{"id":2489,"date":"2004-09-08T12:04:00","date_gmt":"2004-09-08T12:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/orthodixie\/2004\/09\/the-massacre-of-innocents.html"},"modified":"2004-09-08T12:04:00","modified_gmt":"2004-09-08T12:04:00","slug":"the-massacre-of-innocents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/orthodixie\/2004\/09\/the-massacre-of-innocents.html","title":{"rendered":"The Massacre of Innocents"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

September 4, 2004 \u2014<\/strong> THE mass murder of children
\n
revolts the human psyche. Herod sending his henchmen
\n
to massacre the infants of Bethlehem haunts the
\n
Gospels. Nothing in our time was crueler than what
\n
the Germans did to children during the Holocaust.
\n
Slaughtering the innocents violates a universal
\n
human taboo. Or a nearly universal one. Those
\n
Muslims who preach Jihad against the West decided
\n
years ago that killing Jewish or Christian children
\n
is not only acceptable, but pleasing to their god
\n
when done by \u201cmartyrs.\u201d <\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t politically correct to say this, of course.
\n
We\u2019re supposed to pretend that Islam is a \u201creligion
\n
of peace.\u201d All right, then: It\u2019s time for Muslims to
\n
stand up for the once-noble, nearly lost traditions
\n
of their faith and condemn what Arab and Chechen
\n
terrorists and blasphemers did in the Russian town
\n
of Beslan. <\/p>\n

If Muslim religious leaders around the world will
\n
not publicly condemn the taking of children as
\n
hostages and their subsequent slaughter \u2014 if those
\n
\u201cmen of faith\u201d will not issue a condemnation without
\n
reservations or caveats \u2014 then no one need pretend
\n
any longer that all religions are equally sound and
\n
moral. <\/p>\n

Islam has been a great and humane faith in the past.
\n
Now far too many of its adherents condone, actively
\n
or passively, the mass murder of school kids.
\n
Instead of condemnations of the Muslim \u201cJihadis\u201d
\n
responsible for butchering more than 200 women and
\n
children in cold blood, we will hear spiteful
\n
counter-accusations about imaginary atrocities
\n
supposedly committed by Western militaries. <\/p>\n

Well, the cold fact is that Western soldiers,
\n
whether Americans, Brits, Russians or Israelis, do
\n
not take hundreds of children hostage, then shoot
\n
them in cold blood while detonating bombs in their
\n
midst. The Muslim world can lie to itself, but we
\n
need lie no longer. <\/p>\n

The tragedy in southern Russia occurred thousands of
\n
miles from the United States, but, in essence, that
\n
massacre happened next door. The parents, teachers
\n
and students kept for days without water or food in
\n
a sweltering school building before being butchered
\n
were our children, our sisters, our wives, our
\n
parents. <\/p>\n

The mass hostage situation wasn\u2019t about Chechen
\n
rebels (and at least 10 Arabs) opposing the Russian
\n
government. It was a continuation of the universal
\n
struggle between good and evil. And there is no
\n
doubt which side is evil, scorned though the word
\n
may be by our own elite. <\/p>\n

How can any human being with a shred of conscience
\n
dismiss what occurred in that school as anything
\n
less than evil? <\/p>\n

The attack in Beslan wasn\u2019t about Russia\u2019s brutal
\n
incompetence in Chechnya \u2014 as counter-productive as
\n
Moscow\u2019s grim heavy-handedness may have been. It was
\n
about religious bigotry so profound that the
\n
believer can hold a gun to a child\u2019s head, pull the
\n
trigger and term the act \u201cdivine justice.\u201d <\/p>\n

We will hear complaints that the Russian special
\n
forces should have waited \u2014 even after the
\n
terrorists began shooting children. Negotiations are
\n
the heroin of Westerners addicted to self-delusion.
\n
Who among us would have waited when he or she saw
\n
fleeing children cut down by automatic weapons? The
\n
urge to protect children is as primal as any impulse
\n
we ever feel. <\/p>\n

Make no mistake: No blame attaches to the Russians
\n
for the massacre at that school. The guilt is
\n
entirely upon the Islamic extremists who have led
\n
the religion they claim to cherish into the realms
\n
of nightmare. <\/p>\n

There will be repercussions. Having suffered the
\n
hijacking and destruction of two passenger jets, a
\n
deadly bombing at a Moscow subway station and a
\n
massacre in a primary school all in less than two
\n
weeks, the Kremlin will have learned to rue the day
\n
it imagined that there was anything to gain by
\n
opposing American efforts against terrorists,
\n
whether Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein. <\/p>\n

As they inevitably do, the terrorists reminded the
\n
world of their heartless barbarism. Even if France
\n
manages to beg the release of its kidnapped
\n
journalists in Iraq, it has begun to sense its
\n
vulnerability. And all Europeans with a vestige of
\n
sense will recognize that the school seizure in
\n
Russia could easily repeat itself in Languedoc or
\n
Umbria, Bavaria or Kent. <\/p>\n

An attack on children is an attack on all of
\n
humanity. <\/p>\n

No matter what differences Western states discover
\n
to divide them, the terrorists will bring us
\n
together in the end. Their atrocities expose all
\n
wishful thinking for what it is. <\/p>\n

A final thought: Did any of those protesters who
\n
came to Manhattan to denounce our liberation of 50
\n
million Muslims stay an extra day to protest the
\n
massacre in Russia? Of course not. <\/p>\n

The protesters no more care for dead Russian
\n
children than they care for dead Kurds or for the
\n
hundreds of thousands of Arabs that Saddam Hussein
\n
executed. Or for the ongoing Arab-Muslim slaughter
\n
of blacks in Sudan. Nothing\u2019s a crime to those
\n
protesters unless the deed was committed by America. <\/p>\n

The butchery in Russia was a crime against humanity.
\n
In every respect. Was any war ever more necessary or
\n
just than the War on Terror? <\/p>\n

And what will terror\u2019s apologists say when the
\n
killers come for their own children? <\/p>\n

From a NY Times Article
\n
BY RALPH PETERS<\/strong>
\n
Ralph Peters is the author of \u201cBeyond Terror:
\n
Strategy in a Changing World.\u201d<\/em>
<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

September 4, 2004 \u2014 THE mass murder of children revolts the human psyche. Herod sending his henchmen to massacre the infants of Bethlehem haunts the Gospels. Nothing in our time was crueler than what the Germans did to children during the Holocaust. Slaughtering the innocents violates a universal human taboo. Or a nearly universal one. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1691,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Massacre of Innocents<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"September 4, 2004 -- THE mass murder of children revolts the human psyche. 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