Dealing With Terrorists
Dean
Whatever else you might say about Putin--most of it not very good--he knows how to deal with terrorists. After conferring briefly with the Saudi government, he ordered his secret service to find and kill those who murdered four Russians in Iraq.
Not "arrest them." Kill them.
What, no concern for their civil rights, or Russia's reputation abroad? Won't Putin squander the world's goodwill by behaving like a unilateralist cowboy?
Related Posts (on one page):
- Another day in the psych ward for extremists
- Dealing With Terrorists
While waiting for a non-rhetorical question, I would like to suggest an amusing scenario. Imagine these terrorists, sitting in some hideaway, finding signs that the Russians are closing in. What would be the safest possible course of action for them? Try this: hands raised, approach the nearest American troop, announce that they're unlawful enemy combatants, and demand detention in Guantanamo!
I have to admit the last time the KGB taught Hezbolla a "lesson," they turned out to be quick learners.
Surely it would lead to calls for impeachment from the opposition party.
And I wouldn’t be surprised if they could drum up enough support for a life time listing on a sexual offenders list.
Personally, I found both events borderline endearing.
I also don't think anyone's scared of the Russians any more. Here's why.
Putin's call for the the terrorists to be tracked down and killed was mostly political theater. I have no doubt that he meant it, or that the OSNAZ would kill the terrorist scum in a heartbeat once they found them, but finding them is going to be the key. If the Russians are serious about this, they're actually going to need our help, or at least our benign neglect, to do it.
How can you expect to have meaningful negotiations with people who see willingness to negotiate as a weakness to be exploited?
What the Russians are doing is what we should be doing, what the British and Spanish should be doing and certainly what Israel whould be doing.
I'm kinda glad their oars aren't in the water with ours... we'd likely get smacked by one.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Isn't everyone (besides the French) pretty damned brave about defending their country? The Russians have historically defended their country by surrounded it with a "buffer" of hundreds or even thousands of miles of other countries, which they evidently miss. They were relentless against Hitler, heroic; yet what choice did they have -- and, after all, they had basically brought it on themselves, after they brought it on Poland. The Russians have no democratic tradition, are cynical to a fault in foreign relations and have yet to demonstrate that they have shaken off a millenium of deep and murderous antisemitism. I'll give them credit for one thing: When you starve a few million of them and put a millions more of them in a slave labor camp or just disappear them, they can accomplish a lot. By which I mean that the Stalin era was the high water mark of Russian achievement in many spheres, at a cost in human life, spiritual destruction and cultural obliteration no humane person could possibly justify (though it is justified all the time)
Well, I don't really have it in for the Russians, Arnold, who notwithstanding the above are about the same as all but the best. But I think we should be careful about assuming they're "all that" just because they're hale and handsome.
But the next time they pull off even the sort of small-scale military or even logistical success that a second-rate powerought to be able to manage, let's talk. As of right now, from what I hear even a few elite French units could run rings around Ivan, who's probably too sloshed to even notice.