WHAT’S DHIMMITUDE IN RUSSIAN?

The Egyptian historian Bat Ye’or in her seminal work, Islam and Dhimmitude, provides the classic definition of subservience demanded of infidels by Moslems who rule over them:

"Behavior dictated by fear, pacifism when aggressed (against) rather than resistance, servility because of cowardice and vulnerability."

Islam offers infidels only two choices:  death or subservience.  People who chose the latter became dhimmis.  By accepting the status of dhimmitude, Ye’or explains, "they obtained the security for their life, belongings and religion, but they had to accept a condition of inferiority, spoliation and humiliation."

There is no word in Russian corresponding to dhimmitude – but there needs to be.

As I am writing this, a friend of mine for many years is fighting for his life in a hospital nearby, having been gunned down in his driveway for criticizing the leader of the world’s most powerful mafia, Vladimir Putin.

On nationally televised "Dateline NBC" February 25, intelligence expert Paul Joyal accused Putin’s secret police of poisoning former KGB agent Aleksander Litvinenko with radioactive pollonium in London last November.  Putin’s message in so doing, Joyal explained, was a warning:

"To anyone who wants to speak out against the Kremlin: If you do, no matter who you are, where you are, we will find you, and we will silence you – in the most horrible way possible."

Four days later on March 1^st, Putin’s thugs – right here in Washington – did just that.  They silenced Paul Joyal in the most horrible way possible.  They blew his balls off.

Media reports are that he was shot "in the groin," or "in the lower abdomen."  How delicately phrased.  Neither the media nor the Bush White House wants the truth clearly reported:

The President of Russia had an American critic’s balls shot off.

The response of the Bush Administration has been to pretend it was a common robbery, to avoid embarrassing Russia’s gangster-president.  George Bush has decided to be in fearful subservience to the Kremlin.

Every effort has been made to squelch the truth of what happened to Paul Joyal on the night of March 1^st.  "Analyst Robbed During Shooting," ran the headline in the Metro (local news) section of the Washington Post.  "Disclosure May Quell Putin Speculation," was the sub-headline, quoting two anonymous "law enforcement" sources claiming Joyal was robbed of his wallet and briefcase. 

The next day, the WaPo had to run a retraction, again in the Metro section. Both Joyal’s wife and son said his wallet and briefcase were left in the car,  He wasn’t robbed at all.

Spiking the story of Kremlin terrorism upon an American citizen in Washington DC was made more difficult, however, when the very next day after the attack on Joyal, Putin’s thugs murdered a Russian critic of their boss in Moscow.

Ivan Safronov, the military affairs writer for the Russian magazine Kommersant, was thrown out of a fifth-floor window of his apartment building (he lived on the third floor).  Two female students saw his body land and called emergency services to say he was still alive.  They were told to call back in 30 minutes if he was still moving.  By that time he was dead.  The police reported it as a suicide.

Safronov was completing a story about Putin’s weapons sales to Syria and Iran.  It would have created "a huge international scandal" for the FSB – Federal Security Service, the renamed KGB – according to Kommersant’s editor.  So FSB/KGB thugs with Putin’s approval, murdered him.

Just like they murdered Anna Politkovsaya, author of the critical book, Putin’s Russia, gunning her down in her Moscow apartment building on October 7, 2006.  Just like they have murdered a dozen other journalists since Putin came to power in May of 2000.

And how has President Bush responded to all of this?

By not saying one single public word of criticism.

By ordering the Voice of America to stop broadcasting in Russia.

By deciding to "reach out more often and more intensively to Russia," according to an International Herald Tribune (owned by the New York Times) story, The Bush team begins new diplomatic initiative with Russia – datelined March 5^th, four days after Putin had Paul Joyal’s balls shot off and three days after he had Ivan Safronov thrown off a roof.

I’d like to believe that these are pretend acts of diplomatic dhimmitude, for public show and media manipulation.  That’s what some folks at the White House assure me they are.  But only actions will assure me, not words.

Last month, you learned how Putin was The World’s Richest and Most Dangerous Gangster.  He has certainly proved that this month.  You learned that he has personal assets hidden around the world in excess of $20 billion – and that the Bushistas were planning on exposing Putin’s wealth, thus exposing him as the world’s greatest crook.

I’m assured that such exposure is still in the works.  Now – with Paul Joyal breathing through a respirator in intensive care, mutilated in the most horrible way a man can be, and Bush operatives calling Maryland police telling them it’s a robbery with no Russian involvement – I have lost confidence in such assurance.

If George Bush has become Putin’s dhimmi, it would be a geopolitical disaster, a horrendous disaster for American national security.  Thanks to Putin, Russia has become our enemy once again.  Putin easily has the capacity to be more dangerous than Osama Bin Laden, if he is not already.

It is terrifying to contemplate the consequences of American subservient dhimmitude to the evil that currently occupies the Kremlin.    

What’s personally important, for me and those of us here in Washington who write and work on the threat of Putin’s Russia, is to avoid capitulating to Kremlin intimidation ourselves.

I’ve known Paul Joyal for 18 years.  I don’t mind telling you that what has happened to him has shaken me.  I’m getting emails from worried friends cautioning me to be extra careful.  The mother of my children is exceptionally worried, more than I’ve ever seen her before.  There’s a part of me that wishes I was retired in the Bahamas.

But there’s another part that won’t let me.  Capitulating to evil is just out of the question.  Dhimmitude is something I have no capacity for.  So… wish me luck.  Wish all of us luck here in Washington who will not stop investigating and criticizing Putin.  And pray for Paul Joyal.