Utterly


Who could have imagined it at the height of the cold war? That we would see the Soviets in such poor shape that they were not merely defeated, but in fact, completely embarassed on the global stage. Of course, this turned out to be fairly bad, as now they're doing things like cheerfully invading the bits of their country that they were forced to let go of. Russians fight fairly cheap, apparently. We spent more money covering the Lewinsky Scandal than they've spent laying the smack down on Chechnya. Of course, there's not much else to do in Russia, besides selling off bits of their remaining inventory and wondering when Yeltsin will finally die.

What I can't understand is why people on the world stage are so irritated that Russia has invaded Chechnya - which was, after all, until recently part of Russia. I mean, do governments have the right to suppress insurrections in their territory, or don't they? You don't see Russia criticizing us for Waco, do you? Well, except when they're being bitingly sarcastic. But if they did, we'd just laugh at them. Ha ha! Those wacky Russians, thinking we ought not to beat up heavily armed militia types in our own country! What could they be thinking! Damn whiners. In this situation, Russia is clearly in the right when they extend the middle finger of diplomacy to the west. Regardless of wether the Chechnyans have a right to self-determinacy or not, Russia has a right to keep bits of its territory from wandering off. Er, any more than they already have, that is. If we're really that mad, why don't we buy it off them?

I mean, hey, we could. Set the Chechnyans free. After all, they haven't been part of the Russian Empire for all that long. Heck, they were probably conquered around the time we were gleefully fighting the Civil War. And people who were forcibly subdued about that time have a right to break free from... oops. Er, we mean, people who were forcibly subdued IN OTHER COUNTRIES have the right to break free.

Let's look at it another way. Russia's current government is doomed. Russia is in piss-poor, highly corrupt, mob-riddled condition, where popular reformers are regularly shot. They're at the point where they're borrowing money to pay off the interest on money they've already borrowed - compound interest in the negative sense. They can't win against that. Clearly, things will become Interesting there in a fairly short time span. And, you see, as they've recently pointed out to us, they still have nuclear weapons. Do we REALLY want to annoy them, so that the next government they end up with makes the Revolutionary Iranians look like a bunch of U.S. toadies? Gosh, that's brilliant. I'm glad we thought of it.

Democracy is the theory that the people know what they want, and want it good and hard, too. Our political machine is in the business of electing shallow, useless idiots. This creates foreign policy problems. This is fine when you're dealing with wimpy nations that you can cruise-missile into submission. But what to do when dealing with the Russians, who will just missile us right back? Oops. Next time, let's try a new strategy, and ELECT SOMEONE FAR ENOUGH ALONG THE EVOLUTIONARY PATH TO HAVE A BRAIN AND A BACKBONE!

Thank you.

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