Who Knew? A Belated ‘Thank You’
I, personally, think it kicked ass. It put a big lump in my throat. Awesome. Много, много спасибо мои друзья
Lump? Brought tears to my eyes.
Then I started thinking: (dangerous. Peons like me aren’t allowed to think)
Why didn’t the George W. Bush Administration make some noise about this? Was it because Vladimir Putin was affronted by GWB’s affectionate nickname ‘Pooty-Poot’?
I meant it when I said ‘thank you’ to the ‘great Russian people’. They are great. Our governments may be at odds at times… but I look forward to being a tourist in Russia.
While I fully recognize this may be taken in bad taste- hell probably IS in bad taste-, I for one must say that I am not at ease with this. I cannot jump on the bandwagon and hug the bear, because bearhugs tend to end with one party finding itself with claws dug into its back.
Now, I will not- indeed, I CAN not- insinuate that everybody working on this project is somehow a cold-blooded KGB hitman seeking only to destroy the West through flattery. Just the opposite; I am willing to bet that many- if not most- of those involved with the project are motivated by a genuine sympathy for us given our two nations’ shared suffering at the hands of Islamist terror. And under most circumstances it would be rightfully seen as a truly heartfelt gift by another nation under attack by the Jihad, and whose flaws (such as the few names too many) are made only out of the best of intentions (after all, better too many than two few regarding things like this).
But, if you want to uncover the full meaning of something, go to management. And that is where my paranoia and distrust kick in. Because management is Putin and his Politburo. And if ANYBODY thinks we can afford to suddenly let bygones be bygones because of this symbolic gesture, I would like to point you to Stalin’s extensive investment in “Soviet-Western friendship,” particularly extremely over-the-top appearences thereof.
Indeed, towards the end of 1945, on December 25th, he visited Germany- briefly, very briefly- to welcome servicemen of his Western Allies in Berlin, during which time he and his cabal handed out various things such as normally reserved sweets to autographs to warmer clothing. He entered and left to cheers by the Allied Soldiers.
Only two weeks later, on January 9th, nearly a million Soviet soldiers- aided by some token reinforcements from the new Soviet vassal states)- opened up the greatest battle nobody has ever heard of by trying to smash through the Elbe front. The only reason those same Allied soldiers who had greeted Stalin so eagerly on Christmas survived his ambition was because he only allowed the now-neutered Red Army to commit some token Polish and German auxiliaries to aid in an abortive drive into Berlin by an ad-hoc division of what were supposed to be non-combat or logistic Soviet soldiers.
I smell something similar in this move. Perhaps not leading up to anything as dramatic as the infamous Elbe River Campaign, but something that is certainly not good for us.
The KGB’s distant ancestor, the Czarist Okhrana, recognized the need to butter up foreign countries at the exact same moment you are planning to do something nasty. For instance, in late March, 1903, the Russian government- influenced heavily by the more reactionary or savage elements within the government and the ever=paranoid Okhrana- issued a declaration asking for remembrance of the old wartime alliances of the Napoleonic Wars and calling for solidarity between them while congratulating them for having helped crush the “Tyrant of Europe.
Less then a week later, the Kishinev pogrom- organized in large part by the Okhrana out of distrust of the “Judaic influence” in the city- killed dozens, wounded over a thousand, and razed 700 houses to the ground.
Even if the project started out independently and untainted by the mechanizations of the Kremlin, I do not believe it is so now. There is just too much history behind such gifts from Russia to let me eagerly open this present.
At best, it is merely a benign attempt to improve relations and thus gain breathing room for Putin while he plans. Unfortunately, my gut tells me the follow-up may be far more damaging.
In realpolitik, when you do something like this, it is either to strengthen an already strong bond (we can rule that out), to improve relations, to gloss over something from the past, or to provide cover for something happening in the present or near future. And my bet is on the last.
