Russia
Over at Harry's Place, David Brown has this to say on Besla, and those who argue that we must understand the 'root causes'.Harm my kids, and I might very well harm you back, but I’ll be making extra special effort to leave your kids out of it. Moreover, I’ll successfully avoid all temptation to murder random children with whom you share your nationality.
Which is hard to disagree with as a statement of what should be done. Clearly the Chechnyan's have been on the end of state genocide, but as someone said in a different context, there's always the option of not being a bastard, and the terrorists in Besland didn't take it (to rather inadequately describe what happened).
In the context of what actually might happen however it's not so helpful. Many of the people who have tried to provide some context (such as Russian expert Dr Mark Galeotti, who Harry's Place have been savaging probably on the basis of some poor sub-editing) are doing so partly because they fear the Russian response will essentially involve the murder of random innocent children, among others. This is not some 'Stopper' flight-of-fantasy, but an historical truth, for there's plenty of evidence that this has already happened in Chechnya, for example see Amnesty's report.
David also adds,
I was going to add that since we’ve had well over 100 funerals, we can start the full-blown analysis, engage every brain cell in an effort to understand (not “condone”, mind you) the motivation of the Beslan hostage takers, and, most importantly, discern “the context”. But as this was already well under way while the corpses of hundreds of children were not yet cold, what would be the fucking point?,
which would carry somewhat more weight if it wasn't the website for which he writes that on September 5th started coopting the evil events in an attack labelling anyone who opposes the "War on Terror" (which of course includes the invasion of Iraq) as the equivalent of 1930s appeasers.
posted by Matthew @ 9/07/2004 09:13:00 AM
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