Obviously, the massacre in North Ossetia was horrible and evil and sick and wrong. It isn’t, however, in any way unique. Nor does it even approach the levels of evilness of the Holocaust, as some (genuinely) respectable commentators seem to be claiming. Update: see end of piece.
Closer parallels to what happened in Beslan last week can be found in El Salvador in 1981, as Nick Barlow points out. Not to mention militias herding 100 children into a building and burning it down, as happened in Honduras in May this year. Come to that, how many children did the Red Army kill in Chechnya again? The US Army in Vietnam and Cambodia?
I’m not sure why all these incidents count as less bad. Is it because the people doing them are our allies, and therefore are less likely to do it to us? Is it because the victims are poor and brown or black, and therefore aren’t quite so easy for white rich Westerners to emphathise with? Yes to both, I suspect.
There are sensible security reasons why people in the West should fear Islamic terrorism more than most of the horrible pieces of barbarism that go on in the world (with or without our backing). But to pretend that this makes the Muslim fanatics morally worse than all the other assorted evil child-slaughtering bastards in the world is, at best, not obviously morally correct.
Update 7/11/04: Norman Geras would like to point out that he definitely, certainly, ISN’T comparing this to the Holocaust in levels of evilness – which is reassuring (I was very surprised by the original Norm post as I interpreted it, given that he’s normally at the vanguard of the anti-Holocaust-trivialisers, which should probably have given me pause for thought). This is good, and I apologise profusely for saying otherwise.
I probably ought, in turn, to add that I didn’t intend to claim Norm considered the murder of 300 innocents equal to the murder of five million; my claim was more about the rarity or otherwise of the kind of evil that took place. I don’t belive the gunmen at Beslan are any more or less the Nazis’ spiritual heirs than the other groups listed above. I got the impression Norm belived they were somewhat closer. Still, poor show by me.
"There are sensible security reasons why people in the West should fear Islamic terrorism more than most of the horrible pieces of barbarism that go on in the world."
As concessions go, I guess that’s a start.
Not a concession. I’ve never denied the existence of Islamic terrorism; my claim is that our leaders have exaggerated its extent and potential impact.
Obviously it’s more likely that Muslim terrorists will blow up London than Honduran death squads or Assamese seperatists – but that doesn’t in itself mean that the only, or even the key, focus of our foreign and military policy should be to smite Islamist terrorists.
Why not?
What should be the key focus of our military policy?
Maybe cutting down on poverty, starvation, undereducation and tyranny? Maybe opposing the political murder of children in Africa and South America, as well as Europe and the US? Maybe focusing foreign policy towards environmental goals?
Or maybe not. But the threat analysis required is more complicated than saying ‘Islamist terrorists are child-killing bastards, let’s focus on wiping them out and ignore everything else that might also become a problem’.
I think one reason why this massacre hit home to us harder than others (no doubt just as horrible) is because we felt we lived through it in real time – we suffered with the relatives waiting for news, we saw the bodies being brought out, and we still didn’t know what was happening to the others. Any parent could empathize with the awful uncertainty.
Hearing about something afterwards (without pictures) is unfortunately just not as horrifying.
With regard to john b’s comments above, these are Norman Geras’ exact words as they appear on his blog:
Beslan and the Holocaust
If you were to take the time necessary to correct all the misconstruals encountered in the blogosphere, you’d never be able to do anything useful. So you let a lot or even most of them go. By ‘you’ here so far, I’m referring – as you may have guessed – to me. And seeing as it is me, and that this pertains to a topic which I care much about, and so take care about, I do intend to correct the misconstrual lately visited on me by John B at Shot By Both Sides. John writes:
‘Nor does it [the massacre at Beslan] even approach the levels of evilness of the Holocaust, as some (genuinely) respectable commentators seem to be claiming.’
I thank him for the ‘genuinely’, but under the word ‘respectable’ John has a link to this post of mine. Readers may satisfy themselves that I say nothing whatsoever there about Beslan approaching the scale of evil embodied in the destruction of European Jewry. On the basis of the material I quote, I point to a particular kind of continuity between the attitudes of the killers of the Nazi period and the attitudes of the killers of Beslan and call the latter – in this respect – ‘true and authentic heirs’ of Nazi barbarism. The claim John imputes to me is not only offensive; it’s ridiculous. It shouldn’t be imputed to anyone without something rather solid to support it.
http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2004/09/beslan_and_the_.html
Cheers Sean. Meant to link to the Normblog post in my correction, but forgot.
