Putin Criticizes American Support for Chechen Terrorists

In a Moscow talk, Vladimir Putin lashed out at US support for Chechen terrorism:

"Speaking to western policy experts and journalists just days after hundreds of children died in the Beslan school siege, the Russian president said mid-level officials in the U.S. government were supporting Chechen separatists, whom he compared to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, CNN reported. "You find it possible to set some limitations in your dealings with these bastards, so why should we talk to people who are child-killers?" Reuters quoted Putin as saying. The president said that each time Russia complained to the Bush administration about meetings held between U.S. officials and Chechen separatist representatives, the U.S. response has been "we'lll get back to you" or "we reserve the right to talk with anyone we want," CNN quoted him as saying. Putin blamed what he called a 'Cold War mentality' on the part of some U.S. officials, but likened their demands that Russia negotiate with the Chechen separatists to the U.S. talking to al Qaeda."

Putin is right, on this point at least. There are a lot of Chechen supporters in America, not just in the mid-level offices of the State Department. I saw Richard Holbrooke and Zbignew Brzezinski attacking Russia on behalf of the Chechens at a Library of Congress symposium a few months ago. The only one who appeared to have any sympathy for Russia's dilemmas was James Billington. And anti-Russian views domintate the major media, as well. For example, the New York Times editorial on the day after the school massacre in Beslan blamed Russia, not the terrorists, for the killings. Despite Peter Baker's superb reporting from Beslan, editorials and op-eds in the Washington Post have tended to be anti-Russian. As has NPR, which made the Chechen terrorists sound like they were in a guerrilla insurgency against a military target. I still haven't seen a major newspaper investigation that clearly connects the Chechen terrorism to 9/11--despite a great deal of evidence that both fronts are part of a worldwide jihad against the West (see the link below about Mohammed Atta being on his way to Chechnya before he decided to attack the World Trade Center). It is pretty clear that the terrorists see Russia, the US, the UK, and Israel in much the same way that the Nazis saw the Allies during World War II (of course, these countries are allies from World War II). Most experts in Washington think-tanks also hew to an anti-Russian line. In fact, evenhanded analysis of the Chechen conflict from people like Leon Aron at the American Enterprise Institute (scroll down for the link),is a rarity as far as I am aware. Aron, a biographer of Yeltsin, appears to be alone even in Republican policy circles right now. Of course, blogs like Winds of Change and Little Green Footballs have connected the dots between the Chechen terrorists and those who attacked the US.

Burt Herman on the Beslan Massacre

I met Burt Herman when I was in Tashkent two years ago. Now he is in Beslan, covering the recent school massacre for the Associated Press:

"BESLAN, Russia - Funeral processions filled the rainy streets of this southern Russian city Monday, carrying coffins large and small, as townspeople buried scores of victims of a carefully planned school siege that prosecutors linked to a Chechen rebel leader.Desperate families searched for those still missing from the siege at School No. 1, while others buried 120 victims during the first of two days of national mourning across Russia, which has seen more than 400 people killed in violence linked to terrorism in the past two weeks. Reports emerged that the attackers apparently planned the school seizure months ago, sneaking weapons into the building in advance. There also were signs that some of the militants did not know they were to take children hostage and may have been killed by their comrades when they objected."

BBC's "State of the Union"

Here's the program the BBC is running to replace Alistair Cooke's "Letter from America." It's called State Of The Union.

Jan Morris on the New South

A fascinating account of the British author's recent return visit to Charleston, South Carolina in OpinionJournal - Extra.

An Uzbek Arts Blog

One of my students from Uzbekistan has created this new blog dedicated to the arts, in English, Russian, and French:ART, Entertainement, Interesting Facts and Ideas.

Abdel Rahman al-Rashed on Terrorism

In an article in the Telegraph, reprinted from Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, entitled 'Innocent religion is now a message of hate' Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, general manager of the Al-Arabiya channel, writes about terrorism and Islam [link from DanielPipes.com]:

"Bin Laden is a Muslim. The majority of those who manned the suicide bombings against buses, vehicles, schools, houses and buildings, all over the world, were Muslim. What a pathetic record. What an abominable 'achievement'. Does all this tell us anything about ourselves, our societies and our culture? These images, when put together, or taken separately, are shameful and degrading. But let us start with putting an end to a history of denial. Let us acknowledge their reality, instead of denying them and seeking to justify them with sound and fury signifying nothing. For it would be easy to cure ourselves if we realise the seriousness of our sickness. Self-cure starts with self-realisation and confession. We should then run after our terrorist sons, in the full knowledge that they are the sour grapes of a deformed culture."

