Russian Responses

This fascinating piece from Belmont Club explains much about hamfistedness of the Russian response to the Beslan massacre - and offers some clues as to why Kerry's promises of internationalization of the war on terror are hollow.

Here's the best section of this excellent piece:

When President Bush stopped to consider his response to September 11, he had a range of options available only to a nation as unimaginably powerful as the United States of America. Japanese newspapers reported that President Bush was offered the nuclear option immediately after the attack, probably as an extreme in a range that included filing a diplomatic protest on the opposite end of the spectrum, which he rejected, choosing instead to do what no other country could do: take down the state sponsors of terrorism and pursue the terrorists to the four corners of the earth. America's unmatched power allowed President Bush to select the most humane course of war available. No European power, nor all of them put together, could have embarked on such a precise campaign for lack of means. It was a rich man's strategy, a guerre de luxe.

But no one who has seen the rags and hodgepodge of equipment issued to the Russian Special Forces can entertain any illusion that Vladimir Putin can go around launching raids with hi-tech helicopters, or follow around perps with robotic drones before firing, or use satellite-guided bombs to wipe out enemy safe houses that have been seeded with RFID chips. Nor will those detained by Russia gain weight the way detainees have done at the "inhuman" Gitmo prison. That's an American way of war which even Europeans can only regard with envy. The poor must respond with less. When the Nepalese saw the video of their 12 compatriots executed by terrorists in Iraq, they did what you could do with a box of matches: they burned the mosque in Kathmandu. To paraphrase Crosby, Stills and Nash, 'if you can't hit the one you should then hit the one you're with'.

When the ignorant likes of Kerry and Dean play to the ignorant (about defense) likes of their supporters, talking about "internationalizing" the conflict, it's stories like this that show how very, very wrong they are.

Because Europe's militaries aren't a whole lot better-trained and better-equipped than the Russians' (and the Russian special forces have always had a fairly decent reputation). Outside the British - who've managed to maintain the excellence of their military despite draconian budget cuts since the end of the Cold War - most European militaries are shells of their former selves. The once-superb German military is basically a peace corps with guns.

To the Kerry mindset, it'd seem that anyone with a gun is equal. It's just not so.

Posted by Mitch at September 8, 2004 05:35 AM | TrackBack