Tuesday, September 7, 2004
Apologies for the lack of updates. It was a fairly busy weekend and I thought I'd take a few days off from the "pressure to produce" and take a little break (I'll likely post some whimsical peach picking photos later). I've also had a few issues rolling around my head, but nothing that I could quite spit out. Obviously, the big one is the Russian School Massacre.
I kept wanting to do a post that somehow looked at the slightly bigger picture - how it fit in with our own War on Terror - but I kept hitting a mental wall. Not to say it doesn't fit! I just kept thinking about Putin and some of the ironies involved here. I mean you think about so many of the criticisms leveled at the US and George Bush - how the Administration has been, through its policies, flirting with fascism, stifling dissent, manipulating a coerced media...that the military can't be trusted...that personal business interests have had far more influence on policy than altruism our even a more far-sighted national-interest...that we, through our policies can be said to have brought some of what happened to us on 9/11 on ourselves - and all of that, all of it, can be said to apply to Vladimir Putin and his government far more accurately than could ever apply to George Bush in a Leftist's wet-dream.
Which is not to say that the Russians are responsible, or ought to turn inward and begin to beat their chests and throw themselves upon the fire, either. The Muslim terrorists are responsible, of course. They are the only ones who should be throwing themselves, or be thrown into, the inferno. In a wider sense of course, the people responsible are all those who would excuse - in any way - what happened in Beslan. This sort of terrorism should never, ever be rewarded. It should certainly never garner sympathy for the terrorists' cause. Indeed, if there were ever a clearer sign that a cause were not worth an ounce of sympathy, but instead should garner barrels of revulsion, it is the events that transpired in Beslan this past week.
Such sympathy is a product of what some may call the "Palestinianization" of the cause - where terror and horror's perpetrators are excused, or at least judged not so harshly, because of a world that feels sympathy for the political cause they represent. The world clings hard to its beliefs and doesn't want to let it go and turn away from it in spite of who they find themselves in bed with by not doing so. They give ideological shelter to murderers and get more of the same by sympathizing with a cause long past deserving of any sympathy.
The Palestinian Authority spokesman who, following the suicide bombings in Beersheva, said that he condemned all acts of violence against civilians, whether perpetrated by Palestinians or Israelis, is responsible for exactly the type of equivocation that encourages more of the same. Want attention for your cause? Do something depraved and get someone to draw a sympathetic connection to your issue - the more depraved and vicious, the more attention and even perverse sympathy you may receive. The PA spokesman just couldn't bring himself to unequivocally condemn the proximate act that got his statement noticed in the first place. He has another agenda and it shows. He's responsible.
But the press and world leaders who fail to point it out to him, who don't point out that he is a PA official and not an Israeli one and thus has a particular need to speak out in a particular way in this particular situation, also have a share of blame.
Saddam Hussein, the demagogue who cynically adopted the Palestinian cause, who used his propaganda engine to blast America and the Jews and who sought to work with radical Islamists for his own purposes was responsible. Fortunately thanks to the United States and her allies, his current area of responsibility involves the avoidance of buggery and little else. We did something about it, you see.
And that brings me back to Putin, the EU and others. While the United States is busy recognizing Iraq as a stepping stone on the path to victory in the greater War on Terror, while we recognize (perhaps not clearly enough, but still better than many others) how Yasser Arafat's depraved Palestinian Authority is also part of that War, and while we are recognizing Iran as part of an Axis of Evil - where are the rest?
Putin had been busy dealing fast and furious with Saddam until we did something to remove that option permanently - an action he, the EU and others (the Axis of Feckless) did everything possible to avoid. Sympathizing with the Palestinian Arabs and their cause and tactics? Check. Run cover for the Mullahs and their quest for nukes? Check again.
So now we're to accept that Putin's struggle is the same as our struggle against International Terrorism. OK, I'm game. There is undoubtedly some overlap. The people that did this are the same type of murderous fanatic that has glommed-on to issues worldwide.
I just wish there was a tad more recognition of the greater fight, the serious long-term war that we're only now dipping our toe into, from countries like Putin's Russia. This is nothing new for Russia, the terrorists have struck there before and will strike again, yet Putin has shown little enthusiasm for changing his mind-set on the larger issues and alignments - the true proximate causes of the horror of Beslan. Is it in part because, unlike George Bush, Putin the near-dictator is not as responsible to his public as our President is? The President's time in office is limited. He craves re-election, and when his two-terms are up he will have needed to have maintained the viability of his party. That means he needs to take a serious view of the war. He even may feel the pressure to take risks to protect the nation because the people demand it. What pressure does Putin feel beyond the personal? Low-grade conflict that doesn't threaten the State itself doesn't call for audacious and risky maneuvers. In this case, caution is key for the oligarch. Why take great risks?
