There is a difference.
I'm sure there is no chance of linking to any of these....\
:-(
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,10677436%5E7583,00.html
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opinions/story/228942p-196622c.html
http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2004/09/crossroads-little-public-analysis-has.html
http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2004/09/ilushas-stone-this-is-holy-memory-from.html
When your asymmetrical warfare strategy depends on gunning down schoolchildren, you're getting way more asymmetrical than you need to be. The reality is that the IRA and ETA and the ANC and any number of secessionist and nationalist movements all the way back to the American revolutionaries could have seized schoolhouses and shot all the children.
But they didn't. Because, if they had, there would have been widespread revulsion within the perpetrators' own communities. To put it at its most tactful, that doesn't seem to be an issue here.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,10677436%5E7583,00.html
The problem is Islam. Moderate, radical , fuzzy happy makes no difference when the majority bends over for Allah and remains muted.
For someone as careful with his words as Mark Steyn (writing in the Australian, link in previous comments), the semantic vacuity of this sentence is revealing:
"What happened in one Russian schoolhouse is an abomination that has to be defeated, not merely regretted."
One would have expected Steyn to wonder what "defeating an abomination" could possibly be. Not: defeating the terrorists, who are abominations. But: defeating what happened in one Russian schoolhouse, which is an abomination. I can attach neither sense nor reference to the phrase.
It's revealing because this is the nexus -- grammatical and otherwise -- where all these commentators are trying to stake a position. "It's an abomination" (and it is), therefore "Bush and Putin must not give an inch." But what is the connection between inch-retention and this wholly appropriate outrage?
There's a good argument that acceding to terrorist demands only encourages more terrorism (a lesson that the Russians have presumably already learned). Fine, an important point. But it's a point that addresses the need for a political settlement to be perceived in a certain way, not the wisdom of seeking a political settlement.
Now Steyn doesn't quite ignore the need for politics: "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'." (Is that first "them" a typo, or are we supposed to hear it as hick Russian?) But he seems to assume that any politics that is not part and parcel of a Global War on Terror can only be capitulation to terror. Surely there's lots that Putin could begin doing to make Chechnya seem less impossible to its inhabitants -- I mean that literally -- that would amount neither to "teaching them a lesson" nor to "capitulating."
The word for threading that needle is politics.
Ted H,
I agree that the choices do not boil down to capitualtion or Bush administration policy. You're right to call Steyn on this: its' a cheap shot.
But I don't view that as the core point Steyn is making. Rather, he suggests that monstrosity in Beslan is way, way beneath the already low standard established by civilian-murdering terror groups. And I think he'd say also: when was the last time a non-Islamic terror group released a snuff film? That's the fact to be explained here -- that something is *way more* screwed up at the extremes of Islam than is characteristic of most under-gunned groups with a political grievance. Asymmetric warfare has not taken this form before.
Thus, Steyn argues that anyone who slots Islamism into the "political insurgency" box of the polysci textbook makes a terrible error. That seems to me the interesting question. Do you agree with Steyn on this?
It's a funny n notion, this idea of rude violence. That's part of what Styen's talking about, isn't it? One of the problems is that Islamicists seem to not be using the standard methods of killing. How annoying.
He even admits the Chechnyans have a great case. But does he bother to get pissed about that? Doesn't seem like it. I suppose because the Russians kill in ways that are culturally acceptable. In the article Ogged linked to, we learn that more than 80,000 Chechnyans have died...I wonder if in that big number, there might have been 150 children? Hell, I'm sure we've even killed 150 children in Iraq.
But those deaths are more acceptable because they were more "accidental" in nature.
Nick Berg? Beheading is so gross, and so out of fashion. Pummeling a guy to death in a dingy room and taking the dead body away in an ambulance is wrong too, but, well, it's not so psychotic. Not to us.
Fly some airplanes into skyskrapers to kill innocent civilians? That is so not how you kill innocent civilians. Please proceed along the approved paths. Maybe a nuclear device?
I find plenty wrong with Islam. Mostly I deplore any culture that prides itself on rigidity and refuses to philosophize about itself. There's certainly evidence that Islamic extremists have a less refined approach to killing than we do. But I don't buy for a minute that they are more eager to kill than anyone else.