There They Go Again...

The Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, which is funded by the Ohio Arts Council, which is in turn funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, is having a retrospective celebrating the "Culture Wars" of the 1990s, including the famous NEA 4 and Robert Mapplethorpe. From the Contemporary Arts Center website:

"The following is a partial list of artists to be represented: Artist and Homeless Collaborative, Ross Bleckner, Karen Finley, Gran Fury, Group Material, Guerilla Girls, Hans Haacke, Keith Haring, Lynn Hershman, Deborah Kass, Mike Kelley, Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Robert Longo, Robert Mapplethorpe, Allan McCollum, Richard Prince, Tim Rollins + KOS, Martha Rosler, David Salle, Julian Schnabel, Cindy Sherman, Haim Steinbach, David Wojnarowicz, and Krystof Wodiczko."

There's an article about the show in the Sunday New York Times. Just one way the "arts community" shows gratitude to President Bush and Congressman Ralph Regula (R-OH) for increasing the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts...

Mark Steyn on the Beslan Massacre

Thanks to Instapundit for this link to Mark Steyn in The Australian:

"So the particular character of this "insurgency" does not derive from the requirements of "asymmetrical warfare" but from . . . well, let's see, what was the word missing from those three analyses of the Beslan massacre? Here's a clue: half the dead "Chechen separatists" were not Chechens at all, but Arabs. And yet, tastefully tiptoeing round the subject, The New York Times couldn't bring itself to use the words Muslim or Islamist, for fear presumably of offending multicultural sensibilities. In the 1990s, while the world's leaders slept – or in Bill Clinton's case slept around – thousands of volunteers from across the globe passed through terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and were then dispatched to Indonesia, Kosovo, Sudan . . . and Chechnya. Wealthy Saudis – including members of the royal family – invested millions in setting up mosques and madrassas in what were traditionally spheres of a more accommodationist Islam, from the Balkans to South Asia, and successfully radicalised a generation of young Muslim men. It's the jihadist component – not the asymmetrical one, not the secessionist one – that accounts for the mound of undersized corpses, for the scale of the depravity."

Arianna on Bernard Levin

In Arianna Online, a relationship recalled:

"I first met Bernard Levin on a 'Face the Music' panel. I was there as a curiosity -- a woman with a foreign accent, elected president of the Cambridge Union. He was there as a celebrated columnist for the London Times, an intellectual with an encyclopedic knowledge of music. It was 1971. I was 21, he was 42. He knew nothing about me. I had had a major intellectual crush on him ever since I discovered his writings while at Girton. I had devoured his book 'The Pendulum Years,' and would meticulously cut his columns, underline them, and save them in a file (no, I did not put pressed flowers in the file, but might as well have). So when I found out that he was on the panel, I was reduced to a bundle of inarticulateness. I'm still amazed that in my fog, I actually managed to recognize Schuman's Fourth Symphony. "

Fire at Weimar Library

From the BBC , an account of the fire at the Duchess Anna Amalia Library last Thursday:

"Among the works saved were the travel papers of naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt, rescued by people forming a chain to get the books out of the building. "

The Economist's Top Universities

Thanks to ArtsJournal for this item on The Economist's ranking of the world'sbest universities. It's kind of interesting. The Top Twenty are not terribly surprising. In order, they are: Harvard, Stanford, Cambridge, Berkeley, MIT, Cal Tech, Princeton, Oxford, Columbia, University of Chicago, Yale, Cornell, UC San Diego, Tokyo University, University of Pennsylvania, UCLA, UC San Francisco, University of Wisconsin, and the University of Michigan.

The Economist's source is Chinese: a study from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. A footnote states the rankings are "biased against universities focusing on the humanities and social sciences."

Art World Mobilizes Against Bush

This article in The Art Newspaper indicates the art world doesn't seem particularly grateful that President Bush increased funding for the National Endowment for the Arts:

"Art dealers are typically cautious not to offend their clientele by taking strong positions on controversial topics. This year, however, the rules have changed. Dealers and artists in New York have become visibly politicised and have been actively raising funds and campaigning for Democratic candidate John Kerry in the run up to the US presidential election on 2 November."

More on the Beslan Massacre

From Harry's Place:

"We have been here before. Then, as now, there were some who were unable or unwilling to face the hard choices but some knew then - and we all know now -that the struggle had to be carried out. When it was all finished, the world vowed 'Never Again'. The analogy with the enemy that faced Europe and the world in the 1930's is not an exact one but it remains valid. Ask yourselves when was the last time gunmen filled with hate fired into the backs of fleeing children? When was the last time that women and children were herded into buildings, treated with callous inhumanity and then slaughtered?"

