A schoolgirl who survived the Chechen terrorist massacre. The school was chosen because of the large number of Orthodox Christians who attended it.
Scene from the Chechen terror.
28 thoughts on “Scene from the Chechen terror.”
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A schoolgirl who survived the Chechen terrorist massacre. The school was chosen because of the large number of Orthodox Christians who attended it.
Comments are closed.
How do you know the school was chosen because it was largely Orthododx? Thats quite a statement… any supporting references? Forgive me if I seem confrontational, its not my intention. But again, thats quite a statement to make on a widely read forum such as this.
Fr. Jacobse,
First let me say that I did not realize ‘who’ is what that wrote this brief articel when I commented. Second, let me address you appropriately with ‘Father Bless’.
We may debate whether acts of terrorism are caused by preventable socio-economic and geopolitical forces, or pure evil. Normally I lean towards the former explanation, but in the case of the attack on the Belsan school I would say that pure evil was at work.
In a calculated, premeditated manner the Chechen terrorists decided to place the lives of hundreds of small children at grave risk. I understand that children were made to sit in the windows as human shields and that explosives were hung from the ceiling in the gymnasium over their heads. One report says that some of the members of the terrorist team were shot by their own leaders after asking for mercy for some of the children.
The terrorists who planned this shed their last vestige of humanity and surrendered themselves over to satan.
Jim, I got this reference: “North Ossetia is the only predominantly Orthodox province in the otherwise mostly Muslim North Caucasus” from this article: Hostage drama death toll rises from Canadian Broadcasting Company.
Dean, what terrorism is ever justified by “socio-economic and geopolitical forces?”
Thank you, Father.
I never used the word “justify”. I used the word “caused”, which is different. Medical researchers want to learn the “causes” of cancer, but that doesn’t mean they support cancer, or think cancer is justified. It means that they want to know what forces are responsible for cancer so they can eliminate and prevent that disease in the future.
Similarly as social scientists we want to know what socio-economic forces drive human beings to a point of hopelessness, humiliation and anger that they feel they have no other choice but to lash out with violence. If we examine at the poorer Catholic areas of Northern Ireland during the seventies, or the Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza today, for example, we can see the combination of geographic dispossession, second-class citizenship, and economic hopelessness that have combined to turn people into terrorists.
Socio-economic and geopolitical forces do not “justify” terrorism, which as Christians we believe is always evil and never justified, but they may explain why terrorism occurs.
The Belsan case is unique however because its difficult for me to imagine any grievance that could cause even a non-religious person to deliberately target small children.
Dean,
what socio-economic forces drive human beings to a point of hopelessness, humiliation and anger that they feel they have no other choice but to lash out with violence.
Have you considered the possibility that the motivations of these persons were from something other than hopelessness, humiliation and anger? From the plethora of reports I read, those people came there to die. They gloried in it. Regardless of how warped that may be, to them, it was neither hopeless, humiliating nor angry.
Dean, your use of the term “cause” however, still functions to justify the terrorist. In actual fact, poverty has little to do with terrorism. Most terrorists are not from the poorer classes. Read: The Myth That Poverty Breeds Terrorism.
Also, ask yourself why the Hamas leadership (you mentioned Palestinian terror) send their children to Europe for their education and never sacrifice them for terrorist attacks.
Terrorism is a tactic of war, pure and simple. The wanton violence of blowing up innocent people ought not to be justified by the moral lethargy that masquerades as a benign tolerance and dims the awareness of real evil.
Here is an editorial that lays out the facts clearly: They Shoot Children, Don’t They?
Fr. Jacobse is absolutely correct that terrorism is a tactic of war. And Islamofascist terrorism seems to regularly practice a form of terrorism that specifically targets women & children or uses women and children as shields.
Karl Zinsmeister describes the practice of Saddam’s fedayeen (sp?) grabbing women & children from the streets to shield themselves from coalition forces. Or they would force women & children to stand atop berms from behind which Iraqi Republican Guard or fedayeen irregular militia forces would fire at coalition forces.
Some choice quotes from the article linked above:
“Another group of Marines was forced to halt a firefight when the Special Republican Guard unit they were battling dragged a number of women and children into their front lines. The Americans pulled back…”
“… a building on the east side of Samawah … had been identified as a source of enemy fire, so one of the forward air controllers out with the troops called in an air strike. The bomber was actually overhead and about to let fly when the Iraqi fighters in the building literally ran into the street and grabbed a number of terrified women and children, dragging them into the building with them. The air drop was instantly called off, and a decision was made by U.S. commanders to leave the building alone … ”
That is what we are up against in this war against the Islamofascists. Chechnya is not an incident that one can think of in isolation. It is part and parcel of the Islamofascist modus operandi (sp?) to destroy the West.
