Time For Ending Our Endless Incredulity--- The Current Strategic Significance Of Russia's Beslan School Siege
Yes, Putin is doing the unthinkable and targeting Ukrainian civilians with illegal anti-personnel weapons, both in their homes, hospitals, schools, and fleeing columns of refugees. Apparentky Russian Soldiers bombed a Children's Hospital. Many analysts are warning that gassing them is the next phase if Putin's demands are not met.
He will face consequences for this indiscriminate killing of civilian non-combatants. It is however problematic that so many among us are shocked at what he is doing. There were two notable incidents in which Putin addressed terrorist kidnappers taking large numbers of hostages in Russia. In both cases he ordered Special Forces to attack and included dangerous knockout gas, precipitating mass casualties.
The worst was in response to Chechen terrorists taking over the Beslan School, declaring more than 1100 people hostages. The Russian attack on the school resulted in 333 deaths, out of which were 186 Children of a total of 777.
Remember Putin's advice to Donald Trump on June 2, the day he tried to invoke the 1807 Act and deploy the Army to crush the George Floyd protests after a phone call with Putin. "You can never let them think you appear weak". This is something that I did not forget in making my assessments of what Putin would do over recent years. Do a Google News search for the several articles by Russia experts that admit they completely misjudged Putin. There are many.
What is troubling to me are the sheer numbers of good people who just as in the case of Trump's statements and actions continue to say or think "I never thought he would or could do that......!"
This is how we are misled by even sympathetic media because of their insistence in parsing everything, to remain "credible" and not speak in "extremes". Every step of the way for the last six years we have gotten watered down objective mush for information, even from most of the "good guys", with a few exceptions.
Here is the story of the Beslan School Siege which should have told everyone beforehand what Putin is capable of doing, which we are currently so "shocked" about. Hopefully at some point soon we can stop making the same mistakes.
