NationStates Jolt Archive

Places like Russia are pretty far ahead of the US in terms of this, and they are only getting more and more personal. When a terrorist leader mocks a regional leader, and claims to have killed his father, it's pretty personal when the terrorist leader gets killed in return.

June 18, 2006

By STEVEN LEE MYERS
MOSCOW, June 17 — Russian special forces killed the leader of Chechnya's separatists on Saturday, officials said, reveling in a new blow to a rebel movement with a long history of terrorist attacks that has recently appeared seriously weakened.

The leader, Abdul Khalim Saidullayev, died in a raid in a Chechen village in which two Russian officers were also killed, the director of the Federal Security Service, Nikolai P. Patrushev, said at an international security conference, Russian news agencies reported.

Officials said they would conduct tests to confirm that the body was Mr. Saidullayev's, but they displayed little doubt that they had succeeded in finding and killing the movement's leader. Russian television channels showed gruesome images of a body that appeared to be his, and a Web site linked to the Chechen rebels confirmed his death and declared him a martyr.

"The terrorists have been virtually decapitated," Prime Minister Ramzan A. Kadyrov, the leader of Chechnya's pro-Moscow government, told the Interfax news agency in the regional capital, Grozny. "They have sustained a severe blow, and they are never going to recover from it."

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003068918_chechnya18.html

Read the whole article. It's been going on for a long time when an informant can be had for some heroin, and when people are down to killing each others' relatives.

Are you suggesting that this is how things ought to be?

Are you suggesting that this is how things ought to be?
No, why do people make these idiotic assumptions?

I'm saying that's where we're headed in the future.

While I do not condone radical Jihadiism, which seems to underpin a lot of Chechen Nationalism. I do understand and sympathise with their desire to no longer be a part of the Russian Federation.

It's not the 19th century anymore, allowing a region to secede is not a show of weakness, it's a show on enlightened thinking, and this is something Russia needs to realise. Other things Russia needs to realise is how to not be an illiberal dictatorship.

No, why do people make these idiotic assumptions?

I'm saying that's where we're headed in the future.

Err, it was a question, and not a complex question at that, your irritation is unwarranted; besides, the best threads are ones where someone actually takes a position, opposed to reporting alleged facts.

Err, it was a question, and not a complex question at that, your irritation is unwarranted; besides, the best threads are ones where someone actually takes a position, opposed to reporting alleged facts.
My position is that this is where things are headed for the US.

Not that it's the "desireable" thing.

What I object to on this forum is the automatic inclusion of the personal morality of the poster as a point of argument - something that nearly everyone here does.

My position is that this is where things are headed for the US.

Not that it's the "desireable" thing.

What I object to on this forum is the automatic inclusion of the personal morality of the poster as a point of argument - something that nearly everyone here does.

Well, including "ought" in the discussion does not immediately imply moral evaluations, it could merely be amoral evaluation. Like you, I’m a moral skeptic, so I can sympathise, but you can include evaluations and prescriptive judgments without involving morality (still doesn’t make it objective though).