Getting Ugly in Russia

[lookout123]

first 2 planes go down. then a suicide bomber takes out some people. now they have gone into a school, and taken as many as 400 hostages. 7 people are already dead. i honestly haven't been following the situation too closely, do any of you well informed cellar dwellars know what has been going on over there to cause this sudden spike in activity?

School under siege.

[Trilby]

good God. They are saying they are prepared to kill fifty children for each one of their members killed. No wonder I am a nervous wreck. This is insane.

[jaguar]

the 'election' in chechnya seems to be the trigger to remind the ruskies to go fuck themselves. Also appears to be a more covert faction than the more traditional rebel movement, lots of women suggests it might include the wives of guys killed/tortured/abducted during the occupation.

still sus about the planes though, I wouldn't rule out FSB involvement in that.

[warch]

I read, on Salon I think, that they have ID'ed two women as Chechen, one on each of the blown planes. Theres speculation they are black widow terrorists, but not sure yet.

[lookout123]

Originally Posted by warch

black widow terrorists

giving them names only lends them credibility. i prefer to call them what they are: worthless piles of human filth.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I don’t know if it gives them credibility, but it quickly identifies them as one of “those” wackos as opposed to some other wackos. It’s shorthand that’s so valued in the electronic information age. Makes for better sound bites.

[DanaC]

"giving them names only lends them credibility. i prefer to call them what they are: worthless piles of human filth."

If they had just risen from their beds one morning and decided on a whim to slaughter people wholesale I might, just might agree with that sentiment but they did not. I dont agree with the way they are waging their war but I can see how they have arrived at their decision. These are women whose menfolk have been killed by the power which dominates them. They are under occupation and their land has been devastated by Russia. Grozny has been levelled. Literally. Whne the Russians had finished their destructive rampage you could stand on one side of the city and more or less look to the other side unobstructed by buildings. The women who are known as the black Widows have sufffered loss on a huge scale. Many of them have lost multiple members of their families.

Does that make it right that they engage in terrorist attacks on civilians? That's a question to be argued. But to merely dismiss them as worthless filth is to deny the pain they have suffered at the hands of Russia. What is happening in Russia now is what happens to a country who imposes it's will violently upon people who consider themselves to be seperate and independant. Putin and his government are responsible for the chaos which has been unleashed upon the Russian people as much as they are responsible for the chaos they unleashed upon the Chechens

Anyone who wishes to know why these people are engaging in such a terrible and violent struggle might find this website interesting

A photo Essay from Chechnia Following the Progress of the Russian front

The Chechnya Page

[lookout123]

Originally Posted by DanaC

If they had just risen from their beds one morning and decided on a whim to slaughter people wholesale I might, just might agree with that sentiment but they did not.

it does not matter what happened previously. it doesn't matter if they lived the life of Riley or were shat upon daily. if your decision is to strap explosives to yourself and enter an area crowded with civilians... women and children and detonate your explosives killing these innocents - you are filth to be cast off or destroyed. to justify their actions in any way is foolishness.

if they were going after political figures or military troops i might, just might change my view slightly.

Does that make it right that they engage in terrorist attacks on civilians? That's a question to be argued. But to merely dismiss them as worthless filth is to deny the pain they have suffered at the hands of Russia.

previous pain and suffering is irrelevant to the decision to blow up innocent men, women, and children. to say their pain in someway justifies their actions is just ridiculous. that is like the pedophile saying he did it because he was an abused child. you are responsible for your actions and decisions - no one else. acts of terrorism unleashed upon the civilian population are not acceptable ways of voicing your displeasure at a government.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Does that make it right that they engage in terrorist attacks on civilians? That's a question to be argued.

Bullshit, there is absolutely no justification for this kind of senseless carnage. None!

[Trilby]

Okay, these are obviously desperate people but this isn't the way to effect change, gain sympathy or even get any message across. Does this tactic ever work?

[wolf]

Any time concessions are made to terrorists, it works.

