As usual, the Clinton administration is ahead of the pack. Similarly, Republicans, who take pride in being members of the party of Lincoln, should remember that it was President Abraham Lincoln who unleashed Gen. William T. Sherman on Georgia in a deliberate effort to terrorize its citizens and hasten the Confederacy's surrender.
Nothing can justify Russia's brutality in Chechnya.
But those in the West who would lead a moralistic crusade against Moscow should apply the same standards to their own records. They also have a strategic responsibility to examine the complexity of Russia's predicament in Chechnya and the realistic options available to influence the Kremlin. Russia has no good options in Chechnya. Though we were strongly opposed to Moscow's 1994-96 military campaign and critical of the Clinton administration's defense of Yeltsin, we believe that this time Russia had good reasons to act. While the Russian government has been unable to prove conclusively that Chechen militants were responsible for terrorist bombings that killed 1,000 civilians in Moscow and other major cities, there is no doubt that Chechnya had become a lawless land plagued by kidnaping and murder, and that it harbored groups that launched regular armed incursions into neighboring Russian regions and eventually a large-scale invasion of Daghestan.