EFL. No snarky interspersed comments for obvious reasons.
PHOTOGRAPHED from above, the body bags look empty. They seem to lie flat on the ground, and it's only when you peer closer that you realise that that's because the bodies in them are too small to fill the length of the bags. They're children. Row upon row of dead children, more than a hundred of them, 150, more, many of them shot in the back as they tried to flee.
Flee from whom? Let's take three representative responses: "Guerillas", said The New York Times. "Chechen separatists", ventured the BBC, eventually settling for "hostage-takers". "Insurgents", said The Guardian's Isabel Hilton, hyper-rational to a fault....
So the particular character of this "insurgency" does not derive from the requirements of "asymmetrical warfare" but from . . . well, let's see, what was the word missing from those three analyses of the Beslan massacre? Here's a clue: half the dead "Chechen separatists" were not Chechens at all, but Arabs. And yet, tastefully tiptoeing round the subject, The New York Times couldn't bring itself to use the words Muslim or Islamist, for fear presumably of offending multicultural sensibilities.
In the 1990s, while the world's leaders slept — or in Bill Clinton's case slept around — thousands of volunteers from across the globe passed through terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and were then dispatched to Indonesia, Kosovo, Sudan . . . and Chechnya. Wealthy Saudis — including members of the royal family — invested millions in setting up mosques and madrassas in what were traditionally spheres of a more accommodationist Islam, from the Balkans to South Asia, and successfully radicalised a generation of young Muslim men. It's the jihadist component — not the asymmetrical one, not the secessionist one — that accounts for the mound of undersized corpses, for the scale of the depravity...
What happened in one Russian schoolhouse is an abomination that has to be defeated, not merely regretted. But the only guys with any kind of plan are the Bush administration. Last Thursday, the President committed himself yet again to wholesale reform of the Muslim world. This is a dysfunctional region that exports its toxins, to Beslan, Bali and beyond, and is wealthy enough to be able to continue doing so.
You can't turn Saudi Arabia and Yemen into New Hampshire or Sweden (according to taste), but if you could transform them into Singapore or Papua New Guinea or Belize or just about anything else you'd be making an immense improvement. It's a long shot, but, unlike Putin's plan to bomb them Islamists into submission or Chirac's reflexive inclination to buy them off, Bush is at least tackling the "root cause".
If you've got a better idea, let's hear it. Right now, his is the only plan on the table. The ideology and rationale that drove the child-killers in Beslan is the same as that motivating cells in Rome and Manchester and Seattle and Sydney. In this war, you can't hold the line against the next depravity. Unusually somber for Steyn. Read it all at the link.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/05/2004 1:53:57 PM ||
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#1
somber and angry - understandable
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/05/2004 15:33 Comments ||
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#2
Why will the press not call a spade a spade?
These were Terrorists. Period. If you want to add the proper adjective, they were Islamist Terrorists.
Has our press become so detached from reality behind their NewSpeech that they have lost all sight of any morality in the issue at all? They are so concerned about being PC they fail to name the Evil what it is. Its disgusting. How can those people live with themselves slanting things like that?
#3
OldSpook----I am continually baffeled by that. The only thing that I can think of is their obsession with being PC is taking on the symptoms of being an illness. Nobody can stand back and look at the big picture. It is like they insert standard phrases into the story, like an idiot's cookbook. The good news that other alternative means of communication are getting the story out. The MSM is losing its credibility, slowly, steadily. It is just not fast enough for events and the situation the world is facing with Islamofascists.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/05/2004 17:43 Comments ||
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The MSM wouldn't want to offend anyone with the non-PC truth. Liberal politicians like Kerry and Kennedy will have to speak the unspeakable adjectives like "Islamic" before they will be PC. That won't happen until a few hundred American children die. Maybe not even then. The only thing that keeps me from sagging into depression is that (1) Bush gets it and keeps chipping away at the Islamic terrorists, regardless of what the NYT and WaPo have to say and (2) Bush will be unencumbered by the campaign in two months.
Posted by: Tom ||
09/05/2004 18:02 Comments ||
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It will be far too long until the enemy is called by its real name. We have been socialized to be accepting/non-critical of other cultures and religions. It will take many American and European dead before that changes. War and its horrors are the only thing that will harden us and awaken our whole society to the evil that confronts us. We are better people when we are accepting, but the circumstances demand that we change and do so quickly. I am thankful that Pres. Bush is in charge (and has a double digit lead in the polls).