If there are a lot of Islamic terrorists in the world....well, for one thing, it's not exactly a rare religion, is it? And it's not as if we can't find other common unifiers among the terrorists, such as a view of being oppressed, that offer a much better and more sensible way of understanding what drives a person to terrorism.
Anyone who slots Islamism into the "political insurgency" box of the polysci textbook makes a terrible error.
Ben, I do take this point. But the error in question is a moral error -- the sort of moral error involved in Michael's request that we understand why people are "driven" to mass tortrue and murder, by the way. (I guess Michael is being sarcastic, but his "rude" doesn't quite capture what's wrong with this conduct.) Steyn and the many others (e.g. Aaronovitch in the Guardian) are right to both to note the error and to criticize the actions that follow from it.
Yet not everyone who takes the view that there needs to be a political settlement in Chechnya, or who criticizes the Bush approach to Islamist terrorism, makes this error. And it's equally erroneous to give in to the tempation that seems to be gripping Steyn-- and if not him, then the hundreds of sub-Steyns in the right blogosphere. Call it the sub-Steyn temptation. It's an inference felt deep in the gut: because the terrorists have behaved so outrageously, a correct response must in every respect express this outrage.
But sorry, that's a moral error too. It's moral narcissism. And while moral narcissism isn't such a terrible error in its own right, it usually leads to worse errors.
Can we fight a war on terrorism while resisting the sub-Steyn temptation? In theory, yes; but I doubt we can in practice. And that strikes me as a serious objection to the whole idea of a war on terrorism. It tends to make for a narcissist's war, and narcissists do not make good warriors.
Mark Steyn is a columnist for Britain's Telegraph Group and the Chicago Sun-Times. Incidentally, Chicago Sun-Times is owned by the same conglamarate that owns Jerusalem Post and many other pro-Israeli and anti muslim newspapers. I guess for the sake of their own religious agendas, if Styn writes about muslims being cruel and violent, it somewhat helps soften the cruelty of the genocide currently underway in Palestine. May be he wants the readers to focus elswhere, for it is a shameful and ugly site in Palestine. May be he wants the world to sympathize with the Israeli soldiers who bulldoz old women and children out of their homes, and assasinate them randomly and indiscriminately. I do not condone the killing of innocent children; however, I do question the motives behind publicity that the sad story of non-muslim child gets compared to the story of a muslim child. Aren't all children the same? Is there a difference between the little feet and small hands of a non-muslim and a muslim child? Don't they all get excited about toys, and have a favorite candies? Isn't the mother of a muslim child whose guts and intestine have been ripped open in front of her eyes by conventional bombs entitled to a respect for her rights as a mother? Shouldn't she be allowed to properly griev without being called a terrorist, and without bombs falling on her while grieving the loss of her child, like the mother of a non-muslim child who lost her child to violence? Shouldn't she be able to have a proper funeral for her child? May be a grave so that she can visit once of twice for solace and therapy? So that you know, many muslim mothers have been deprived of even the least basics of human rights, even in their own countries, by their own regiemes. What is even more despicable is that historically the West has supported the cruelest and most dictatorial forms of the Middle East governments, and has assassinated and helped the overthrow of the leaders who have vowed and vouched for democracy. The formula is simple: To annihilate a culture and to steal its resources, you must keep the masses asleep, and to do that, you have to prevent any form of democracy. The end product: the muslim citizens pay for all this as collateral damage. It is not the muslim religion that perpetuates violence, it the capitalistic zeal that promotes the fanatic form of the Islam, so that it could control them easier. How easy would it have been for the U.S. and its Western allies to have sanctioned Islamic countries who mistreated women? Very easy. How easy would it have been to promote democracy, say in Saudi Arabia? Very easy. But why would you want to if you are the U.S.? Why do you care? Promote democracy for what? To do what? To have people decide their fate? But, wouldn't that be mutually exclusive with the idea of imperialism? So my friends, whenever you read an article such as Styn's, geared towards instigating violence and hatred for muslims, please ask yourselves a few questions before jumping to conclusions. Read about the horrible, inhumane and disgusting legacy that the West has left behind in Middle East. Ask yourselves whether muslims have any rights to fight back. I do not know of a single muslim who would be happy about the death of an innocent children. I don't know how to avoid future death to children. But one thing I do know: The West has a lot to do with promoting the fanatic form of Islam and because of the collateral casualty arising from the actions of the West and Israel, there are many more angry muslims in the world. If you corner a dog, and keep on beating it, it will attack back at some point. Even if you consider muslims as noting more than animals, the natural reaction to being beaten repeatedly is to attack back.
