Welcome to DouglasDeBono.Com, the Cyberspace Home of author Douglas De Bono

Welcome to DouglasDeBono.Com, the Cyberspace Home of
author Douglas De Bono.

The Butchers of Beslan

Unfortunately, the Beslan massacre is nothing new. Press accounts place the death toll at between 300 and 400 people, mostly children. In the weeks that followed the September 6th outrage, Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev claimed responsibility for the slaughter.

Killing children is nothing new for Islamic Fascists. On May 15, 1974, members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine murdered 21 students at a school in Maalot, Israel.

There are the homicide bombers—children themselves who are willing to strap explosive vests to their bodies and seek out Jewish children along the West Bank and Gaza. They target grocery stores, restaurants and rush hour buses. They make a statement that pyric death is better than life.

Chechnya is a terrible mess. They have been fighting Moscow off and on since shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It would be convenient to say that Russia’s hands are clean and that the outrage in Beslan happened without provocation. (Now don’t get me wrong, Beslan was an atrocity just as horrendous as what happened at Babi Yar—nothing can paper over mass murder.)

However, I must point out that since 1999 Russia has conducted a bitter war in Chechnya. Russian military doctrine based on the evidence of Afghanistan in the 1980s and more recently Chechnya, appears unchanged from the tactics used on the Eastern Front during World War II—that is to destroy everything without regard to civilian and non-civilian targets. Under Putin’s regime, Russia has conducted a brutal war against Chechnya. They have reduced Grozny to a shelled-out husk; introduced over 150,000 troops; bombed, strafed and shot just about everyone they could find.

Does that justify the actions committed in Basayev’s name?

No.

I happen to know a bit about the Chechen situation. Elements of my novel Rogue State (Metropolis Ink 2000) are based on the conflict. If anything, the situation has deteriorated since writing the novel.

So why choose Beslan?

1.It is convenient. Beslan resides in the neighboring Republic of North Ossetia just north of the Caucasus Mountains.
2.It is a soft target. Little kids do not have the wherewithal to fight back or defend themselves.
3.It is Christian. Regardless of Russia’s dalliance with Godless communism, it remains a Christian country (at least in the historic sense).

The Islamic Fascists have made a grave miscalculation. They struck a chord deep in the Russian psyche when it comes to the reverence of children in Russian culture. Striking at Beslan’s children is akin to Japan’s attack at Pearl Harbor and Osama’s September 11th success. Just as Hitler managed to force an alliance between Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin in World War II, the same nations find themselves the target of the 21st century’s scourge.

There are questions that remain:

1.Do Russia’s armed forces have the assets to project force in a meaningful way against the Islamic Fascists?
2.Will Russia cease providing materiel and technical support for Iran’s nuclear weapons program?
3.Will Russia’s security agencies open their archives and reveal to the west which weapons and technologies were delivered to Saddam and his surrogates?
4.Will the American electorate recognize that we must win this war and ensure that no Beslan or Maalot massacres occur on American soil?

In the 1940s, Moscow, Washington and London faced a common enemy. They closed ranks to protect the world from Hitler’s Germany. Likewise, today they need to band together again and do what the rest of the world needs to be done. They need to put down the scourge of Islamic Fascism.