Posted by: Remote Man ||
09/05/2004 18:21 Comments ||
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#6
Note the term chosen by the MSM to describe the incident: a siege. Y'know, like the Nazi siege of Leningrad. Or maybe Waco. As if the jihadist child-killers we're defending their own turf from the fascist Spetsnaz.
Then look at the sequence of events, as per the BBC. No mention that the Spetsnaz began shooting only in response to, first, the bombs set off by the terrorists, and second, the semi-automatic turkey shoot of fleeing children by the terrorists. And now we have the six phases of this "seige" as per the Beeb:
No mention of slaughter, killing, terror. Instead we have the hostages' (or maybe the hostage-takers'?) "plight." No blame, no worries. That shit happens.
Detonation of bombs, suicide bombings by two female terrorists, spray-shooting of children with autmatic weapons? That's a "flashpoint."
And finally, the effort by civilized people to prevent children from being gunned down by savage killers? That's an "assault."
Four years of unspeakable atrocities, after so much sacrifice, sweat, blood tears, and these f***ing retards don't get it. Screw those morons. If the EU idiotarians cannot grasp that this is war and that the adversary seeks a fight to the finish, then we must and will find allies beyond Europe who do get it.
We have been socialized to be accepting/non-critical of other cultures and religions.
I haven't. And neither have most of my friends.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/05/2004 20:26 Comments ||
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I am so damm critical right now I am carrying a 45, just incase I run into a muslim males or MSM member.
I don't have to accept this crap or their apoligists.
Remember -
Don't carry unless you intend to draw when needed.
Don't draw unless you intend to shoot.
Don't shoot unless you intend to kill.
You fight like you train - dont do it in anger. If you carry you have to train yourself. You must only kill out of cold rational decision making and with precision and dispassion.
I didnt carry for a while, but this stuff in Russia reminded me - the best defense against such things is an armed citizenry.
Were those teachers armed, they could have at least held off the terrorists and allowed many others to escape.
Imagine yourself at the local shopping mall. Imagine that bunch taking over. What will you do, die? Not me, at least not without getting a few of them first.
Fire and movement. Kill them and keep them off balance to allow others to escape, while I work my way toward an exit. 10+10 (I carry a relaod these days) .40S&W hollowpoint will stop them, hard - no military FMJ here - I'm making big holes. Unless they are wearing body armor they are not going to be able to take more than a single hit.
One things for sure - they better take the sporting goods store first - otherwise, there will be a company's worth of citizen militia after them with shotgus, pistols and hunting rifles. No 7 day waiting period - just bust open the case.
Now if there are 30 others like me in the mall, the Terrorists will all be dead, and far fewer of our fellow citizens will die.
We need to be sure there are plenty of us goats in amongst the sheep. We should have local governments *requesting* that citizens volunteer to qualify and carry concealed weapons - and then training them and certifying them. A true militia.
#10
Whoa SPOD! - take it easy, we don't want to lose you here!
I've given up on the BBC, but don't let them and arseholes like them drive you into doing something you may regret.
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
09/05/2004 22:23 Comments ||
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I got your back, O.S. I need to start carrying a reload, too; thanks for the reminder.
Though I imagine if/when they do try that crap here, they won't try it in Texas or Virginia (except Northern Va., which is a sort of Yankee-land lite) or Alaska or any of the Midwestern farm states. Or they'll be in for a huge surprise.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/05/2004 23:11 Comments ||
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#12
True.
For targets, look which states are anti-carry, anti-firearms, do not have a lot of police (rules out NY and a lot of large dense metro areas- imagine having the entire NYPD coming down on you).
Look for fairly large concentration of population, a decent sized target mall.
Is Minnesota carry/gun friendly?
If not, I'd be putting state police and rotating swat teams in the Mall of America, right this moment.
#13
#2Has our press become so detached from reality behind their NewSpeech that they have lost all sight of any morality in the issue at all? They are so concerned about being PC they fail to name the Evil what it is. Its disgusting. How can those people live with themselves slanting things like that?
OldSpook, I wish that I had an answer for you, but I don't. I, too, am astounded by such willing misrepresentations being made by the mainstream media. It is not just dishonest, but basically suicidal. The vein-opening desire to be politically correct, "sensitive," or "culturally aware" goes beyond open-mindedness and into the realm of plain insanity.
