Friday, September 17, 2004
Three years after 9/11, the grand, anti-fascist coalition of World War II is now falling into place. First, it was America alone. Then Great Britain threw in. Now, here comes Russia.
. . .
Vladimir Putin's government (and before it, Boris Yeltsin's government and successive Communist regimes) made similar miscalculations. Russia helped Iran with its nuclear program, sold weapons and supplies to Saddam Hussein and Baathist Syria and gave political support to the Palestinians - and hoped these good deeds would preserve it from fascist jihad.
Then Muslim holy warriors showed up at the schoolhouse in Beslan, and Putin underwent a battlefield conversion to the Bush Doctrine. "We have to admit that we showed no understanding of the danger occurring in our own country and the world," Putin told Russians after the massacre. Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, chief of the general staff, promised to "liquidate" the terrorists "in any region of the world."
. . .
Vladimir Putin's government (and before it, Boris Yeltsin's government and successive Communist regimes) made similar miscalculations. Russia helped Iran with its nuclear program, sold weapons and supplies to Saddam Hussein and Baathist Syria and gave political support to the Palestinians - and hoped these good deeds would preserve it from fascist jihad.
Then Muslim holy warriors showed up at the schoolhouse in Beslan, and Putin underwent a battlefield conversion to the Bush Doctrine. "We have to admit that we showed no understanding of the danger occurring in our own country and the world," Putin told Russians after the massacre. Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, chief of the general staff, promised to "liquidate" the terrorists "in any region of the world."
