IP: answer to query query re Moscow Times: A Bit of History of US/Middle East Despot relationships

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2001 18:26:27 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Vadim Antonov <avg () kotovnik com>
> To: farber () cis upenn edu
> Subject: Re: IP: query re Moscow Times: A Bit of History of US/Middle East
>  Despot  relationships
>
>
> I guess I can make a try.
>
> Cannibal is the one who eats his own kind.  Supporting monarchies,
> dictatorships, and otherwise suppressing ideals of the society for the
> sake of protecting the same society are forms of ideological cannibalism.
> The tactical expediency is not really a justification for that.
>
> Actually, Solzhenitsin was referring to the Communist proclivity for
> purging their own supporters ("Beat your own, so the enemies will fear");
> it is a well-known fact that the harshest purges of 30s-40s were in NKVD
> (aka KGB) and in the military. Only few people from the original Bolshevik
> government died from natural causes.  Going after American citizens for
> voicing dissent, spying on them, censoring domestic media, etc are all
> tools from the same old Communist arsenal.
>
> On the other hand, liberal wooly-headedness which makes no distinction
> between "us" and "them", thus preventing any understanding of their
> motives (your average citizen of modern secular society just cannot accept
> that there are deeply religious people who feel and think completely
> differently) is probably just as disastrous.
>
> This is because if one accepts the notion of such difference, then, if one
> is honest with himself, he has to admit that no amount of good will or
> flower power is going to change the minds of the current opponents.  It is
> our existance which is an anathema for them.  It is against the core of
> their beliefs.  There's no other course of action than to hunt them down,
> kill their leaders, burn down their "schools" and have them to either
> accept our notions of civility, or perish.  Just keeping their societies
> down is guaranteed to breed more virulent forms of the same.
>
> Russian intelligentsia (Solzhenitsyn not excepted) often frames its
> position in Machiavellian terms.  It is better to be feared than loved.
> This is something ingrained in Russian psyche by millenia of warfare
> against both East and West, and survival as a coherent society.
>
> Wolfhounds, beasts of fear to evil things prowling in the dark, are right,
> then.
>
> --vadim
>
> On Sun, 21 Oct 2001, David Farber wrote:
>
> >
> > >Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2001 11:46:35 -0500
> > >From: Steve Cohen <stevecoh1 () home com>
> > >To: farber () cis upenn edu
> > >Subject: Re: IP: Moscow Times: A Bit of History of US/Middle East
> > >Despot  relationships
> > >
> > >I saw this article before and found it interesting.  There is one thing
> > >about it that puzzles me.  Maybe someone on IP can clear it up.  At the
> > >end the author quotes Solzhenitsyn:
> > >
> > > >Many years later, in Russia, a man named Solzhenitsyn harrowed the 
> hell we
> > >make on earth and distilled a harsh wisdom into these stern lines: "The
> > >wolfhound is right; the cannibal is wrong."
> > >
> > >What was Solzhenitsyn's meaning in these lines?  I can't make head or 
> tail
> > >of it, at least not without some context.
> >
> >
> > For archives see:
> > http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
> >


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