Solzhenitsyn on "absurd projects"

Those wascally Wussians. A few days ago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, so beloved by the right for his ascerbic critique of the Russian political system, gave his first interview in the past three years with the Vesti Nedeli TV program on Russia's Channel Two. Solzhenitsyn flatly stated that Russia still has "had no democracy" or anything even "remotely similar to democracy." But then Solzhenitsyn departed from the rightwing script and actually had the gall to turn his invective toward the U.S.--the promised land itself. Solzhenitsyn said that over the last decade the US has "launched an absurd project to impose democracy all over the world" and that "the US has a strange idea of democracy." Solzhenitsyn's advice? "The US must understand that democracy cannot be introduced by force, by the army."

Poor Alexander. All those years being dissed and disciplined as a disgruntled dissident, and you still don't get it. These wars have absolutely nothing to do with democracy or altruistic projects and everything to do with pipelines and pocketbooks. If we Americans wanted a democratic leader, we would have elected one. But we wanted a wealthy oil man to grease the gears of elite privilege and corporate growth. And so now we're fighting these wars for our oil man and his small group of oil tycoons. Your point about democracy not coming through the force of arms is quaint, but wake up and smell the crude. As any history book on the Middle East will tell you, oil can be extracted and stolen through the force of arms. Such projects are only absurd to the tax-payers paying for the wars or to the people fighting them. To the people making the money, they are completely sensible.