Al Qaeda = Iraq = Islam = Beslan

Russians, raw from being screwed by terrorists, are beginning to focus their rage against their own government; when this happens, things generally don't work out so well. Nevertheless, when a government fails to perform its most important function (i.e. to protect the long-term stability of its society), it deserves to be savaged. And yet, the blossoming use of terrorist tactics throughout the world is increasingly complicated by the proliferation of groups which are radicalized, religious and – from their own vantage point - oppressed. It's a good thing that we Americans have David Brooks to help put terrorism in the proper perspective:

Dissertations will be written about the euphemisms the media used to describe these murderers. They were called "separatists" and "hostage-takers." Three years after Sept. 11, many are still apparently unable to talk about this evil. They still try to rationalize terror. What drives the terrorists to do this? What are they trying to achieve?

They're still victims of the delusion that Paul Berman diagnosed after Sept. 11: "It was the belief that, in the modern world, even the enemies of reason cannot be the enemies of reason. Even the unreasonable must be, in some fashion, reasonable."

Brilliant. Not only can we avoid a tiresome analysis of the history of violence and abuse in Chechnya, but we're actually delusional if we do it. When Bush looked "into Putin's soul", he could be forgiven for being charmed and impressed – the two are looking more and more to be cut from the same cloth. The Beslan massacre wasn't a product or indicator of disastrous military adventures and tyrannical politics. Nope. It was the harbinger of "total and full-scale war". The real enemy isn't in Chechnya or the Keystone Cop military or Russian civilian leadership, it's Al Qaeda and the sinister machinations of ghostly "cells"; the generalized, polyglot assemblage of "people who love death". The more disconnected from reality people get, the harder reality will spank 'em when it finally catches up, and ol' "Pootie" has got some hard truths to face up to:

In the long run, the question of Russia simply withdrawing from Chechnya might come up, but it is too early for that and that would be the hardest thing for Putin to do since his own reputation would be at stake.

FYI Arlo: I've been away from a computer for the last week while rehearsing a Chekhov play. Pretending to be Russian can be fun; being Russian can be grueling.