For Sake of the Terror Fight, Anti-Americanism Must End
"Propaganda of the hard anti-West kind long ago brought its result: a majority of Russians see the West as an enemy which, led by the U.S., initially destroyed the USSR, and now would like to bring Russia to the same condition. ... False targets set by anti-Western rhetoric, before a country that stands in the midst of a very real battle with terrorism, are dangerous."
Dzhennet Abdurakhmanova, one of two suicide bombers responsible for an attack on the Moscow Metro that killed 39 people, poses with her husband Umalat Magomedov, who was killed in 2009. Abdurakhmanova was 17 years old.
The anti-Western rhetoric
of pro-Kremlin politicians and political analysts poses difficult questions for
the country, which now finds itself in a state of real armed struggle against
terrorism.
German newspaper Die Welt,
in an attempt to analyze the reasons for the growth of terrorist activity in
Russia, encourages us not to look to Western machinations for an explanation.
And, this might seem strange - no formal accusations against Western intelligence
have been raised by the Kremlin. However, the public rhetoric of many
domestic political analysts and even some fairly prominent officials - [President of Chechnya] Ramzan Kadyrov for example, confidently
inject direct invective against the West, specifically the United States and
United Kingdom, whose intelligence operations supposedly back North Caucasian militants and suicide bombers.
The fact that they haven't
been joined by diplomats and senior Russian officials is due more to pragmatic
considerations and the limits imposed on them by their posts rather than it being
a reflection of the mental state of Russia's political class.
Propaganda of the hard
anti-Western kind long ago brought its result. A majority of Russians see the West as an enemy which, led by the U.S., initially
destroyed the USSR, and now would like to bring Russia to the same condition. According
to popular wisdom, human rights campaigners specifically act in the interests
of achieving this result, which is why the hooliganish treatment of 82-year-old
Lyudmila Alexeyeva
(photo, above right) was met with approval by many.
[Editor's Note: Alexeyeva is a
former Soviet dissident and human rights campaigner who has frequently
protested against the Putin government.]
Islamic terrorists,
opposition political groups, “wrong” media outlets, and finally, the hucksters
selling out Russia - they all merge in the eyes of the average person into a
single united army, lead by the U.S. CIA and its British associates against
Russia.
With good humor and on the
eve of April 1st, the All-Russian Public Opinion
Research Center reports on a respondent who considers Barack Obama a
“well-known leader of Chechen militants.”
It looks as though with just a
single decisive strike they could all be defeated and all of our affairs would
be settled in the best way possible.
These sentiments can be fueled
in a variety of ways, from hysteria around the fate of a Russian
boy living with a Finnish family, to the exploitation of real tragedies.
The spread of this worldview is extremely convenient for solving the practical
problem of maintaining a stable regime at a time that its effectiveness drops
with the disappearance of a favorable economic environment.
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
It's not only the well-known benefit
of cultivating the image of an enemy to distract public opinion, but that in
this scenario, the struggle against all of Russia's visible social ills is
automatically delegated to the security services, which form the basis of power
in Russia. The fact that the security forces are poorly-prepared to deal with these
kinds of issues has been removed from the agenda altogether.
The problem, however, is that
the spread of contagious paranoia is harmful to those who spread it. Of course,
their heads don't contain the porridge of confusion that they openly or secretly
feed to a wider audience. However, the conviction that Russia is in a direct confrontation
with the “Washington
Obkom” pushes even them into simplistic interpretations of events, doesn't
allow them to see the real issues, and, therefore, to begin to address them.
[Editor's Note: The
"Washington Obkom," which translates as the "Washington Province Party
Committee," is a conspiratorial Russian expression that refers to a
supranational group that secretly rules Russia and the post-Soviet States from
Washington - with the help of unnamed Russian elites].
Western intelligence agencies
are likely working in both the Russian political sphere and North Caucasus
conflict zones (if not, it is highly unprofessional of them.) However, it wasn't
Western intelligence services that created a breeding ground for violence in
the North Caucasus and people who prepare suicide bombers are ultimately just
as much enemies of the Western countries as they are of Russia.
False targets set by
anti-Western rhetoric, before a country that stands in the midst of a very real
battle with terrorism, are dangerous, not only because they alienate us from
potential allies, but because they directly weaken and blind us.