Ted H,
You say "not everyone who takes the view that there needs to be a political settlement in Chechnya, or who criticizes the Bush approach to Islamist terrorism, makes this error."
This is obviously correct, and I hope I did not give the impression of disputing the point. I regard the contrary view as Steyn's "cheap shot." But if you concede it's a insufficient to view Islamism through the lens of "asymmetrical political insurgency," you should also concede that rejecting this view has important political consequences. People -- and as Steyn shows, there are a lot of them -- who do view Islamism as a standard political insurgency are likely to get the political answers wrong.
Michael,
There's a crude consequentialism at work in your response. Maybe that's a moral error, as Ted H thinks. But let me focus on what I think is a political error. Let's just grant, for the sake of argument that a bombardment directed at insurgents that kills 150 civilians is the moral equivalent of an insurgency that directly targets 150 civilians and kills them by bayonet. (I don't believe this, and do regard it as a moral error. But ignore that for now). Here's a question. Do these different modes of warfare tell us anything about what kind of political actors the perpetrators are likely to be? I think one could draw conclusions like this. And I think one could draw further, important, political conclusions from how the act was received in the commuities of the perpetrators. I see you as denying this: no, we can't tell anything politically about radical, militant Islam from the unprecedented conduct of the terror campaign, and from the hold terror appears to have on certain segments of Muslim culture. I believe, to the contrary, that these aspects of Islamic terror are immensely consequential, and that all debate about policy alternatives (of which there are many, and on which people of good faith disagree) must start from these facts.
Veiler,
I certainly did not intend to minimize the suffering inflicted on the Palestinians, or to deny the common humanity that links all victims of violence. A child is a child everywhere, just as you say. The man who denies this is more than wrong, he's evil.
This still leaves open the question of what the West should do. I am not convinced that it would have been easy for the West to spread democracy and women's rights in the Middle East. Rather, this strikes me as a very difficult accomplishment. Today, there is an immense debate (on both left and right) about how aggressively the West should seek reforms of these kinsd. Do you think the West can helpfully pursue women's rights in Saudi Arabia (for example)?
I was having a rather cynical day when I wrote that post.
Nevertheless, the issue as I see it is that there is a problem with the directness of the approach to killing by Islamic terrorists. If the government (doesn't really matter which one) lobs some bombs and missiles, and ends up blasting a school, well, sorry, they didn't mean to.
Now, there's always the very real concern that maybe they did mean to. But even if we suspect that they did, it's still slightly comforting that they at least care enough to try to cover it up. At least they're aware that what they're doing is wrong.
On the other hand, there does seem to be a pattern showing that Islamic terrorists have really grabbed onto that "terror" part. Does this convey some political information? Sure. Have they done this because of a different cultural approach to killing, or are they just more desperate? Could be both.
But as to the moral argument, is there a different between shooting a kid in the back and dropping a bomb on him? The former is obviously more savage. And it takes more hatred or whatnot to lower the threshold of killing for shooting someone as opposed to bombing them. (I've been reading Grossman) But I don't think it makes much difference to that kid's parents. So I'm leaning heavily in favor of crude consequetialism, although I suspect I'd be willing to make some exceptions for some cases.
Hi Ogged,
One important fact that the otherwise very good Slate backgrounder omits is that the principal Russian negotiator of the mid-90s peace was Alexander Lebed, a genuine war hero to the Russians, someone who had earned the right to say that Chechnya was turning into another Afghanistan. That helped sell the Russian public and leadership on trying something other than leveling Grozny.
Lebed went on to become governor of one of the more eastern regions of the country, and died in a helicopter crash. Interestingly, he is buried almost right next to Raisa Gorbachev.