Chechniya used to be a haven for terrorists... after the US smuggled the usual brand of Wahhabi scum into it. A very disorganised Russia barely managed to defeat them for good once Putin came to power. With the help of the current leader Ramzan Kadyrov's father, who switched sides from being a rebel to joining forces with the Russian government to defeat the Wahhabi scum. Also, Chechniya is in fact part of the Russian state, it is an autonomous republic which enjoys a great deal of independence from Moscow, but it is still part of Russia, not its own country. Even though Moscow laid waste to Chechniya because they were so disorganised and ineffective back then, Putin these days enjoys enormous popularity not just with the leadership of Chechniya but with the people as well. Ramzan Kadyrov asked 10000 elite Chechen soldiers to volunteer as Putins personal guard, not to protect the president of Russia mind you, but Putin personally, even if he leaves office, that's how popular Putin is. Putin doesn't acknowledge them to this day, because a personal army would give him way too much power, but 10000 of some of the toughest soldiers of the entire planet, not just Russia, volunteered to be his personal army... let that sink in.[1]Here's the video:
Those 10,000 troops and police look like some well-trained, professional troops and President Kadyrov is unlike just about any other world leader. The Wikipedia entry for him is very interesting to say the least. Not your Jeffersonian democrat but a man who rose to the top in a rough environment indeed.
Consider all this a glimpse of very different kinds of men with a distinctly different idea of Islam, one with little tolerance for Salfists or adherents to ISIS. It’s a snapshot of a different kind of Muslim and draw your own conclusions. At a minimum, I suspect you will agree that the Muslim of Chechnya is a different breed of cat from those in the Middle East who seem more committed to savagery and stupidity. The interesting aspect of this video is that such loyalty to Russia, not a Muslim entity, is so firm. What was it that Vladimir Putin did to earn it is a question I’ll keep in mind when reading more about this.
The comments on the video are interesting too. The usual low life on YouTube are there but there expressions of affection and respect for the Chehens from Orthodox Christians and one statement by a Christian that they have lived peacefully with Chechens with no problems. I’ll reserve judgment on that latter point. Certainly it contrasts starkly with the general ethnic cleansing of Christians in the Middle East (except in Syria).
As a coda to this, Solzhenitsyn’s discussion of the Chechens in the third volume of his The Gulag Archipelago was fascinating. Chechens in the Soviet GULAG were not messed with by the guards because the Chechens made it a point of exacting revenge for any slight or injury visited on one of their number. They stuck together ferociously which I see as a benefit of being part of a real culture. In defense of American culture I have to say I saw similar reaction on the part of American troops in Nam. In an instant they were ready to go to the rescue of other Americans who had been on board a chopper forced to crash land nearby. They would have done anything to get to those guys and help them, which fortunately proved unnecessary.
While writing this I ran across an earlier post of mine with a video of a Muslim who similarly challenges our perceptions of Muslim thought. Here’s the interview with that gent so no need to click on the link:
This is just extraordinary. If there is any major strength of Islam and Arab culture is most certainly is not self-awareness. He certainly nails the essential failings of Arab Muslim culture but the group think and clinging to useless concepts are just as much defects of our own. We seem possessed of an insufferable arrogance, obsessed as we are by our military strength, our “exceptionalism,” and our apparent divine right to determine how everyone else in the world is supposed to live. Our "Assad the Butcher" fixation is pathetic and a lie.
And this is not to mention our own flight from truth and reason. The propaganda that sluices through American society now is 50 feet deep so we are as deluded and prideful as any salafists. President Trump gets a few things right but neither he nor our political class exert themselves to examine basic principles or have the inclination. Our "sacred" Constitution is nothing more to our political class than a dirty rag. We are a sad, deluded culture where safe spaces, crying boxes, and absurd ideas about the relations between the sexes – and sexual “identity” – are embraced with great energy. We do not pay attention to Solshenitsyn’s injunction to “live not by lies.” "Health care" is right there in the Constitution and America can bypass the U.N. Charter when it's convenient.
I won’t tie a bow on any of this. Suffice it to say that there are some other realities, allegiances, perceptions, and thinking that are out there in the world and I think some of them are more hard-edged, realistic, and honest than what delusions we concern ourselves with. Sensible and formidable people are out there. Read Kadyrov’s Wikipedia entry and ask yourself if this gentleman is likely to tolerate some human foolish enough to step into Chechnya uninvited. We, however, are scared of our own shadow on the border and fold up and slink away if some mothertrucking foreigner or leftist troll screams that we “hate immigrants.” Quote unquote.
A long period of grace is coming to an end for the Western world, controlled as it is by midgets and traitors. The post-WWII paradigm of America as the guardian and lode star for the world is beginning to fade. What the Black Swan event(s) will be is unknown but some hard lessons are about to be taught by some hard people and some harsh realities.
Notes
[1] "International Journalist Tells The Truth About Syria." The Jimmy Dore Show, 1/3/18. This is another one of Mr. Dore’s excellent commentaries/interviews on Syria and world affairs. This fellow is sharp as a tack and I recommend his videos to you. So is his guest, Rania Khalek.
2 comments:
We've also diminished our armed forces, by excluding many that would be decent soldiers, and continuing the bloat of WWII. We need to realize that the only people under contract by the DoD that deserve to be called soldiers are those that are trained for combat. That does include the medicals, air support, communications, and other specialties.
But, it excludes procurement, any supply services that are not prepared to go into a combat zone, and includes only the basic services of a unit in war (food, vehicle maintenance, etc.).
In other words, if you're a REMF, you won't be considered a soldier. And, your access to VA services after your time in "service" should be limited to TRUE service-connected injuries.
That should bother do a lot for the budget of the DoD, but also free up space in the Pentagon. There's a lot of bloat in there.
Oh, and those turned down for service? My dad would have been - no high school diploma (just a few months in the building before he quit), hung around with a rough crowd, learned to drive running moonshine, worked low-level factory jobs, janitorial. Had a bit of an attitude for a scrawny hillbilly.
He enlisted about 6 months before Pearl Harbor, and did fine - he was decent at math, so they put him in artillery. After the war, he landed a job with Bell telephone, and worked his way up to an engineering position.
That's a good point, Linda. Sometimes enemy fire can reach out an touch clerks and jerks but it's the combat arms that that take the real risks.
However, there's also the matter of disruption of life that affected draftees back when. Well, anyone really. I was infantry myself but have always felt that my time in the service outside of what might pass for normal career advancement had hidden costs. It also took me a while to get out of the Army mentally even after discharge.
I also think it's probably administratively impossible to distinguish between troops with different functions. Unit cohesion would suffer. Better one size fits all.
Too, service life is hard on families and not all spouses are cut out to live a periapatetic life. Divorce enters in to the picture as a result. Not to mention lonely wives losing focus shall we say. These are expensive and damaging realities.
Also, non-service-connected maladies can be treated at the VA but it's not a complete free ride, though the limits on co-pay were generous last time I looked into this area.
My thinking of late is cut down on the asinine mission of global empire (see latest post) and reduce the size of the military. Costs would go way down.
As an aside, my father's mother drew a Civil War widow's pension till 1934, I think, and grandpa and grtgdpa were badly damaged by their service in an Illinois infantry regiment. Gtgdma appears to have been one of those lonely wives with a pregnancy to boot, which circumstance affected the life of the resulting child greatly, not to mention destruction of the marriage. War wounds in many different ways.
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