🚀 go-pugleaf

On 6 Feb 2000 23:00:50 -0800, uj797@victoria.tc.ca (Arthur T. Murray)
wrote:

>Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
>
>Under the pretext of Chechen terrorism in Moscow,
>the Russian gangsters have invaded Chechnya with
>absolute disregard not only for Chechen civilians
>but for their own sons and soldiers dying for the
>cause of stealing Chechen oilfields for Russia.
>

Actually what we're seeing is the basic incompetence and lack of
discipline typical of a largely conscript army, much like the Americans
in Vietnam.

Probably if they had been able to supress the robber barons and
religious extremists without a lot of random slaughter the majority of
the Chechens would have welcomed the restoration of some kind of order.

>Even the American television news media are guilty
>of broadcasting the bare facts of the invasion
>without mentioning the background of the oil.
>Shame on CBS, shame on ABC, shame on NBC for
>treating the pillage of Chechnya as just another
>tit-for-tat squabble among the once-Soviet republics.
>

But then the whole business of the Russian Fedaration trying to hold
itself together is a matter of hanging on to resources. War is about
geology, it's been said.

There's no reason to suppose that the American oil companies would be
any less well off buying oil from a stable, independant Chechnya than
from the Russians. They just don't like trying to do business when there
emissaries are in constant danger of being kidnapped and held for
ranson.