The early 20th century American philosopher George Santayana wrote, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Similarly, those who fail to make a genuine effort to understand the causes of terrorism are doomed to be its victims.
The argument that terrorism is solely the result of the innate evil nature of individuals is as self-serving as it is self-defeating. If we deny that external factors play any role in causing terrorism then we can at the same time absolve ourselves of any responsibility for actions by our nation that may have driven people to terrorism. Russia need not be held accountable for the 100,000 Chechens killed during its war in Chenenya during the early nineties, or for reducing Grozny, the Chechen capital, to rubble and displacing a half a million people. Israel need not experience guilt for driving West Bank Palestinians off their land and into refugee camps, so they can build more settlements. America need not experience any guilt over the 11,000 Iraqi civilians that have been killed as result of our military operations. “It’s not our fault; they’re just bad.” How easy. How convenient
It was very entertaining to listen to Pat Buchanan on “Meet the Press” Sunday as he tore into Newt Gingrich and demolished the case for war in Iraq. Democratic politicians could use some of viciousness and meanness that seem to come so easily to Republicans like Buchanan. “Do we think Osama Bin Ladin, sitting in his cave, suddenly read the Bill of Rights one day and decided to attack America?” Buchanan asked sarcastically. “They hate us not for who we are, but for what we do.”
That doesn’t mean we give into terrorist demands only that we recognize cause and effect and strive without preconceptions to understand the nature of our enemy. The Byzantine Empire, After a period of initial losses to Islamic armies, adapted and held off the Arabs for nearly 300 years through the use of cunning and stealth. In the great opus on Byzantine military strategy, “The Strategikon of Maurice”, which has been compared to Sun Tzu’s “Art of War”, the author writes:
“Wild animals are taken by scouting, by nets, by lying in wait, by stalking, by circling around, and by other such stratagems rather than by sheer force.” In waging war, one should do likewise, “whether the enemy be many or few.” To try “simply to overpower the enemy in the open, hand to hand and face to face,” is a “very risky” enterprise that “can result in serious harm” even if the enemy is defeated. “It is ridiculous to try to gain a victory which is so costly and brings only empty glory.”(30) Thus, “a wise commander will not engage the enemy in a pitched battle unless a truly exceptional opportunity presents itself.”) He will avoid emulating those who “are admired for their brilliant success [but] carry out operations recklessly.”(32) He will “watch for the right opportunities and pretexts” and “strike at the enemy before they can get themselves ready.”(33) “To capture the enemy’s army …is better than to destroy it; to take intact a battalion, a company or a five-man squad is better than to destroy them. For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.”(34)… http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/strategikon/strategikon.htm
I also listened to General John Abizaid interviewed in Iraq yesterday. He expressed surprise at the deteriorating situation and increased casualties in Iraq despite American victories in every combat engagement. Because Americans have not taken the time to understand the nature of the insurgency in Iraq, but carelessly characterize all insurgents as “terrorists” we are doomed to win battles and lose the war, just as in Viet Nam.
Dean, calling terrorism (and terrorists) evil, doesn’t mean one is endorsing all policies of the government and people against whom the terrorists perpetrates their evil. This ought to be self-evident.
Your problem, as is the problem with so many on the left, is that terrorism functions as defacto proof that the terrorist’s victims are the real evil doers.
I live in the UK and was educated at a military school during the height of the IRA’s English bombing campaign. I can even remember hearing the detonation when the Royal Marines music school in Deal was bombed. We were constantly being drilled as to what to do in the event that they were to attack our school, and yet everyone knew that, however awful they were, the IRA would never deliberately target a school, not even one like ours full of the sons of soldiers. It seems that with this new breed of Islamic terrorist, all such bets are off.
I’ve been reading this site for a while, though I’ve never contributed before, but Dean your attitude to these murderers is way off, which is why I feel compelled to write now. These terrorists are purely evil. I have a small child and seeing what happened in Beslan left me praying and in tears for his future. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before these terrorists strike here too. Nothing can justify or explain what they do. The majority of poor Northern Irish Catholics did not join the IRA and the majority of poor Chechen Muslims don’t join terrorist groups either. The majority of terrorists appear to be well educated and at least moderately wealthy, so where are these ’causes’ we must try to understand? You could say that they feel compelled to ‘aid’ their fellow people to escape their suffering, but that still means that they must be either mad or bad.
