I’m really sad that apparently all the hostage-takers in Beslan have been killed. They couldn’t wait for me to get there with my arsenal of dull spoons and Spanish Collars? Goddamit. I’m kidding of course. I’ve got only a capacity for dark humour today, though.
This latest incident proves to me (beside the fact that the human race isn’t worth much, if we are capable of doing these things to each other) that a) The Russian Federation either has no intelligence or b) The Russian Federation can’t be bothered to use its intelligence to protect its own children.
These are, honestly, the questions that my friends have been asking today: “WHERE ARE THE BASTARDS’ FAMILIES? WHERE ARE THEY? Why wasn’t at least ONE of their little sons brought to the walls of that school within 24 hours with a gun to his head? Oh, we can’t do that, we don’t know enough about them, oh it’s so inhumane, blah blah blah, BULLSHIT. You’ve got your hostages, and we’ve got ours.” These are scary words.
You know what’s also inhumane? Keeping your people like a bunch of blind cows in a burning barn. For a country being literally raped by terrorists, the Russian Federation seem to be awfully relaxed in terms of modern espionage. And yes, the government can afford it, if it can afford hundred-pound crystal chandeliers in the Kremlin. Is it that the terrorism inspires exactly the sort of fear needed to further curtail basic human rights in this great country, this rich country, this largest-in-the-world-and-yet-perhaps-not-large-enough-for-some country?
It is times like these (September 11th, 2001, brought on similar feelings) that I am reminded of the fact that killing anyone out of spite or revenge is wrong… Right? Even as I stare at the pictures pulled off the exceedingly “honest” Russian servers, pictures of bloodied little bodies with wax-like limbs, pictures of those who had no part in this ridiculous conflict and died brutally for it, died calling for their parents who will later mop up their blood, died stripped to their little underpants, died because their government is useless against enemies to whom the “infidel” isn’t human, died because their government made mistakes, because their army made mistakes, because there is no justice in this world, seek and you will not find it, knock and the door won’t open. Not here, not now.
How I would feel if my little brother had been at that school? What kind of monster would that turn me into? A monster with teeth? A monster with claws? A monster with a grenade-launcher? I think about the parents of the children at Beslan, and I wonder if they’re monsters now. Or maybe they know something I don’t, something bigger and warmer than all dreams of sawing the terrorists’ heads off with dull chainsaws, an understanding that will save them from being buried forever under this blood and guts and grief. Or so I like to think, that there is at least one person out there who can make sense of this. I’m sad that this person isn’t me.
The most important question remains: How do you bring yourself to shoot a running first-grader in the back? God, don’t let me find out. I have seen enough. How any good for Chechnya will come out of this bloody mess is a mystery. If we continue to build nations on the crushed bodies of little children, how can those nations be worth living in?