[DanaC]

Well.....Those tactics can have an effect. For instance, the people of Russia may after several of these appalling attacks put pressure on their government to pull the troops out of Chechnya. I would imagine that whilst many Russians will take a "hold firm and dont give in to terrorists stance" many others will just want the terrorism to end and as such may pressurise their government to effect the changes which will lead to an end of the violence.

As to whether or not it is ever justified to kill women and children well I really dont see a staggering amount of space between their acts and the bombing of hiroshima. The only difference is that the bombs were dropped by a state and these people are acting on their own. The whole point of this is that it is a target which a) is manageable with minimal military equipment ( which of course the chechens have) and requires no standing army or fully functioning state machinery ( which they do not have) and B) given that attempts to negotiate their independance have been met with overwhelming force and macho posturing by the russian state, an attack against it's military would be dangerously ineffective. Instead they have chosen to attack the people themselves. Specifically in this case they are attacking the children. They obviously see this as the only way they can get to the Russian people and therefore the only way they can effect any kind of change.

Essentially, since the chechnens are not militarily capable of taking on the Russian army headon, there is nothing for the Russian state or it's people to gain from simpy pulling out their troops and leaving the chechens to get on with it. By making life intolerably violent and dangerous for the Russian people they change that completely. With people afraid their loved ones will become victims or that they themselves are personally at risk there is suddenly a hell of a lot to be gained by persuading the govermnent to pull out the troops. Why would they be willing to sacrifice many in order to keep hold of a devastated province ?

It isnt pretty, but it is the way wars were fought for most of the world's history. All that calmly marching up to each other and then swinging axes only held for the warriors. Warfare has always been brutal and the struggles between peoples have historically hurt civilians most. Standard practice in ancient and medieaval warfare was to devastate the surrounding area and starve it's people and maybe also take a bunch of them as slaves along with the rest of the plunder.

War as an honourable and governable action is the luxury of nationstates with armies and strong infrastructures. It is a luxury which Russia has chosen to put aside in it's treatment of the chechens because they do not see Chechnya as a nationstate. The Chechens do not have that luxury to put aside, they have been denied their statehood and their infrastructure has been devastated. Therefore the Chechens have to wage an altogether different kind of war. To make their lands carry such a heavy price that the Russian people become unwilling to continue paying it.

As far as I know none here have seen their homelands devastated and their loved ones slaughtered or tortured or simply "disappeared" Humans are humans and when pushed to the very limits of their despair and brutalised to such a degree then they begin to see the people who did that to them as somehow less worthy of their respect. They become the foreigner and the brutaliser. The human desire for vengeance is strong. It can drive people to wish to visit upon their enemy the torment and pain which was visited upon them. Hence I have some sympathy for the Black Widows. Not, I hasten to add that I see the hostage situation at the school as at all acceptable. But I believe it is possible to deplore someone's actions without ceasing to sympathise with their own distress.

As to the comparison with childmolestors. I dont think that holds. When the chechens attack civilians, they attack the heart of their enemy. The parents of those children are the people whose persuasion needs to be brought to bear on Putin's government. When a paedophile attacks a child and uses as his excuse that he was abused as a child then he is simply repeating blindly a pattern of abuse. What the chechen terrorists are doing is not blind. It is a conscious and thought out plan of attack at the nation which has caused it such turmoil and grief. A paedophile abuses a child to satisfy his urges and the identity of the child is usually irrelevant. The children in that school arenot just random children chosen to satisfy the selfish desires of individual people, they are Russian children, whose parents are seen as at least partly culpable for the situation in Chechnya.

After 9/11 the world went in to a state of shock. None of us could quite believe I think what had occurred. America in pain hit out in a strike that led it to Afghanistan and Iraq. Many people had vengeance on their lips and bombs were rained down upon Iraqi heads. Think of how much that atrocity affected America. Now imagine that the people who had done that were much much more powerful than America( almost impossible to imagine really ) Imagine that there 20 world trade centres, imagine New York flattened to rubble, it's people homeless refugees. Imagine an army tank on your street corner with your enemy seated in it pointing a gun at you. Imagine your children have missed the last 2 years of school. Your brother perhaps has disappeared along with one of your cousins. Your partner of however many years died in your arms. You have lost hope and the world does nothing to ease your pain. There is no coalition of the willing to stand at your side and facse the dangers with you, nor is their an international outpouring of grief for the lost.

