Comments by Scoper...

Lessons of a Lost Sub

As the Norwegian divers have confimed, the 118 Russian submariners aboard the Kursk are grisly victims of the icy deep. Most of them may have been killed in the initial explosion that sent the sub to the bottom of the frigid Barents Sea. They would be the lucky ones, for any survivors would be left sitting in darkness, waiting for rescue but knowing it's much more likely they're waiting for their air to run out or to freeze to death. Psychologically, it's hard to imagine a more horrible fate.

It could be argued that it's tactless and cruel to say that we might be able to learn something from the crew's quick or agonizing deaths. But might it not be even more tragic to say that those men died for nothing? In an abstract sense, I don't believe they did. The sinking of the Kursk - and the way the Russian government has handled it - is like a flashing neon sign pointing out that while the old Soviet Union is gone, it's very much alive in the minds of the people in charge of the "new and improved" Russia. 

According to Russian naval authorities, it started out as a "malfunction" on Sunday, August 13. The lies had already begun. The Kursk disaster happened on Saturday. The government needed "cover-up" time. Early reports were almost positive: air and power was being supplied to the crippled sub from the surface, there was "contact with the crew" and, apparently, no loss of life. The news got worse with each passing day. No air and power from outside, no real communication with the crew, and even the "tapping" on the hull may have been fabricated. For the sake of the Scandinavian countries, we can only hope their claim that the reactors shut down weren't. 

At this writing, British and Norwegian rescue teams are engaged in one last, desperate rescue effort, but Russia waited so long before grudgingly accepting Western assistance that it's likely any survivors died during the wait, turning a "rescue" mission into one of "recovery." 

But we "made nice" with the Russians years ago, didn't we? The Bolshevik Revolution ended, Yakov Smirnov's jokes aren't funny anymore, and we're building an international space station together. But the fact is the "Cold War" never really went away, because it's a war of minds and ideologies. Oh, there was shooting, but in one sense, both Korea and Vietnam were the bloody manifestations of the U.S. and Soviet Union shaking their penises at each other. Despite the global economy and information revolution, the Russians are still shaking theirs. 

Ten years is not enough time to get over the concept of economic central planning and collectivist thought, the very things that put the old Soviet economy in ruins in the first place. If the West "won the Cold War," it's because the Soviet government spent itself broke. As for capitalism, they don't know what to do with it. It involves letting the hoi polloi make many of their own decisions, which goes against generations of Communist indoctrination. It also involves the leaders giving up a good measure of their power, and they're just not going to
do that voluntarily. 

Neither will the U.S. government, by the way. And the outcome of the November elections really won't change that. For example, they're not going to refund a 1.7 trillion-dollar surplus to the taxpayers. Nor will people be allowed to "opt out" of Social Security or have some of their tax money earmarked to subsidize non-government education for their children. Ain't gonna happen. A government program, once set up, is forever. Do you see a bit of an ominous parallel here?

I'll concede it could be worse. In Russia 2000, the State is still everything, meaning the individual is still nothing, except for his ability to serve the State. Those poor submariners were expendable; their government is more concerned with its image and the loss of an expensive piece of military hardware than with the crew's horrible
demise and the anguish of their loved ones. And because the Russian government "lie machine" was kicked into overdrive from the first hour of the tragedy, the whole world knows it. 

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