After Beslan

I haven't written about the atrocity in Beslan, partly because I didn't have anything to say that hadn't already been said by better writers and clearer thinkers. I wasn't avoiding the task, so much as realizing just how much needed to be said.

I am a parent. My son is 13 now, and I worry about him whenever he's away from home. Until recently, knowing he was in school was a time of reduced concern . . . because schools generally are safe places. This is probably more perception than reality, but the terrorists who attacked the school in Beslan have forced me to come to terms with my rationalization. School is no longer the safe haven I comfortably imagined, for my son or for anyone else's children.

That being said, however, the answer is not to roll over and give in to terrorist demands. This is nothing new. Back in the dark ages, the petty kingdoms in what is now England paid tribute (the "Danegeld") to Viking raiders to persuade them not to pillage the English coast. The tribute only encouraged the Vikings to come back again and again, until they decided to cut out the middleman and collect the tribute themselves, claiming large areas of the country for themselves. Paying the Dane only works as a temporary expedient: you weaken yourself and strengthen the Dane. Modern day terrorists will happily accept any concessions from the "decadent west", but it won't satisfy them or deter them in any way from their long-term goals.

Cathy Young writes:

One thing should be made clear. Nothing that the Russian military has done in Chechnya excuses or even mitigates the horror inflicted by the terrorists (terrorists, not "rebels" or "insurgents") on their victims in Beslan. Indeed, under the circumstances, calls for Russia to change its policy in Chechnya are ill-advised and ill-timed.

If a policy change comes about as a response to the terrorist attacks, the rest of the world will have learned precisely the wrong lesson: terror works. The right lesson is this: Even if you have valid grievances, you will squander whatever sympathy you are due by resorting to the murder of innocents to further your cause.

But we should also be wary of Russia's attempt to use this crisis to hitch its wagon to the war against international terror. No, Russian atrocities in Chechnya do not justify terrorism. But right now, it seems likely that the Putin regime in Russia will use terrorism to justify a new wave of repression, both against Chechens and against the government's critics in the press. And that is something the West should not condone.

And in today's Telegraph, the news is that Putin is using the threat of terrorism to actually do what Ashcroft and Bush have been accused of doing: limiting democracy and crushing dissent:

In what critics say amounts to a serious setback for Russian democracy, Mr Putin effectively negated the right of citizens to elect a regional representative. Instead, the country's 89 regional governors will be proposed by the president.

The former KGB spy also announced that seats in the Duma allocated to single-member constituencies will be scrapped in favour of a fully proportional system.

The move will accord his United Russia party, which can already count on the backing of about two thirds of the deputies in the Duma, even greater control.

Putin is becoming what Bush is accused of being. But that won't change the rhetoric in the American election campaign, because the Russians are potentially valuable allies in the fight against al Qaeda, regardless of who wins in November.