MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Pyotr Romanov.) I am surprised that it sometimes takes my colleagues a long time to realize that they now live in a different world, a world suffering from international terrorism.
Moreover, in this world there is no difference between a "good" terrorist and a "bad" terrorist: All terrorists are bad and alien. Their hands are smeared with the blood of innocent victims. As a matter of fact, I have written about this repeatedly.
ABC, which apparently preaches freedom of speech, has given airtime to the most notorious Chechen terrorist, Shamil Basayev, who has even been blacklisted by the UN. Basayev admits complicity in bloody terrorist acts on Russian territory, including the murder of children.
The Russian Foreign Ministry will, of course, make a corresponding statement to its US colleagues. I myself want to ask my US counterparts whether they smelled drops of blood and dead human flesh while broadcasting Basayev's statements. It seems that Thomas Jefferson, one of U.S. democracy's founding fathers, had every reason to complain in old age that the vessel of freedom of the press could be filled with anything, even dirt.
Do ABC journalists dislike Russians and the Russian government? That is their problem. But do they like their fellow Americans who were killed in the horrendous terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001? Do they like the British citizens who died as a result of the bombing of the London Underground? And what about those killed in Spain and Egypt? Or do my colleagues still naively think that Chechens alone are fighting in Chechnya? I would like to tell them that foreign mercenaries have already outnumbered Chechen terrorists in the Caucasus.
Terrorists seized a school in Beslan last year. Many children were killed then.. There were two British subjects in the group. The terrorists were subsequently killed by the Russian special forces. It seems that London would have been rocked by additional bomb blasts if they managed to escape. Or they might have staged a terrorist attack in the United States.
I find it hard to imagine that my U.S. colleagues planned to achieve some goals other than to raise their channel's ratings when they gave airtime to Basayev.
They became famous, if that was their intention. But any other terrorist act on the part of Basayev will make them his accomplices.
Finally, the anti-terrorist coalition has once again displayed its inefficiency and a commitment to double standards. However, it is impossible to win the war against terrorism in such a way.