You see, I fit into their demographic. I’m university educated, from a lower middle-class background and I’m observantly religious. I can see my co-religionists, the Orthodox Serbs, suffering in Kosovo, but do I think it’s right to murder and terrorise Kosovar Albanians? No. Will I ever kill Albanian children to make a ‘political statement’? Certainly not. I have not (and, God willing, never will) forsaken my humanity and embraced evil.
I might not support some of the past Russian policies, and certainly not their heavy-handedness, in Chechnya but it is a long stretch from that to my supposing that such barbarism as was shown in Beslan even has identifiable causes. Frankly, I don’t want to understand why these people do such things (and I don’t think it would help if we did). I just want them to stop.
I’m just glad that those who destroyed Nazism and Imperial Japan did not wring their hands and wonder what we did wrong to make the Germans & Japanese angry with us.
When the United States removed all military forces from Saudi deserts (troops were never, never, never station within the city limits of Mecca or Medina), did we see praising editorial comments in the Arab media? Was the anti-American preaching from the mosques moderated in the least? No. The Islamofascists simply moved the goal posts, because they say it is about what we do, but the reality is it is about WHO WE ARE. It has never, never, never had anything to do what what we do.
Fr Jacobse et al,
So trying to find the root causes of terrorism is a de fact justification for it? Are you guys even listening to yourselves? Asking why people would do such monstrous acts must necessarily include more than the conclusion that they are “pure evil.” No, terrorism is not caused solely by poverty, but it is certainly a factor in it. Political repression is now topping the list of potential incubators of terrorism. If political repression, poverty, religion and other factors all influence terrorists, does it make sense to have our anti-terror strategy be the singular goal of hunting down and killing all terrorists? Might the lives of our troops, the lives of the victims of terrorist and the lives of the potential future terrorists themselves (for whom Christ also died), and the billions of dollars we have and will spend on the war on terror, be better spent on a comprehensive solution that seeks to address some of these causes along with appropriate miltary responses? This is not “hand-wringing” nor is it “justification.” Your problem, as is the problem with so many on the right, is that you are completely unwilling to consider that terrorists just might have legitimate political goals in spite of their horrific crimes.
Nathan, advocating that root causes exist for terror implies that some terror is justified. I argue that terror is evil. There are no morally acceptable root causes for the kind of monstrous evil was saw at Beslan (or Dachau, Lubyanka, or Cambodia).
Terror is, as I mentioned upstream, a tactic of war. The more relevant question is how the terrorists can harden their consciences to the point where raping thirteen year old girls, or stabbing an eighteen month old infant 48 times, or murdering 6 million Jews and 7 million others in concentration camps, or pounding nails in the knees of ten year old boys (as is done in Sudan), is considered an acceptable act. Look close and you find this common denominator: all this evil is in service to ideology, be it Nazism, Islamofacism, Marxism, and others.
What these ideologies enable is the rise of thugs to leadership. Often these thugs are well educated and affluent. Take the Beslan carnage for example (or September 11). These operations required a high degree of communication, planning, and funding. To think that the perpetrators were acting out of spontaneous rage is naive.
The political repression that breeds the frustration that becomes the soil for the recruitment of ideologically driven killers is not caused by the United States or other free nations. Rather, these conditions are created the leaders of the killers. Poll the people in Afghanistan today and ask them if they want to return to Taliban rule. Look at Syria’s subjugation of Lebanon. Take a hard look at the suffering Eritreans endured during their forced starvation by the Marxist north a decade ago. Look at the unsolvable corruption within the PLO.
I don’t want war. I detest war. My family has experience with war that many of the contributers here don’t share. But the great wars of the last century (hot and cold) were not caused by the United States. They were driven by those who sought to subjugate others through the brute force of a gun — through terror.
And yes, Christ did indeed die for the murderers of Beslan. But don’t forget there is a judgment.
Father Jacobse: Can I take a break from our debate to say that this a very important and complex issue and the fact that we are able to discuss and explore it here shows the great value of your web site and this Blog. Thank you once again for making this space available.
The issue is one that could be discussed in an ethics class and can be briefly re-stated as follows:
If we believe that acts of terrorism are evil (and as Christians we should believe that) does that make any discussion of external factors that may or may not have contributed to terrorism irrelavent?
