More on the Russian School Attack

I wrote yesterday about the terrorists capture of a school in Russia, complete with the taking of hundreds of children as hostages and threatening their lives. There is much more information at The Glittering Eye and Logic and Sanity. The Glittering Eye partially translated an editorial from gazeta.ru. Here is the important part:

The seizure of a school with children even for the present terrorist way is a scene that is completely out of line. It is not merely a challenge. It is the last straw. Christianity does not admit of blood feuds. But anyone who stakes the life of a child cannot be reckoned as human. These creatures may have no God, may have no people. This threat to kill a child is a renunciation of membership in the family of man, it is like killing your own mother.

Anyone who thinks that the actions of the jihadis are not driving the world closer to genocide is either not paying attention, or has no sense of history and particularly of the brutality of a decent man pushed past his limits.

The Russias may expect dreadful hours, even days. On the one hand there is a principle "don't make concessions to terrorists". For by this we only take the risk of further sacrifice. But on the other hand there is no principle by which one can sacrifice children.

It is in this reckoning that one renounces the humane. Because the Russian power is bound, in the first place, to save children, and in the second place to give such an answer that no one would think that this has been a successful experiment. If the government cannot do this, then what is it good for?

And gazeta.ru's editorialist puts his finger precisely on the terrorists' methods: make governments look weak and ineffective, and increase the chaos on which the terrorists feed. It's a hard position to be in, because the only options are to collapse or become brutal: the terrorists cannot be deterred, and they cannot be defeated without attacking the (non-combatant) populations that shelter and supply them. And if we adopt brutal methods, and attack civilians, not only will our own nature rebel against our actions, but the hardening of our hearts against this rebellion of our natures, in combination with more outrageous atrocities by the terrorists, could push us over into being monsters. Either way, we cannot get everything we want; the best we can do is survive with enough memory of honor to restore it afterwards. If we can first destroy the terrorists.

UPDATE (9/3): The crisis appears to have ended, bloodily, but not as bad as it could have been (much as the Moscow theater takeover ended). Russian rescuers were allowed inside to remove some of the dead earlier killed by the terrorists (not sure if these were the men blown up in the hallway, the non-walking wounded shot after the initial takeover, the men who were killed resisting, or the children and parents killed during the initial attack), and while they were inside, the terrorists apparently opened fire indiscriminately and set off a bomb that partially collapsed the roof. Hostages fled, and the Russian troops blew a hole in the wall of the gym to create an escape route. The total casualties are not yet known. At least one of the terrorists was captured, and more were killed. More at FoxNews.

UPDATE (9/3): More from Belmont Club, The Glittering Eye, Logic and Sanity and < a href="http://instapundit.com/archives/017580.php">InstaPundit.

I particularly recommend that you go to Logic and Sanity, which has the best coverage I've been able to find. (Better, in fact, than any of the mainstream media - who somehow still wonder why people have started ignoring them.)

UPDATE (9/4): The Command Post has information on how you can help.

Posted by Jeff at September 2, 2004 10:47 AM | Link Cosmos