Ralph Peters, unlike secular liberals, is angry about the mass murder in southern Russia and wants to fight the murderers:
“If Muslim religious leaders around the world will not publicly condemn the taking of children as hostages and their subsequent slaughter — if those “men of faith” will not issue a condemnation without reservations or caveats — then no one need pretend any longer that all religions are equally sound and moral….”
“Negotiations are the heroin of Westerners addicted to self-delusion….”
“A final thought: Did any of those protesters who came to Manhattan to denounce our liberation of 50 million Muslims stay an extra day to protest the massacre in Russia? Of course not.
“The protesters no more care for dead Russian children than they care for dead Kurds or for the hundreds of thousands of Arabs that Saddam Hussein executed. Or for the ongoing Arab-Muslim slaughter of blacks in Sudan. Nothing’s a crime to those protesters unless the deed was committed by America.”
Amen, brother. As President Bush astutely saw very soon after the September 11 attacks, the world is dividing itself between those who want to fight international Islamic terrorism, and those who support it or appease it. For all countries, the options are either Austria (let yourself be co-opted by it) Switzerland (pretend to be neutral, but bankroll the murderers), or Britain (fight until victory, or the last Briton is choking on his own blood, as Churchill put it.)
So this slaughter of the innocents was just like the Columbine massacre, times ten. What do you want to bet that liberals won’t get as angry at Islamist terrorists as they did at American gun owners? Will Michael Moore’s new movie be “Bowling for Chechnya,” blaming the whole thing on radical Islam’s penchant for indiscriminate violence?
Nah. Because as I’ve said many times in this space, to liberals, Islamist terrorism is just a force of nature, and you cannot ascribe any blame to the perpetrators: because they’re essentially sub-human, and we shouldn’t have provoked them in the first place.
If anything, liberals will blame Russian President Putin for not letting the Chechen Muslims have their own state. Serves him right for denying them self-determination. Muslims, after all, are the poor oppressed subjects of an evil Christian country (once Communism fell, Russia lost its moral cover with liberals).
Putin is in a tough position. A ground war to subdue Chechnya didn’t work, and now the Chechens are aggressively pursuing acts of terrorism. If he lets this tiny piece of Transcaucasian real estate go, he looks weak. If he responds with the kind of force that would really put down Chechen rebelliousness–say carpet-bombing Grozny–he’ll be stooping to their level. Though it would seem to me that bulldozing every Muslim madrassa in Chechnya and only allowing public schools would be entirely justified.
I for one don’t know what the best course of action for Russia is, other than bringing to justice the perpetrators of the recent crimes–the school massacre, the two airliner bombings, the subway bombings. Given Russia’s history, it’s surprising that there’s still a building in Grozny left standing at this point. Soon, there may well not be.
Sooner or later an actual state which harbors, finances, or otherwise supports this barbarism will have o pay the price…..
And of course as long as Saddam Hussein — after 12 years of sanctions and no-fly zones, periodic pin-pricks, continued periodic flouting of the cease-fire terms, virulent anti-Americanism and Arab nationalism, and ties (however small) to the Islamofascists — was in power, no threat that any “actual state which harbors, finances, or otherwise supports this barbarism will have to pay the price” could be credible.
THAT (and not delving into Czech intelligence minutiae over who picked up Mohammed Atta’s Pilsner tab) is what Saddam Hussein has to do with the war on terror. Yes, Saddam was not the leading sponsor of al Qaeda and certain other Muslim terror groups.** But without major changes in Muslim political culture that HAD to start with a final reckoning with Saddam Hussein to demonstrate their impotence against our might when we chose to use it, September 11 would be an annual event.
** ASIDE: One of the most truly insufferable and obnoxious things about the anti-war people in 2002 and early 2003 is the way they always talked down to us pro-war people, as though **we didn’t know** that Saddam led a secular government while Osama was a theocrat.
There has also been a deafining silence from the Kerry campaign on this tragedy. Not one word, no condolences, nothing. Reuters and others are afraid to even use the world terrorist and John Kerry is afraid even to mention this tragedy because he know his leadership on this issue is so weak.
This story from Bloomberg has Kerry’s condolences.
Democratic presidential challenger John Kerry said in a statement that “Americans stand united with the people of Russia against terrorism and share the Russian people’s grief and mourning at these senseless deaths.”
Okay — but what’s Kerry going to do about it? Other than empty promises (“get more international involvement,” as if the American president can order foreign countries to deploy troops) and meaningless vows (“We will destroy you”), the Kerry-Edwards team doesn’t really offer anything substantive.
The Pope’s statement was more vigorous than Kerry’s, for that matter. Zenit wrote: In a telegram sent in his name by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Pope described the terrorist attack as a “vile and pitiless aggression against defenseless children and families.”
There’s nothing Kerry can meaningfully do about the matter, so I don’t blame him. (Today.)
The US can’t do much, either, except perhaps to seek that any Chechen al-Qa’eda who get captured in Iraq or Pakistan get handed over to Russia; is it possible we have a few in Gitmo?