigled partly by smooth-talking Pakistan adn Saudi Arabia, at a time when the Soviet Union was already collapsing because it had failed on its own -- i.e., economic -- terms, to deliver, and when the children of people high in the Party, and then advisers to people high in the Party, and then people high in the Party themselves, such as Gorbachov, had their doubts grow and grow, as they became demoralized and depressed about the Soviet system and its Communism/Bolshevism/call-it-what-you-will. The Soviets did a good job changing minds in Central Asia, and the words "Communist" or "Marxist" in such a setting as Muslim Afghanistan might have been an acceptable way of camouflaging someone of a "secular" bent, and in any case, anything that weakened Islam would, by that point (the early 1980s), have been a good thing, even if it allowed the Soviet Union, possibly, another year or two of crippled existence.
Here is a relevant excerpt, for example, from "Fitzgerald: Jihad, Not Hirabah" from 2006:
"No, nor is it those successive Treasury Secretaries who through the 1970s and 1980s kept rushing off to Saudi Arabia to obtain the "cooperation" of our "staunch Saudi allies.” Nor the various Presidents who started the tradition of paying the Jizyah of foreign aid to any Arab or Muslim country that forgot to be born rich with oil -- Egypt, Jordan, the PLO as "representative" of the "Palestinian people" in its, and their, various embodiments, Pakistan (that started long ago, with the love affair between American generals and those ramrod-straight Terry-Thomas mustachioed Pakistani generals, so straight-talking, so pukka-sahib, so...so "just like us"). No, nor is it Eisenhower, puppet of John Foster Dulles in foreign policy, the Dulles who believed in CENTO (the curtain came down on that farce in 1958, when Nuri al-Said's mutilated body was dragged through the streets of Baghdad -- "strongman" Nuri al-Said, "pro-Western" Nuri al-Said). No, it is not Carter, not Eisenhower, not Nixon, not any of them who stand out as absolutely the worst in their failure to begin to have a glimmer of what Islam is all about. No, the answer is that they all must share the prize.
Nothing extenuate? No, let's extenuate. Let's make their case. After all, in the midst of the Cold War, who knew about the belief-system of Islam except that it should be called a "religion" and that it was somehow, for some reason we were never offered in detail, a particularly strong "bulwark against Communism" -- even if Nasser and others in the Arab and Muslim world apparently found the Soviet Union far more to their liking than they did any of the liberal democracies of the West.
Those CIA agents, who thought they were doing god's work in Afghanistan during the Soviet period, who proudly remember their deeds of derring-do in helping the local mujahedin, appear not even now to begin to consider the possibility that possibly they were not doing something in the long-term interests of the United States or the rest of the Western world, by supplying money, weapons including thousands of Stinger missiles, and looking on benignly as the Saudis also provided aid, and then just as benignly, looking on as the Taliban were raised up in Pakistani madrasas, and then, again with Pakistani and Saudi support, and then diplomatic recognition, establishing their rule all over Afghanistan. Meanwhile, who was paying attention in Washington, or elsewhere in the West, to the sinister I.S.I.[i.e., Pakistani intelligence services]-supported Dr. A. Q. Khan? Who noticed what he was doing in Western nuclear laboratories in Holland? The Soviet Union was within a decade of collapse, whatever happened in Afghanistan. Gdansk workers in Solidarity, decades of programming from Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe, those in Hungary who remained true to Imre Nagy and Pal Demeter, those in Czechoslovakia who remembered Dubcek, those in East Germany who could look over the border and see what goods and services capitalist Germans could produce – all that was leading to its collapse. And of course there was the Russian nomenklatura itself, now having its doubts, and more doubts. Those doubts hardly required the Americans to hand support the mujahedin in Afghanistan to exist.
The Soviet forces might have installed a regime that would necessarily have been antipathetic to Islam, and might have constrained it, or tried to, as Ataturk had done in the 1920s in Turkey. It might have been a start. But surely the aid extended to the Mujahedin, military and financial, was not the unalloyed triumph that the CIA officials involved in it complacently still allow themselves to believe. They, like their civilian bosses then and today, did not know enough about this longer-lasting (1350 years), and much more powerful force. Communism failed on its own terms; Islam can never fail in that way -- it can only be seen to have failed politically, economically, socially, intellectually, in this sublunary world, not in the dream-world of the Muslim paradise promised to those who march in lockstep on the path of Allah, by that selfsame Allah."
