EDITORIAL:
Inperialism & the Kursk tragedy
The submarine Kursk may have
sunk and its 118 sailors perished because it collided with a
U.S. or British submarine, according to Russian media reports
that are being spread across the Internet. Russian Defense
Minister Marshall Igor Sergueyev raised this possibility at a
news conference broadcast on ORT, the main Russian TV
channel, Aug. 21. Sergueyev said that Russian sailors spotted
part of a buoy with British colors near the crash site.
Such collisions also happened during the Soviet era,
though the imperialists never admitted it.
Whatever the cause of the Kursk tragedy, the big-business
media from the United States to Germany have used it to
attack the Russian government and its head of state,
President Vladimir Putin.
First they charged that the Russians waited too long to
call in help from British and Norwegian ships in the area.
Then the media--including a lead New York Times editorial
Aug. 23--went out of their way to hit Putin for failing to
rush to the area to publicly show his concern.
U.S. capitalist politicians always feign concern for
fallen soldiers. That doesn't mean they promote relief for
veterans suffering from Agent Orange or Gulf War
illnesses.
There are lessons from this event and the media's handling
of it that shouldn't be lost:
* There is no longer a Soviet Union, and Russia has a
pro-capitalist government. But the Western imperialist powers
want a subservient Russia, not a capitalist competitor.
* If the Russian Navy goes on maneuvers to defend its
seas, NATO forces still spy on it. Two U.S. submarines and a
British submarine were reported in the area.
* There is no such thing as a humanitarian rescue by NATO.
We saw how "humanitarian" they were during the brutal
bombardment of Yugoslavia last year. If British imperialism
tries to save Russian sailors, it is also spying and trying
to humiliate the Russian military.
* The imperialist governments have shown they are unhappy
with the Putin leadership. Not because he is moving toward
socialism, but for steps that he has taken to assert
independent Russian policies, whether it be toward
eliminating sanctions on Iraq, trading with Yugoslavia,
making agreements with the People's Republic of China or
strengthening the Russian military.
Perhaps the greatest danger of the Kursk sinking is that
the most rabid militarist sectors of U.S. imperialism will
take it as a sign of Russian weakness and push harder to
threaten Russia militarily. The anti-war movement in the
United States should be on alert to combat this danger as it
would any other possibility of U.S. military
intervention.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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