{"id":2580,"date":"2008-08-15T22:28:37","date_gmt":"2008-08-15T19:28:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=2580"},"modified":"2011-09-01T19:03:53","modified_gmt":"2011-09-01T16:03:53","slug":"separate-and-unequal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2008\/08\/15\/separate-and-unequal\/","title":{"rendered":"separate and unequal"},"content":{"rendered":"

From: Arch Getty <getty@ucla.edu<\/span><\/span>>
\nSubject: separate and unequal
\nDate: Fri, 15 Aug 2008<\/p>\n

Things look very different from here in Moscow,
\nalmost as if one is observing things from another planet.<\/p>\n

The other night I watched a story on Russia
\nToday, a semi-official Russian news channel.\u00a0 It
\nshowed CNN footage purporting to come from the
\napparent Russian “capture” of the Georgian town
\nof Gori.\u00a0 Actually, the film was (unattributed)
\nRussia Today footage of damage from the Georgian
\nattack days ago on Tskhinvali, the So. Ossetian capital.<\/p>\n

But even aside from the difficulty of getting
\nanything resembling accurate news here, the
\nRussian point of view is, predictably, vastly
\ndifferent from the knee-jerk Russophobia in the
\nU.S. press.\u00a0 And to many of us here, the Russian
\npoint of view is at least as compelling as the
\nmainstream U.S. attitudes we hear about.<\/p>\n

Russians have always been sensitive to western
\nviews of them and are particularly alert for
\nattitudes\u00a0 that smack of inequality and
\nhypocrisy.\u00a0 The vast majority of people here are
\namazed, sad, and confused at the way the western
\nmedia has transformed the Georgian side, which
\nstarted the war, into the victims.\u00a0 When Prime
\nMinister Putin decried the west’s cynical
\n“turning black into white” he spoke for large numbers of Russians.<\/p>\n

People here were amazed and insulted when
\nPresident Bush bragged about his “stern” warnings
\nto Putin.\u00a0 Like Putin, they cannot imagine a
\nreason to pay any attention to such a person,
\nwhose paternalistic but helpless schoolmarm
\nlectures are considered here to be “not serious.”<\/p>\n

Russians wonder how, before Russian intervention,
\nsomething more than a thousand deaths including
\nthe destruction of villages and shooting of
\ncivilians by the Georgians escape western notice.<\/p>\n

They wonder why Georgian attempts to suppress the
\nOssetian alphabet were not cultural genocide and
\nRussian defense against Georgian attack is.<\/p>\n

They wonder how prying Kossovo away from Serbia
\nwas popular self-determination but So. Ossetian
\nindependence from Georgia is not.<\/p>\n

They wonder how President Bush, who for the sake
\nof regime change invaded Iraq far from his
\nshores, nevertheless managed to denounce Russian
\nuse of force and complain that the days of regime change had passed.<\/p>\n

They wonder why, in 1942 when attacked by Japan,
\nthe U.S. did not follow its own advice about a
\n“measured response” and stop her counterattack on
\nJapan at Pearl Harbor.\u00a0 “Were the Japanese the
\nvictims then, just like the Georgians?”<\/p>\n

They wonder why, as one puzzled but sincere
\nfriend put it, “you Americans hate us so much when we do what you do.”<\/p>\n

But mostly they wonder why US leaders cannot come
\nup with a more sophisticated world view for the
\n21st century than surrounding Russia (which after
\nall has nuclear weapons and much of the world’s
\noil) with verbal abuse, hostile alliances and
\nprovocations.\u00a0 They don’t understand why US
\nleaders cannot see beyond or outgrow the cold
\nwar.\u00a0 Another asked,\u00a0 “So Cheney and Rice, they
\naren’t your most advanced global thinkers, right?”<\/p>\n

J. Arch Getty
\nMoscow
\n[Professor of History, UCLA]<\/p>\n

Johnson’s Russia List
\n2008-#150
\n15 August 2008<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From: Arch Getty <getty@ucla.edu> Subject: separate and unequal Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2008 Things look very different from here in Moscow, almost as if one is observing things from another planet. The other night I watched a story on Russia Today, a semi-official Russian news channel.\u00a0 It showed CNN footage purporting to come from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":38128,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[209,42,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-georgia-caucasus","category-russia","category-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}