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Leadership failing to prepare Armenian people for war - newspaper

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  • Leadership failing to prepare Armenian people for war - newspaper

    Leadership failing to prepare Armenian people for war - newspaper

    Golos Armenii, Yerevan
    11 Mar 04

    The Armenian army is ready for war, but the people are not, according
    to an article in an independent Armenian newspaper. Society trusts
    neither the authorities nor the opposition and will not want to fight
    for them, the article said. Azerbaijan, and as a result Armenia, have
    entered the final pre-war period, a time of intensive propaganda to
    mobilize support for war. The following is the text of Arsen
    Yalanuzyan's report in Armenian newspaper Golos Armenii on 11 March
    headlined "Imperatives of the threatening period"; subheadings
    inserted editorially:

    The despicable killing of an Armenian officer in Budapest has marked
    Azerbaijan's entry into a "threatening period": this is what the final
    pre-war stage of a period of peace is called. The characteristic of
    that period is intensive military and political propaganda that
    mobilizes a country's citizens to give unconditional support to the
    future actions of their own armed forces and the neutralization of
    pacifist tendencies and speeches by the population. The official
    propaganda of Azerbaijan has practically achieved this objective and
    now that the scum who killed Gurgen Markaryan has become a hero, there
    is and will be no return to constructiveness in Azerbaijani
    society. So this means that we also have automatically entered this
    period. This is a fact that must not be ignored.

    People not ready for war

    Are we ready for war? The military and political leadership of our
    country announces confidently: "Our army is ready to carry out all the
    objectives it is set." Any person who is aware of the rate and quality
    of the development of our army may have no doubts - the army will do
    its job. But the possible war will be a war not of the armies but of
    the peoples - Armenian and Azerbaijani. And either our nation or
    Azerbaijan will gain victory in that war. That victory will define
    their fortunes for the foreseeable future.

    The authorities of Azerbaijan along with the army are preparing their
    nation for that fateful war. The result is obvious. But how are our
    people preparing for the war? To be more accurate - have our
    authorities set this objective at all?

    War a taboo subject

    We have the impression that a taboo has been set in our society on the
    word "war". Ex-President Levon Ter-Petrosyan mainly promoted this. His
    statement about the coming to power of the "party of war " gave the
    "hawks" a complex, as any mention of war may be understood as
    confirmation of the ex-president's "prophecies". Meanwhile, mentioning
    the need for a new war to protect the achievements of the national
    liberation fight of 1988-94 may not be reprehensible, if it is these
    very achievements that are the price of the offered peace. The point
    is - who will lead the people (not the army!) to war? Who will make
    the address to the nation after a decade of horrible lawlessness, as a
    result of which the people lost faith in the authorities?

    At that time, at the beginning of the 90s, we won thanks to the cream
    of our nation - those volunteer lads who for ideals, which were later
    announced by the president to be a "false category", were ready to
    fight and to die. In addition, at that time society had just entered
    the path of "democratic development" and national values were
    considered something usual. And the Armenian Pan-National Movement
    [APNM] as a party (not its separate patriot-members) as the holder of
    the leading anational ideology, had nothing to do with that victory,
    because it hated that victory as a matter of principle from the very
    beginning. Otherwise we would not have such a precedent, unthinkable
    in our long history, when not just any person but the president of the
    country denies the ideals of the Armenian nation. He denies the reason
    and pledge of victory, the laurels of which are being ascribed to him
    personally today. He denies the blood of thousands of patriots to whom
    we and our future generations are eternally indebted!

    And what do we have today? Since the APNM came to power, there has
    been no patriotic training in schools and today's society has been
    much poisoned with liberalism, self-interest and cosmopolitanism, but
    there is not even a sign about relative social justice. From this
    point of view it is not the laurels of previous victories that belong
    to Ter-Petrosyan but the seeds of future defeats! As for today's
    president, till now he has not said whether he agrees with
    Ter-Petrosyan or not in the matter of national ideology. So who will
    prepare society for war and how?

    Society trusts neither authorities nor opposition

    Let us look truth in the eye: a major part of our population does not
    trust the president or government, opposition and clergy. We live
    during a threatening time! What are those who have power doing at this
    responsible moment to gain the people's trust?

    Contrary to the mood of society, the government is continuing to
    introduce a system of social cards. And nobody says: gentlemen, even
    if you are right a thousand times, the trust of the people is more
    important. Can it be excluded that the sponsors across the ocean of
    such programmes are managing to divide our nation from the authorities
    precisely at this threatening period? Specialists in psychological
    warfare call this method "enlivening religious prejudices in the midst
    of the enemy". The opposition is calling for revolution, again in the
    threatening period. And in the instructions of psychological warfare
    of all our enemies (not only Azerbaijan!) this is called something
    slightly different: "to rouse the civilian population and servicemen
    of the enemy to anti-public actions that destabilize the normal
    everyday life of society and the army".

    Luxurious private residences and casinos are being built for everyone
    to see, costly office cars are bought at the expense of the people,
    and nobody is listening to the press when they say "Enough!". But
    tomorrow people will not want to fight for their masters! And our
    enemies will register the latest successfully fulfilled objective in
    the psychological war: "to stir up contradictions between specific
    social groups and strata of society of the enemy country". This is
    how our temporal and religious leaders are preparing our society for
    war! As for our nation, it will move mountains, if it knows for what
    end and has a just, Armenian leader! The people know what to fight
    for. The issue remains of a leader who understands that social justice
    today is the most important thing, as justice and trust are the
    imperatives of the threatening time.
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