PRO: Yes all acts of terrorism are beyond the pale of moral behavior. The people who commit them have made a willful decision to commit heinous deeds and must be punished. Any attempt to explain their actions only serves to rationalize evil.
CON: We may be able to prevent acts of terrorism by avoiding policy decisions that create conditions condusive to terrorism. Because we have a moral obligation to prevent terrorism, we should consider the impact of our policies and whether they may be driving people to commit terrorist acts.
Dean, I give it up to you. This is the most concise, cogent, relevant post you’ve made to this site. Well done.
My two cents: The discussion is not irrelevant. Nevertheless, it must be a responsible one. Terrorism is never acceptable and should, in fact, be addressed ruthlessly and aggressively. And the inquiry into policy decisions cannot be a cloak for the exaltation of terrorists as “freedom fighters,” and it must be undertaken in an atmosphere of political altruism. Even if terrorists begin with “legitimate political goals,” they themselves lose all legitimacy when they adopt terrorist methods.
“… terrorists just might have legitimate political goals in spite of their horrific crimes.” To speak of “legitimate political goals” in such a manner that the “horrific crimes” are dismissed is to justify these crimes with these “legitimate political goals”. So…
Name one “legitimate political goal” that justifies the stabbing to death of an 18 month old child, after shooting that child in the back.
Name one “legitimate political goal” that justifies the raping of children.
Name one “legitimage political goal” that justifies forcing children to drink their own urine.
Name just one “legitimate political goal” that justifies what happened in Beslan, Chechnya.
Our moral obligation extends to those who are, and might be, targets of the terrorist. How this obligation is expressed in concrete terms is difficult but necessary.
America, by and large, has a good record in avoiding the creation of social conditions that breed the rise of the thuggery that breeds terror. We rebuilt Germany after defeating Nazism in WWII (we learned from the European mistake with the Treaty of Versailles), and Japan too despite their brutality in East Asia (although requiring the stepping down of the Emperor and the disbanding of the pre-war government as a precondition). We are rebuilding Iraq, despite the goal of Islamic terrorists to plunge that nation into civil war. We would even help build up Palestine if the Palestinians could throw off the yoke of the PLO (which might happen).
But Dean still can’t shake the notion that America is to blame for the rise of the terrorist.
The cause of terrorism is not socio-political in nature. Society and politics only reflect the moral condition of the people involved. If one does not submit to the love of God in Christ, confess one’s sins, turn from wicked ways and receive the gift of grace and healing one becomes bestial or demonic or both. The course of the Muslim faith must either be vapid tradition or horror because they deny the Lord of all Creation at the very foundation of their belief. They are not alone. (See David Hart’s article).
We must embrace the reality of Jesus Christ or we embrace darkness, pain, and death.
In the West, our poison is rationalism, materialism, and naturalism. The Islamic poison is more honest, i.e., the naked embrace of death. Both pretend that the deadly poison being quaffed is really an elixir of life.
While the United States has certainly done many good deeds around the world throughout her history, we cannot look to such acts with any confidence. They are mere tepid offshoots of genuine faith.
I am concerned with the strain of evangelical manifest destiny heard in some circles and I am equally concerned with the moral equivalency prevalent in other similarly powerful elites. One side attempts to drown truth and virtue in dead moralism while the other seeks to kill truth and virtue with aggressive amoralism.
Jesus said it best, “Seek first the Kingdom of Heaven.” We Orthodox have the wondrous opportunity to submerge ourselves in the living waters on at least a weekly basis. Do we do so? I know, I don’t, I’m just too….(fill in the blank). Remember what happened to those invited to the feast who begged off for worldly reasons. Even when we go and partake of the heavenly feast, how much do we release the world and step into the Kingdom? The Orthodox Church does not have the antidote, she is the antidote to all the horror, pain, death, and tears that seem to be inundating us. How often do we sell our re-birth right for pottage.
The horror of terrorism is the reflection of the sin in my own heart, multiplied through ignorance, apathy, and conscious evil into a laser of darkness. If we look to any other source but Jesus Christ for sustenance, protection, and victory, we are deluded and will be consumed.
A live link to David Hart’s speech.