It is easy for us to condemn. We in the west are primarily safe. The chances of being involved in a terrorist attack are so minimal as to make them almost not worth calculating. The hard thing to do is to get a grip on the human psychology which leads people in extremis to do appalling things in order to achieve their aims, or simply to assuage their grief filled need for vengeance. To dismiss the people who do this as inhuman is to deny the human condition, to deny the way we as humans are when we've been stripped back to our barest.

[lookout123]

Well.....Those tactics can have an effect. For instance, the people of Russia may after several of these appalling attacks put pressure on their government to pull the troops out of Chechnya. I would imagine that whilst many Russians will take a "hold firm and dont give in to terrorists stance" many others will just want the terrorism to end and as such may pressurise their government to effect the changes which will lead to an end of the violence.

and if the russians fold due to these attacks they will once and for all prove themselves to be a feeble state unable to stand firm in the face of terrorist actions.

by your logic, let's imagine that the wives of the russians killed in this conflict started strapping bombs to themselves and going into chechen markets and schools. would you then argue that it is a logical and justified action? or would you condemn them as butchers?

striking out at civilian centers with terrorist method is the work of human filth. they deserve to be wiped from the earth. soldiers fighting other soldiers is unfortunate, but fair - the strongest win. (and that doesn't necessarily mean the side with the most bombs or people) sometimes civilians will be killed in these battles that is also unfortunate, but not the intentional goal of the action. strapping a bomb on a person and putting that person in the middle of a civilian center is bullshit. you can justify it with your love for the "cult of the victim" but it is still bullshit. we live in a "civilized" world (it is hard to say that with a straight face) that has decided there are rules of warfare. if one side of a war or conflict discards the rules what is to stop the other?

say putin sees enough russian civilians killed and gets big balls about it. what is to stop him from discarding the accepted rules of war, like his opponents did, and commence firebombing the city centers of chechnya one at a time. i mean, hell, why waste anymore good russian soldiers on the conflict. just wipe chechens right off the face of the earth until their leadeship decides they've had enough and surrenders. would that be ok with you? if putin sees that as the only viable option to ending the conflict, that would be ok wouldn't it?

dana i appreciate your compassion for those you see as downtrodden but you are obsessed with victimization. you justify anything they do with the same logic; "look what they have had to endure." bad shit happens. each individual is responsible for their actions. having some corpses in your family cannot justify the intentional targeting of civilians. those who strap bombs to themselves and target women and children are filth, worthy of a painful death.

[smoothmoniker]

Dana, this is the simplest redaction of the difference between taking hostages and bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

When you take hostages, or engage in acts of terror, you are attempting to use the moral decency of your opponent as a weapon to hinder his actions. You are counting on an inequity of moral hindrance to make your actions effective.

“I am willing to kill children. You are not willing to let children die. Therefore, I have created a position of strength by exploiting your moral hinderance.”

If there is no moral hindrance on the part of your opponent, then they will not care that you kill their women and children; they will use their overpowering military might to crush you regardless of the costs. Any action which creates exploits a position of strength through the exploitation of the moral rectitude, compassion, charity, or love of your opponent cannot hold the moral high ground.

This is true in Chechnya. This is true in Gaza. This is true in Iraq. This is true in business, in law, in communities, and in families.

Bombing major cities in a time of war is a different act altogether. The essential task is not to use the compassion of your enemy against him, it is to remove his ability to wage war. When you level two of his major centers of economic strength, including shipping yards, armament factories, military bases, and yes, civilian populations that are working to support a war of aggression, your primary goal is to remove his ability to wage war.

There are many, many valid arguments to be made against our actions in bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but they are not equivalent acts with a terrorist group seizing hostages.

-sm

[Undertoad]

We went through another approach to this question a few years back.

Dana, what indignity would you suffer before you decided your best bet was to abduct a 5-year-old girl, aim a high-powered rifle at her head, and blow it completely off? What thought would make you pull that trigger?