Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey: Chechnya is not about freedom (reply to David Mendoza)

Dear David,

I am glad that you find my article interesting, yet this is a surprising adjective to use. Why interesting? Are you surprised by it?

What hasn't your press been telling you? Didn't you know that your government has spent two hundred thousand million of your hard-earned dollars destabilising Iraq and destroying its civilian infrastructures?

Didn't they tell you that these infrastructures were purposefully targeted and that the billion-dollar rebuilding contracts were doled out arbitrarily?
Did they tell you about the ten thousand civilians slaughtered in their homes? Did they tell you about the thirty-five thousand others mutilated for life by your armed forces?

Did they tell you about the deployment of cluster bombs in civilian areas?
Did they tell you about the one thousand kids maimed or blinded for life by these weapons?

Did they tell you that the torture had been going on systematically for months and that they had tried to cover it up? Did they tell you that they lied in their causus belli and that they knew that WMD did not exist?

What is "interesting" about that?

Trying to justify this by claiming that genocide has taken place in Chechnya and that in the Soviet Union atrocities took place, shows me two things: you are as ignorant as you are arrogant.

Chechnya is not about freedom. It is about business. This has been going on, on and off, for two centuries. The Chechen people hate these terrorist elements as much as the Russian Armed Forces do. Most of them want to live in peace inside Russia, as part of Russia, as Chechnya is and has always been.

As for the Soviet Union, so your argument is that since atrocities were committed under Stalin some seventy years ago, then it is justified for Bush to do the same now? Sure, Stalin committed atrocities, another place, another time, long since gone, another set of circumstances.

Russia has to assume her history as a whole and accept the bad, along with being proud about the good parts. You cannot ignore periods and highlight others without being incoherent.

But Russia has moved forward, moved on. Russia represents peace, fraternity, equality, freedom of expression, debate, dialogue, discussion, the basis of democracy.

These precepts, David, your government does not respect nor does it expound them. Therefore it is logical that the whole world outside the frontiers of the USA looks to Moscow as a friend and looks at Washington wirth extreme concern, derision and utter contempt.

As for the UNO, the investigation proceeds but I can tell you there are fingers already pointing at Washington in this scandal so be careful before you start throwing stones.