Norm Geras recalls that in the Israeli town of Ma’a lot, in May 1974, 21 Israeli children were killed by terrorists of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Norm also points “to a particular kind of continuity between the attitudes of the killers of the Nazi period and the attitudes of the killers of Beslan and call the latter – in this respect – ‘true and authentic heirs’ of Nazi barbarism.”
Norm was replying to John Band, who rightly is against trivializing the Shoah, yet repeats Kerry’s Big Lie, showing its continuing power:
“Closer parallels to what happened in Beslan last week can be found in El Salvador in 1981, as Nick Barlow points out. Not to mention militias herding 100 children into a building and burning it down, as happened in Honduras in May this year. Come to that, how many children did the Red Army kill in Chechnya again? The US Army in Vietnam and Cambodia?”
and Band’s post is strongly against the idea that
“the murder of 300 innocents equal to the murder of five million”
After the Shoah, the Holocaust, there was a new idea: Never Again. Unfortunately, Band’s citing of the US Army in Vietnam means he’s way, way, way off, John Band seems to actively support the genocide choice.
Band says 5 million; I usually hear these two numbers: 6 million Jews; 10 million murders by Nazis in death camps and massacres. Of the 10 million, some 3 million were Gypsies (really almost nobody cares them ), and another million included thousands of priests and others who objected to Hitler or any Nazi policy. (Jew-haters occasionally note that the 6 million number ignores the other 4 million; I think they have a good point.)
But Band totally confuses morals of intent, and result. The US Army had no policy of killing children, and Lt. Calley of My Lai notoriety was punished for his murders. He doesn’t mention Dresden, where FDR’s allied bombing killed some 100 000, mostly women and children. So yes, total war is totally terrible, with only surrender to evil being worse.
And Kerry’s Lie, that US soldiers were baby killers, as policy, is why he’s unfit. It’s also one of pillars of political correct junk, and the PC Vietnam lie – that peace (and genocide) is better than fighting evil.
In case John Band needs more clarity, here it is. The 1971 choice facing America was this.
a) stay in Vietnam, fight, die, kill, and even kill some innocents.
b) leave SE, let the commies win – and accept Killing Field genocide.
John Band thinks Kerry was right, he thinks Peace AND the murder of some 3 million Asians is morally superior to the USA continuing to fight evil, which includes killing. There’s more about the Moral Superiority War http://tomgrey.motime.com/1093629194#330293
It is THIS weakness of the West, this terrible pro-genocide moral emptiness, which has made the UN impotent and the Human Rights a joke.
Norm doesn’t mention that one of the leaders of Pali terrorism, Arafat, was awarded a Nobel peace prize. I think he should.
http://tomgrey.motime.com/1094591226#335812
I’d like to state for the record that I’m not claiming the US Government had a policy of killing children in Vietnam. However, the evidence is overwhelming that several American soldiers did – which sounds like similar behaviour to that shown by the Beslan gunmen.
You know Tom, a link generally suffices. And it’s rather odd to write about someone in the third person on their own blog.
Oh bummer.
Right, I’m adding proper HTML support when I get home (at the moment it only allows the deprecated b and i tags, not strong and em).
Tom’s post is cut-and-pasted from his own blog, which I assume explains the weirdness.
Thanks John; I’m sorry to be so odd/ weird.
But one significant point is that the US policy was to prosecute soldiers that deliberately killed children, nor is there any acceptance of it as a policy by leaders.
There is no Muslim policy to prosecute terrorists; and quite a few Muslim clerics support terrorism.
John, here’s my comment in response to yours (on my blog)
The murder of thousands follows because communism is, and was, evil — where commies take over, they murder people. By the thousands.
And yes, the evil commie KR had a different dictator than the evil commie NV. Communism, in practice, goes along with strong nationalist leader; such leaders don’t always get along.
How would YOU formulate the 1971 choice facing America about Vietnam? And what do YOU think the more moral choice was?
There is no Muslim policy to prosecute terrorists; and quite a few Muslim clerics support terrorism.
No, those Muslims never punish terrorists. And nobody in the USA ever supported soldiers who massacred children. Well, certainly not members of Congress.
where commies take over, they murder people. By the thousands.
I must’ve missed the mass graves in West Bengal.
How would YOU formulate the 1971 choice facing America about Vietnam? And what do YOU think the more moral choice was?
Three options:
1) Kill Vietnamese and send Americans to die until Vietnam is reunited as an American colony, with half its inhabitants dead
2) Agree a gradual withdrawal (allowing American collaborators who’ll be singled out by a communist regime to flee to the US, etc)
3) Prevaricate between the two options, because you’re aware that 1 would be insane but are worried you’ll look like a pansy if you do 2.
Option 2 is the most moral choice by an enormous margin.