Fr Jacobse –
“Nathan, advocating that root causes exist for terror implies that some terror is justified. I argue that terror is evil. There are no morally acceptable root causes for the kind of monstrous evil was saw at Beslan”
I do not agree in the least that suggesting there are causes of terrorisms implies that some terror is justified. That is your blind spot, not mine. But fine, lets not talk about causes, but conditions that can create an environment where terrorism is likely. How about that? Covering your ears, closing your eyes and shouting “lalalalalala” at the top of your lungs will not change the fact that real people, in real governments do things to other real people that create the conditions that may cause people to consider terrorism as a viable response. I don’t think for one second such acts are justified, but its utter foolishness to pretend that there are not non-military ways of fighting this conflict. One of which involves figuring out how people can so deaden their moral sense that they would consider the deaths of children to be glorifying God, as you point out above, and then finding ways to counter it.
I feel like I must point that the military response is entirely reactive, even its pre-emptive iterations. A military strike can only kill terrorists that already exist – anyone else is an innocent, which is clearly not an option for Christians to undertake. Addressing the roots of terrorism will help to prevent the creation of future terrorists. At some point down the road, a young man or woman will consider taking up a rifle/belt of explosives, or peaceful political action. Finding the fulcrum that will sway that person, and others, to choose the peaceful political process is of utmost importance. Otherwise terrorism will never die.
I agree with Bill that discussion about potential “causes” must never be used to diminish the horrific crimes of terrorists or to recast them as rebels or freedom fighters. But as Dean said, if we have a moral obligation to eliminate, or at the very least reduce, terrorism, then we have to be able to go beyond a merely military response and look for comprehensive ways to address the issue.
And Daniel, I will not respond to your twisting of my words. I’m sorry that you are unwilling to consider that the Russian presence in Chechnya, and the deaths of thousands of Chechens at the hands of Russian troops, just might be a contributing, though not justifying factor, for the Chechens to undertake this horrible crime. That is exactly what it is – a horrible, brutal, utterly despicable and evil crime, and you will never hear me say one word to the contrary or in defense of the monsters that perpetrated it.
Nathan, step back a second. The context of this larger dicussion is whether or not terrorism is ever justified. The term “cause” in this context sometimes functioned as a weasel word, a way to imply a moral culbability that, in the end, redefines the inherent evil of terrorism into something else. Usually the redefinition functions in service to moral equivalency.
This discussion clarfied without a doubt that you see terrorism as evil, which is a good thing, ISTM. There really is no fundamental disagreement between us. Your argument then ISTM, is that some who call terrorism evil imply that no socio-political causes exist that shape the terror into the form it takes. You mentioned that in my case it was a “blind spot.”
But I’ve never advocated this view. In fact, I call terrorism “a tactic of war.” IOW, I see terrorism as undeclared war on civilian populations. That this work has political and geographical dimensions is, well, self-evident. What those dimensions are I haven’t discussed yet except for the point that I raised about murderous ideologies upstream.
I think your frustration may arise from that fact that these factors have not yet been discussed. One reason they haven’t is that the fundamental assumption going in, ie: is terrorism evil or not, must be established first.
Fr Jacobse –
I apologize if I was overly strident, but I tend to get a bit angry when someone accuses me of trying to justify terrorism as Daniel did. My ire was unfairly levelled at everyone here, but it still seems as if the automatic assumption by the more hawkish among us is that any discussion about the backstory of terrorism is an attempt to defend it. However, father, you did say “advocating that root causes exist for terror implies that some terror is justified,” which is not my position at all, and is certainly a misintepretation of my original post.
And, yes, I find the lack of discusson on these factors very frustrating because a military response alone will never solve this problem. There seems to be a strong thread, here and elsewhere, who believe exactly the opposite and are unwilling to consider any causes or solutions outside a very narrow range of possibilities. For instance, I spoke of legitimate political goals, which was somehow immediately twisted into “justification” rhetoric. But let me make my point clear: I have the goal of ending abortion in this country. I can either take this issue up through the peaceful political & legislative process, or I can grab a rifle and start killing abortionists. Regardless of which I choose, the ending of abortion is a legitimate political goal. That in no way justifies a murderous rampage, but the goal remains legitimate.
I will admit, Nathan, that I let my emotions jump in when reason should take charge. However, I do think that it is very unreasonable to evaluate “root causes” in the midst of war. Would it have been useful to evaluate the “root causes” of Imperial Japan’s invasion of China and Korea and the attack on Pearl Harbor? Would it have been usefull to evaluate “root causes” of Nazi hatred of Jews in the midst of WWII?