Because what you and Misha forget while you are- not unjustly- thanking the Russian people is that Putin is a double-dealer. At the same time he is making a memorial to the victims of terror, he is intentionally giving the Islamists the aid to make even more victims of terror in the future. Remember, this is the VERY SAME guy that has been sending the Iranians NUCLEAR MATERIALS for somewhere over SIX YEARS! That alone should draw suspicion as to how sincerer the Kremlin is about this; simply put, as long as Moscow continues to send fuel rods, Plutonium, and other odds and ends to the Mullahs, the entire inventory of the Volgagrad AKs-R-US to the Castro-Hugo-Morales-FARC Axis in Latin America, and artillery support to the Ossetian and Abkhazian irregulars ethnically cleaning the Goergian frontier (OTHER terror victims you will not see present on this memorial), we have every reason to believe that -from his perspective- this is just a cover.
I can recognize the honest desire here to gain solidarity between the victims of Islamist terror across the world and to feel appreciative of such a gift honouring the victims of 9/11, but we cannot afford to let such desires cloud our perception of this matter. Putin has shown every indication that he is an enemy of the West and of our cause. He has dealt such crushing damage to the campaign against International Islamist terror that he is probably in part indirectly responsible for a good percentage of the names on there.
Let’s count ‘em:
* We’ve already covered the “Nukes to Iran, AKs to the Castro Club” bit.
* He played a large role in opposing our attack on Saddam Hussein at the UN.
* At a time when we were fighting against many of the same Islamists in Iraq that he had faced in Chechnya and Dagestan, he ordered a savage attack on one of our allies- Georgia- while their army was still engaged in combat in Iraq.
And I could go ON and ON about this, but I just feel like listing perhaps the most grievous examples.
Now, would you trust a man with this track record when presents something like this?
Those who forget history shall be ruined, and Putin’s history shows a consistent pattern of aiding Anti-American and Anti-Western factions even at the expense of Russian security against the Islamists.
Such a man is not to be trust, such a man is to be shot.
Does this mean that the memorial is fake or necessarily meaningless> Absolutely not. If anything, it shows that we still have much in common with our Russian enemy, and that the Russians still recognize a common foe and his ruthless ways, and that they too have lost innocents to their scimitars.
But such a fact- reassuring as it is- does not mean we are not enemies regardless.
How I would respond? Begin work on a counter-gift in remembrance of the dead of Beslan and other Islamist attacks on Russia. All the while cranking up Intel’s activity in Russia by a couple of pegs at LEAST.
Because if history tells us anything, it is that Putin will probably be up to something very soon.
Ban me if you must, but I feel that the dead of 9/11 and Beslan and countless other terror attacks across the world deserve better than to have a large co-conspirator in their murders be forgiven for laying a flower on their graves while most likely plotting something that will put yet more innocent people- both in the West and in Russia- in their tombs.
Posted by Turtler
08/16/2009 at 10:38 AM
Chris, you ask who knew. BMEWS readers knew; I posted on this back in March, and it was an old story then. The monument was dedicated September 11, 2006; the secondary point to my post then was that it had not received very much if any national press coverage.
http://www.barking-moonbat.com/index.php/weblog/from_russia_with_love1/
Turtler didn’t like it then either, but for different reasons. That’s Ok, each of has his viewpoints. I don’t trust Putin at all either, and I’m very unhappy with the thugopoly that Russia has become.
Drew:
Turtler didn’t like it then either, but for different reasons.
Back THEN, the main problem I had was because I felt that New England had largely dishonored its dead like Spain had, and thus was rather unworthy of it. That was in 2006, back when Putin was just a shady idiot in the background. This was before Georgia, before the recent round of Ukrainian issues, and before we discovered the fullest extent of Putin’s involvement with Iran and the Latin American Axis.
Back then, the issue was about New England. Now, it is about Russia.
Back then, it was mainly an issue of pride and honor. Now, it is an issue of survival.
No credit for guessing why I am far more vehement on the issue now.
Posted by Turtler
08/16/2009 at 12:49 PM
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