But that's a tangent. What I puzzle over is the extent to which the attacks by the 'Chechen' terrorists representative of the Chechen cause as a whole, and to what extent is it simply a parasitic infestation of a convenient host? Are cause, tactic and society almost inextricably intertwined as they are with the Palestinian Arabs, or is it more a marriage of convenience where the Islamists have corrupted an otherwise meritorious cause, as in Iraq? If it's the former, then we might rightly say to Putin to do what you must and turn our backs on the Chechens as a whole, while if it is the latter, we may need to separate cause and tactic more fully. I suspect that while the struggle may have begun as the latter, it's becoming more and more the former. And that's another reason it's been tough to comment on - I just don't know.
Final thought. Wherever responsibility for this act may lie, one thing has to be faced: Islam has a problem. No, not all Muslims are terrorists, but so far it's only a very slight exaggeration to say that all the terrorists are Muslims - the now deceased Tim McVeigh being merely the exception that proves the rule. While we on the outside can do our part in making sure that terrorism is punished harshly and does not pay, and also in doing the soft work of proselytizing in the name of Western Values and doing PR for ourselves, it is ultimately and most intimately the work of Muslims themselves to expunge the sickness from their midst. A little less energy expended playing the innocent and working against John Ashcroft, George Bush and the Patriot Act, and a few more minutes expunging the sickness that clearly exists in their midsts would be appreciated. Is it any wonder that so many so-called moderate Muslim scholars and causes are tied in one way or another to terrorist or Islamist causes? From Tariq Ramadan to the Boston Mosque a quick search shows only a single degree of separation. The problem runs deep and wide. It's not just the people with memberships in the radical groups that are to blame, it's their massive network of supporters, idealogical excuse-makers, fellow-travelers and equivocators who are also to blame.
I'll leave off with this Opinion Journal editorial: OpinionJournal - The Children of Beslan - The unique depravity of modern Islamic terror.
The official death toll at School No. 1 in Beslan stood yesterday at 335, more than one-tenth the number who died in the terrorist attacks on America three years ago this week. One hundred fifty-six were children--boys and girls taken hostage when they arrived for their first day of the new school year. Before their slaughter, by rigged explosives or sniper fire, their captors denied them so much as a sip of water.
The depravity of this is hard to believe, but believe it we must. For it is the new reality of this current age in which innocents are specifically targeted by Muslim terrorists in the name of some Islamic cause. In Russia, the murderers were Chechens, aided by Arabs believed to be allied with al Qaeda. And so the children of Beslan join the ranks of other victims of Islamic terror--in a Moscow theater, a Bali nightclub, a Karachi church, and the Twin Towers of New York.
In the face of such horror, who can offer up any shred of justification? Yet that is precisely what has happened in the wake of every terrorist event the world has seen in recent years. By such lights, terrorism is viewed as a political act, intended to draw sympathetic attention to a cause--in this case the brutal Russian occupation of Chechnya.
Post-9/11, there were those who "explained" the attacks by blaming U.S. policy in the Mideast as behind the "desperation" of the hijackers. After the Madrid bombings, half the Spanish electorate effectively blamed their nation's participation in the war in Iraq by voting out the government that supported the U.S. In the wake of every suicide bombing in Israel, that country's policy on Palestinians is deemed responsible in many quarters, especially in Europe. Post-Beslan, who is prepared to blame the children?[...]
'The unique depravity of modern Islamic terror.'
I have reviewed this article and your site. You make me proud to be human, a thinker, a writer, a listener and a learner. The children of Breslan had no agenda, no advocate, no cares, just school books and a will to learn.
They were learners, who were found in their place of study, then detroyed. The long view of this is that we are all cupable. We spent to much time disputing with Israelie policy until the alligator is not only chewing the bird but everything else in it's path. According to the book of Daniel the alligator will be with us for a while into the future. What we should have learned is to cage the alligator. Break its finances you break its jaws. It is still alive. But cannot harm you, at least to a certain extent. Massive amounts of troops, shutdown all finances, and pull out of locations like "Docs without walls" did in Afghanistan, clean-out our home space which we have not; King David had a similar experience to which there was a password; if you could pronounce the word, you were not of his camp. We are coozing to their whims reacting to their attacks. They want us out of their country we should leave. Terrorist and bin Laden are counting on us having consciences; of staying to make everything right with the world. This as you allude to is what the school killing was about, garning our consciences to their cause. We need to act like and show them we have none. Let's see how long it would take a starving people to kill their own terrorist; otherwise bus #19 will be one of many that won't make it to the next stop. The massive troops I spoke about; brought in from every major country on the planet all at the same time; how about we surround Israelie villages and cities man for man, shoulder to shoulder and see what effect that would have. Should be reminiscent of the battle of Jericho. Prophecy will continue to fulfill itself but there is no reason why we should keep throwing live bodies at the problems of rebellion and disobedience. Hey, these are my musing this is what I think about. Thanks Blooger Friend, You have done well with your blogger site.
I would like to see "Golda Meirs" book "MY LIFE" added to your book listing it is an excellent chronology of events leading up to and afterward, the nationhood of Israel; from an insiders perspective.
Thanks for your comment and kind words.
I've got read Meir's book - I actually have it on my shelf but...so many books, so little time...