When and if the Islamofascists end hostilities then I will be glad to discuss the systemic poverty throughout much of the Middle East, and yes, TBH, the American support of regimes that often perpetuate this poverty (support, BTW, which did not start and likely will not end with Pres. Bush).
You and many others seem to think that hostilities will end when the United States stops shooting and decides to sit down with the Islamofascists in order to discuss the economic issues that are causing them to murder children. I’m sorry, but I just don’t find that to be reasonable solution.
Maybe where one stands on this issue comes down to whether or not one acknowledges that we are at war.
Daniel –
First off, the differences between WWII and the WOT are so large as to make your point almost entirely invalid. Would it have been useful to evaluate the “root causes” of Japan’s imperialism *before* and the Nazi hatred of the Jews they undertook their invasions? Absolutely. Our initial responses would have been vastly different and its entirely possible that we may have been able to formulate strategies that would have prevented or contained their actions. But we are not talking about state-on-state agression – we are talking about cellular organizations with formal & informal ties to other like-minded groups, largely hiding from state authorities and moving across porous international boundaries. There is no draft to force these young men and women to fight; there is only the lure of the terrorist, coupled with a list of grievances that makes terrorism more likely. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying poverty, political repression, etc, are the sole causes of terrorism. There is most certainly an unknown X factor that comes into the equation. Like many, I think a great deal of that X factor has to do with particular strands of Islam.
However, my point is that terrorists are being recruited on an ongoing basis, likely faster than we can kill them. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said as much in a memo that was leaked – we lack a meaningful way to measure whether we are eliminating extremists faster than they are being produced by the madrassas and other organizations. The only way to win this war, realistically, is to eliminate or capture the active terrorists that exist now AND prevent the creation of future terrorists. Your stance that it is “unreasonable” to examine the other side of the equation during war is simplistic and motivated more by ideology than reality. I do not presume that the alleviation of poverty and the opening of political systems will automatically stop terrorism; I do think it can prevent the formation of future terrorists and undermine the popular support that many terrorist organizations enjoy. I don’t think anyone’s stand on this has to do with whether we acknowledge we are at war; it has to do with whether we will stop letting emotions sway our reasoning, and think clearly and unbiasedly about the next steps to take.
Liberals and evil:
Liberals tend not to recognize evil because they then not to recognize the uniqueness of people, the reality of man as image of God. Bad acts are the result not so much of individual choice, but the influences of culture, the determinism of genes, etc. Concrete, individual moral choice does not really exist—hence their emphasis on using government to cure all ills. Such belief also explains the liberal abhorrence of traditional Christianity with our emphasis on personal moral and spiritual responsibility within the community.
The conservative’s tendency to view man as only and independent entity without regard for the community is the other side of the coin. Both reject the, in practice, the idea that man is theophany, reflecting both the person of God and the community of God.
However, the liberal belief when combined with a deformed, death centered “faith” such as held by the Jihadists feeds the acts of terrorism committed in the name of Allah. The liberal ideas enable such acts and seek to rationalize the behavior with geo-political, societal “solutions” to the problem. Ultimately, such ideas lead to darkness of nothingness.
Dean is right when he asserts that disarming evil with love is the only real answer, however, I’m not sure he realizes what that means. It means the willingness and probability of crucifixion, i.e., cruel suffering, pain, and death all the while holding on to the love of God in one’s heart. Further, such love must not just be general in nature but specifically for the person who is inflicting such pain and death upon you. Ironically, if reports are correct, those among the Beslan terrorists who died because they did not want to kill the children may have saved themselves and who knows how many others.
Short of the authentic Christian solution, we are faced with the choice of confronting evil while being, to some extent or another, tainted by evil or allowing evil to be victorious. In a fallen creation, all of our actions, even if we are saints, are tainted with evil. That does not absolve us of the responsibility to confront evil being as consistent as we can. We must endeavor to hold our political leaders to as high a standard as possible, realizing that they are as imperfect as we, realizing that the temptations to power for power’s sake will, at times, be irresistible for them. The reality of such temptations is why we pray for our leaders and our soldiers.
IMO, allowing the evil to destroy more and more lives, is not an option. We must be on guard that our military response does not succumb entirely to the same evil we are fighting. We must not allow our hearts to be further hardened against those we are fighting, but pray for them always. Remember, they too are created in the image and likeness of God and it is their own souls they are destroying as they seek to destroy us. “Lord forgive them, for they know not what they do.”