My Brother Assassins

This review of Mohamed Sifaoui's expose of life inside an Al Qaeda cell, by Camille Pecastaing in Foreign Affairs, provides some international context for Russia's tragedy:

"Sifaoui warns, nonetheless, that European cities still harbor many who could contract the Islamist fever and take up arms in Chechnya, Kashmir, or Iraq. Having probed the world of al Qaeda sympathizers in Paris and in London's Finsbury Park mosque, he sounds the alarm in defense of democracy and liberalism -- perhaps too violently. Sifaoui's book leaves no hope of ever narrowing the fault line that separates Muslims who reject the West from those, like him, who embrace it."

Sifaoui's book has been translated into English by George Miller, as Inside Al Qaeda: How I Infiltrated the World's Deadliest Terrorist Organization.

A Chechnya- 9/11 Connection

From a 2002 story on the BBC :

"Mr Motassadek is the first man to stand trial over the 11 September attacks. He is accused of being an accessory to more than 3,000 murders in New York and Washington, and of belonging to an al-Qaeda cell in Hamburg. He told the court that four alleged al-Qaeda men - hijackers Mohammed Atta, Marwan al-Shehi, Ziad Jarrah and suspect Ramzi bin al Shaibah - had all wanted to go to Chechnya..."

"...To rebuff them or to begin obeying their orders..."

You can read the full text of Vladimir Putin's speech here:

"We winked at our own weakness, and it is the weak who are always beaten up. Some want to tear away [some] piece of our wealth, while others help these aspirants in so doing. They still believe that Russia poses a threat to them as a nuclear power. That is why this threat must be eliminated, and terrorism is just another instrument in implementing their designs. As I said, we encountered crises, revolts, and terrorist acts on many occasions, but what happened this time is a terrorist crime, the cruelty of which stands beyond precedence. This is not a challenge to the President, Parliament, or cabinet of ministers; this is a challenge to the entire Russian state and its people. This is aggression against us. The terrorists believe they are stronger than ourselves, that their cruelty will intimidate us, paralyze our will and degenerate our society. Here we have a seeming alternative -- to rebuff them or to begin obeying their orders. The second means to give in and to let them partition Russia in a hope that they will somehow let us alone. As President of the Russian state, a person who gave an oath to defend the nation and its territorial integrity, and last but not least, as a Russian citizen, I am confident that we have no such alternative. "

Michael J. Totten on Bush's Bounce

At MichaelTotten.com.

Bloggers and the Election

In the Wall Street Journal, Glenn Harlan Reynolds (aka Instapundit) says bloggers are making a difference in this election campaign:

"With accredited bloggers at both conventions, this can fairly be called the first presidential election to be blogged. And that just might matter--though if it does, it will be as much because of big-media vices as it is of bloggers' virtues."

One interesting angle not mentioned in the Wall Street Journal: Reynolds wrote in his own blog that he skipped President Bush's convention speech to play poker with friends.

Of course, I'm not criticizing Glenn for his decision. Poker was the wiser choice, I'm sure. I missed Bush's speech too. We were watching the 1959 Russian film classic based on Nobel prize-winner Mikhail Sholokhov's tragic novel, Destiny of a Man (Sudba Cheloveka).

Build A Wall Around Chechnya

First published in the aftermath of the Nord-Ost hostage crisis in Moscow, this analysis in Russian Outlook is among the most interesting overviews of the Russian-Chechen situation. In his essay, Leon Aron ties the conflict to a number of factors, including the Israeli-Palestinian situation, noting that in Russia there is also sentiment for a physical separation:

"Immediately after the Nord-Ost hostage takeover, most of the friends in Moscow whom I spoke with over the phone advocated stena, a wall along the border with Chechnya. Interviewed several days later by an American reporter, a middle-class Muscovite, too, 'believed [that] the possible solution ... may well be 'to build a Chinese wall' around Chechnya, trapping the people and the problem inside, where it can't infect the rest of Russia.' [32] But the Russian stena for Chechnya is hardly more practical than a similar plan in Israel: an estimated 800,000 Chechens live in Russia outside Chechnya (40,000- 400,000 in Moscow). "

Clueless About Chechnya

Nikolai Zlobin says America does not have a Chechnya policy:

"...the American political elite has no clue about how to resolve the Chechen problem, and no desire to deal with it. One could say without exaggeration that the United States has no policy toward the North Caucasus as a whole, excepting general political stances on the war against terrorism and the relationship with Russia