My television has been off for over three years now and I do not miss this sort of misrepresentation in the least. Your second post makes me seriously consider switching from a 4" folding hunter to a snub-nose S&W. I am sick of American media's prediliction with being so sensitive to those who would murder us in our sleep.
EFL
The truth is that he [Putin] is at least partially responsible for the fact that the siege ended in so horrible a blood-bath. The Russian siege negotiators and the Spetsnaz (there were several thousand of them) who had surrounded the school were totally unprepared for what happened. They knew that the terrorists had mined the school and had strapped bombs to themselves and its roof, but they had no contingency plans if one of those bombs went off.
That was what actually happened: in the chaos which followed the explosion, there was a break-out by some of the children, followed by some of the terrorists. Yet the Spetsnaz had failed to seal off the school, with the result that some of the terrorists managed to get away. There weren't even any ambulances waiting to take the wounded hostages to hospital. Many of the children who died will have been shot by Spetsnaz officers because they were caught in the crossfire between the terrorists shooting at them, and the Spetsnaz shooting at the terrorists. It is distinctly possible that the roof which collapsed and buried many more of the captured children under a pile of rubble was destroyed by a rocket fired by one of the besieging Spetsnaz...
Putin believes he can bludgeon the Chechens into submission. Hundreds of dead children from a school in North Ossetia won't be enough to persuade him to change that policy. He may never accept that it has failed. And yet Russia has very little reason to continue to be so intransigent on the issue of greater autonomy for Chechnya. Chechnya's oil reserves are almost spent; the country has few other natural resources; and its "strategic" importance to Russia is largely a myth. Most Chechens are not Islamic fundamentalists, or even seriously Islamic at all. Al-Qaeda is not welcome there, and I regard it as almost inconceivable that there was any serious al-Qaeda involvement in the hostage-taking in Ossetia, despite the claims from the Russians that they have identified 10 "Arabs" among the dead.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
09/05/2004 10:30:49 PM ||
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The deaths were a fore ordained fact. The terrs had no intention of leaving that school and leaving anyone alive. The fact that the first thing they did was kill a number of men to insure there was no resistance in the school was but a prelude to their main intention. They wanted to drag it out as long as possible, killing as many as needed to keep the TV cameras and reporters in the number one spot on every outlet in the world. I am sure they intended to go out in a blaze of glory taking many "infidels" with them to be their servants in heaven.
The fact that the Russian military and police are not up to an event involving these people is not such suprise. I expect there is about only three groups that could counter these tactics, SAS, Delta Force and what every Isreal has. Get real folks, as long as you are only reacting to these shits, you are going to be behind the curve.
Posted by: Old Fogey ||
09/05/2004 0:24 Comments ||
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Oleg Gordievsky: Only part of the Spetsnaz's reputation is justified. They are certainly brutal. But they are not efficient, and never have been - even in the old days of the Cold War, when they were well financed.
I'm not sure it is entirely fair to blame problems with rescue operations on the Spetznaz. Hostage rescue is a whole different undertaking from traditional commando operations, where the mission is either surveillance of enemy operations or lightning attack and retreat. Soldiers are trained to kill people. Getting people out alive takes special skills that require a lot of preparation. It's not clear that the Spetznaz was prepared for hostage rescue ops. Note that Germany's commandoes weren't able to rescue any of the athletes held hostage at the 1972 Munich Olympics either.
#3
It was the German police in 1972 and they had absolutely no training in hostage rescue. Nobody did really. 1972 was the event that lead to HRT's being created and trained around the world. I even saw an interview were one of the Israeli's they talked said that it was simply assumed that Germans being German, meant the police would take them out easily, but since WWII, Germany really didn't have any kind of special forces.
#4
bleh. Judging from the comments of my leftie friends, the distraction from blaming terrorists to blaming Putin is effectively giving them talking points that allow them not to dwell on the obvious - that we are involved in a war for our very survival.
#5
OF: "The fact that the Russian military and police are not up to an event involving these people is not such suprise. I expect there is about only three groups that could counter these tactics, SAS, Delta Force and what every Isreal has. "
I would add France's GIGN and Germany's GSG9 to your list. Also, FBI's Hostage Response Team is probably underrated. For all of the silliness of Europe's governments, they have some decent ops, developed in responce to Munich, the RAF/SPK,etc. I don't know if EUROPOL has an anti-terror unit- wouldn't suprise me.
OF:"Get real folks, as long as you are only reacting to these shits, you are going to be behind the curve."
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