Two years ago today, the school seizure in Beslan came to a violent and tragic end. There remains controversy over who fired the first shots, but there should be no mistaking who was at fault. Islamic terrorists chose to hold children and their families hostage. They practiced gratuitous cruelty and took sadistic pleasure in the fear and privation of their victims. They shot children in the back who were fleeing from the burning building.
Gerard Vanderleun re-posted his Pieta for the 41st Photograph:
I began to gather these images yesterday, I think. Or was it the day before? I'm not really sure. The cascade of outrages, the piling of atrocity on top of atrocity, has become so unremitting that it is sometimes difficult to know where one episode of evil ends and another begins. The waves keep coming and, because they are always to your back, they keep slamming you down into the hardpacked sand. You pick yourself up and spin around to face the next wave, but this sea of evil is cunning and the next wave will always come from behind your back no matter which direction you face. All you can know now is that there will be another one, and it will come at your back in the way the bullets came for the backs of the children in Russia.
Neo-neocon writes about the spate of articles criticizing the Russian response to the atrocity. When such a terrible event occurs, there is always the very human tendency to look for someone to blame, yet, just as so many could not content themselves with blaming the Islamic terrorists for 9/11 and had to invent ways to blame Bush , et al, (and it is certain that a series of American administrations were not blameless) so, too, the blame for Beslan must be properly assigned to those who committed the atrocity:
But history only plays once; we don't have an alternate universe in which the Russian military and police get another opportunity to do something different, something more effective, something that preserved more lives. Was there any chance of a more successful outcome, given the ferocity of the hostage-takers? I personally don't think so, but I have no way of knowing. Neither does anyone else.
I wrote about the two year anniversary of Beslan two weeks ago in The First Day of School:
Esquire magazine has an article in its current issue that is extraordinarily unpleasant and painful. It is a close-up look at what happened on the first day of school in the Russian town of Beslan almost two years ago; the anniversary is fast approaching as America prepares to send its own children back to school. The article documents the three day siege from interviews of survivors, many of whom were horribly injured and traumatized by the events of those horrible days. What struck me reading it was the unnecessary inhumanity of the Islamic terrorists. I have written before about the particular brutality and sadism that is celebrated by so many in the Islamic world; in particular, I have written about Samir Kuntar, a monster who is held up as “a beacon of light” by the Palestinian Authority and whose release is one of the reasons Hassan Nasrulluh seized two Israeli students [sic-a Freudian slip perhpas?] last month.
The Islamists make much of their "love of death" while mocking our "love of life" yet there is a difference between Palestinians dancing in the streets to celebrate 9/11 and what transpired in Beslan.
The terrorists in Beslan were fully prepared to kill children, which is bad enough. Palestinian terrorists have targeted Israeli women and children for years; they count murdering children among their greatest victories, yet there was something worse in Beslan. They also deprived children, including infants and toddlers, from having water and food and they wouldn't allow their hostages to use the toilet facilities for long periods of time. What possible political purpose could such gratuitous and sadistic cruelty serve?
Charlie Ganske, at Russia Blog, posts on Beslan: Two Years Later and points out that there is a strain in the Russian body politic that is similar to the American; he also links to the Esquire article I linked to above:
For anyone still wondering how the terrorists carried out this atrocity or why the response from Russian security forces was agonizingly slow for the hostages held captive for over 48 hours, it is useful reading. I got the same sickening feeling in my stomach when I started to read this piece as I did watching United 93's depiction of the beautiful, uneventful dawn of September 11, 2001.
Russia's war of necessity against jihad terrorism is not over by a long shot, but many Russians would prefer to forget the events of Beslan just as so many Americans have forgotten 9/11 and say that the threat from Islamic fascism is just a myth created by people in power to control oil and oppress the Muslim world.
Gerard finished his post by writing about his stepson and asked a question of us concerning Beslan:
Next week my stepson will walk up the hill and take the bus to his first day of school. Seats will be assigned. He'll be given books and lists of supplies he must have. Nothing unusual will happen. In the afternoon, he will come home. My wife and I will have dinner with him, he'll do his homework and go to bed. It will be like that day after day. An ordinary life in an ordinary town in an ordinary time.
And the years will flow by and he'll go from strength to strength, from one bright moment to the next. His mother and I will watch him move ever upward into life as he gradually grows away from us and into his own life. This is how it was meant to be and how it will be. He will never be found in a photograph like the one I saw today. There's no place for him in the 41st photograph, the one I couldn't look at but saw just the same.
I am willing to do anything, anything at all, no matter what it may be, to keep him out of that photograph. That's my answer to what I saw. My question is, "Are you?"
I asked a question of the Muslim world in my post:
Many individual Muslims, I am certain, were horrified by Beslan and are horrified by terrorism, especially terror directed at other children and using Muslim children. Yet, if "my tribe right or wrong" precludes criticism of those acting in the name of Islam, that determines the default position of the Muslim World to be support of the worst excesses of Islamic terrorists. This sets them against everything that civilization stands for.
If Beslan did not snap Islam out of its fantasy based ecstatic terror, what will?
All that lies between us and the abyss is our common humanity and it is unclear whether there is enough there to prevent the worst.
Much more about Beslan can be found at Beslan School Attack.
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