There are many dozens of similar passages in the Archives, and in many of the postings.
If I remember right the Georgian flag has 4 crosses on it. As the old saying goes, politics makes strange bedfellows.
Hugh:
Actually I doubt that Russia can support Armenia more than it has already done. Through CSTO Russia has already committed itself to defend Armenia militarily and Russia with its own massive economic and security issues is not wealthy enough to provide a substantial economic support for Armenia. Unlike the EU and US who can waste billions on one islamic hellhole after another.
Regarding the Georgia-Russia war, it was the Georgians that triggered it by invading South Ossetia, so the idiocy is all on the Georgian side for starting a war they were certain to lose and the US for not stopping the Georgians. An alliance between Russia and Georgia might still be possible but only after Saakashvilli is replaced as president. I believe you are wrong about Russias's "insufficient support for the other Christian republics and peoples to the south of Russia and in southern Russia itself": There are 3 Christian nations in that area: Russia is already committed to supporting the Armenians and Ossetians - as they showed when they defended them against the Georgian invasion. And you can hardly expect Russia to support a nation like Georgia whose president starts a war with Russia.
Here's a suggestion.
US Christians here present: please pray for your brethren in Russia. Pray most fervently that people in authority in Russia, both in the church and in the state (especially army and police) will *wake up* to the danger from Jihad, and get Russia *out* of bed with Iran.
Russian Christians, lurking or posting here: please pray for your brethren in the USA. Pray most fervently that those in authority in the USA, leaders in the churches (to teach the ordinary Christian citizens) and in government, will *wake up* to the danger from Jihad, and that the USA will, as a result, get *out* of bed with Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Being completely MIA from JihadWatch.org for the past several weeks, I come late to this ongoing discussion . . . and Julia is 100% dead-on. As with a "few" other responders, it continually breaks my heart that so many American's have been completely "duped" by mainstream media propaganda as to what "truly" took place in the Balkans.
For the oh-so-kind, fellow blogger offering Robert some "professional and cautionary advice" (So PC . . . I want to vomit): Maybe you should actually "read-up" on the DATA available! I suggest you visit your local library and check out history books on the Balkans or the Roman, Persian, and Byzantine Empires before offering Robert a "tip." Surely, Robert is very familiar with truth-seekers being "thrown under the bus." [no worries there Ms. Gorin].
People cannot begin to understand terrorism *until* they read about Balkan History and see that it has been the epicenter of past, present, and future terrorism stemming from a clash ideology and culture (and beyond). The Serbs have been crucified for centuries and literally used and abused by one empire after another! Whenever I see a media report about the *poor, defenseless Muslims,* I want to vomit.[save the biased accusations . . . I'm an American gal, not Serb).
Are we American's supposed to remain apprehensive of Russia? Of course. However, we have been in the cold-war mindset for a very long time, and yes, it is very hard to shake (I've had my moments). However, we have a common enemy that is more powerful, patient, and strategic than anything we can even imagine. Don't you think it's about time we start thinking strategically and offensively instead of just defensively? Remember, "It is good to strike the serpent's head with your enemy's hand."
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***Julia Gorin wrote: "Good thing I don't have a career, then.) It certainly would be nice if anyone paid me for anything I do, but it wasn't to be in this lifetime."***
You're right Julia. You (and many others that have written HONESTLY on the Balkans, Russia, etc.) will never be paid monetarily; However, if there truly is a "Judgment Day," then you will be able to rest assured that you left this world with your soul and integrity in tact.
Doubleamearmy I hope you think it was ok for Russia to stop Georgia from killing and exterminating South Ossettians . Russia did nothing to Georgia except stop Georgians from hurting South Ossettians . Russia is not forcing Georgia to do anything . Russia has let Georgia elect a new government, there are no Russian troops in Georgia , Georgia always was competly independant before they attack South Ossettia and Georgia is still completly independant now
Georgia only has to remember dont shoot people in South Ossettia , becuase Russia will get upset about this . This does not seem to me to be to unreasonable .
The West is full of just too many blockheads that know nothing of the evil intentions of Islam.