Guardian Unlimited | Guardian daily comment | A terrible lesson from a classroom in Beslan:

"Putin pins the blame for the escalating crisis, perhaps the gravest of his presidency, not on home-grown Chechen fighters but, primarily, on an international Islamist conspiracy linked to al-Qaida.
The evidence for his contention is thin and often contradictory. But one thing is undoubtedly true. Since plunging recklessly back into Chechnya in 1994, Putin, his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, and the once proud Red Army have caused such untold misery, such rank injustice, such fury and despair that, like the Americans in Iraq, they created a breeding ground and magnet for the religious extremists they struggle to extirpate. "

An interesting analogy. The fact that both Russia and Israel have suffered some severe terrorist attacks in recent weeks has been raised as evidence that their harsh methods--reminescent of the premptive war of the 2002 strategic doctrine of the US--are actually working against the ultimate goal of ending terrorism in those areas. On the other hand, Andrew Sullivan seems hopeful that the French traitors of the Iraq war will finally be brought into the fold now that two of their journalists have been taken captive. He is hoping that the preemptive front will expand and France will stop being a tool for the Jihadists to use against "us".

As compelling as Sullivan's take is--and as sinister as the dispatch is from these would be terrorists--the difference is that, as usual, he is only considering this from a political and ideological level, ignoring completely the material realities. Ideology isn't something people put on like their socks. It is something that only becomes attractive when it seems to explain where you are. If Al Queda operatives are active in Chechnya the only way that their extremism is able to take hold in such a foreign land is that there is the "fury and despair" that was there first. it is much more neat and pat and easy to dismiss as lunacy and criminality when one can assume that everything else is equal except for the way people interpret the world; if these rebels would just sit down and read the Bible, think about Adam Smith, and have faith that someday they'll get a leg up, well they'd just be as happy as clams because, other than murder and repression by an occupying army, what do they really have to complain about?

The French journalist issue actually seems to show more how fragmented this movement that is supposedly the front united against us. We don't really know anything about the people who are holding these journalists (nor do we really about the people in the school--of whom, evidently, over 100 are now dead, including children, thanks, in part to the blunt instrument of "storming the castle" that the Russians used: disgusting. A replay of their use of what turned out to be lethal gas in the theatre two years ago. Gosh if the Russians keep using that doctrine of overwhelming force that is supposed to work so well in dealing with terrorists, you'd think the terrorists woudl have stopped by now. Maybe there is actually something that happens before and after the terrorism that is a clue?) The problem is that, like communism before it, the ideas that we are up against don't have to be centrally dictated. These ideas begin to take hold in areas where there is little else to give people hope. This doesn't excuse their actions, but if we ignore these ideas as a possible explainations and neglect to consider new solutions--or additional solutions--then we have no hope of ever setting this unbalanced world back on its axis.

I am beginning to think that our leaders have figured out the same thing that third world leaders have been exploiting for a long time: that as unsightly as these terrorists are, they are very useful in centralizing control domestically. We have little hope for stability if instability is meant to guarantee the position of those in power. If we are supposed to keep the same party just because we are afraid to do otherwise, that doesn't give us much hope for change in the national leadership or even in the world at large.

It also points to the biggest problem I have with all of these people in charge right now: they really lack imagination. For some reason, I am supposed to believe that the only two options we have are capitalism and communism (or Giddens' "third way" which is basically capitalism but with a happy face.) Isn't that what people were told 100 years ago? Have we really made so little progress that we have nothing better to offer? I don't agree with all the things that are said at venues like the World Social Forum, but I do agree that the new mantra for the 21st century has to be "Amother World is Possible." Bush and the Republicans want us to believe that political liberty is the only thing that has made America what it is today. Perhaps this is why they also seem to believe that the only thing driving our enemies is ideas, bad ideas. We don't need to change anything in the material distribution: we just need to reiterate some different ideas. We don't need to face any material realities or confront hard questions about how much of Iraq our corporations should own: all they need is "liberty." And, like everything else, you don't need to present any evidence: if you say it, it is so. Orwellian era of Performative Politics has arrived in full and people seem to be eating it up.