Do you think that following the suicide bombing of the Moscow subway that anyone writing articles will bother explaining some of the history concerning Chechnya, or will it all get swept under the heading of monolithic radical Islamic extremism? (Those damn Caucasian Arabs ….! What about Iran!)*
/annoyed with reporting
*Note for the slow and tendentious: I am not saying that the suicide bombing is justified. Killing people is wrong. It is a source of frustration that a suicide bombing in Moscow by Chechen terrorists is attributed to nothing more than radical Islam, which is apparently the only monolithic religion on the planet. By parity of reasoning we should respond to the Catholic sex scandals by investigating the Baptist ministers.
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20 comments
March 29, 2010 at 9:16 am
Texas in Africa
I just want them to stop referring to “two WOMEN suicide bombers.” We know that men and women are both participating in suicide missions worldwide, and that that’s been going on for quite awhile.
March 29, 2010 at 10:16 am
dana
I think it might be significant in this case, given the Chechen Black Widow phenomenon.
I’m not that old, but I seem to remember as a little kid that when there were news reports about Chechnya, the Chechens were the sympathetic party, until their mass conversion to Islam in 2001 or so.
March 29, 2010 at 10:39 am
Josh
Cheer up! At least if Yglesias is to be trusted, neocon hatred for Russia trumps even fear of Islam.
March 29, 2010 at 10:40 am
kid bitzer
yglesias has a great catch on this:
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2010/03/the-blame-russia-first-crowd.php
March 29, 2010 at 10:59 am
Jesse
Why do people always have to score points in times like these?
It’s pretty simple – Russia has been unjustifiably cruel in its treatment of of many of the people groups in the Caucuses, the Chechens not least among them. And the radical Muslim factions have responded how radical Muslim factions all too often respond in this day and age: with guerrilla warfare and suicide bombings of civilian targets.
I don’t see why we can’t condemn both groups for their respective wrongs in this conflict and mourn with the families of the slaughtered innocents without trying to score political points one way or the other.
March 29, 2010 at 2:34 pm
Nick
It’s interesting that in the reporting of the nine militia members arrested today for plotting the murder of law enforcement officials, and subsequently planning to attack the funeral of said officials with improvised explosive devices (terrorism?), they are treated with an uncanny amount of specificity and context. Why not just call them “radical Christian extremists” and be done with it as is often the case with terrorism committed by Muslims?
March 29, 2010 at 3:00 pm
dana
Why do people always have to score points in times like these?
I’m not trying to score political points. I’m legitimately peeved that quite a lot of people who vote are going to think that al-Qaeda’s goals and Chechnya’s goals are aligned.
March 29, 2010 at 7:06 pm
urbino
So you’re saying we shouldn’t investigate Baptist ministers?
March 30, 2010 at 2:38 am
J. Otto Pohl
Attacks against Russian civilians by Chechen militants, whether they involve suicide bombs or not, are not exactly new. So I am not sure why the event is being treated in historical isolation as Dana claims. I have not seen the reports she is responding to in her posts. But, quite a bit has been written about the history of Chechnya in the last couple of decades. It is not that difficult for those willing to look to find plenty of information on the historical grievences of the Chechens. So for anybody inclined to look at the scholarly literature I do not think there can be any confusion that the Chechens have been the main victims in Russian-Chechen relations.
It is also true there are no Hollywood movies on the 23 February 1944 deportations to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. I think the problems of moving this history into the popular conscience are actually considerably greater than current anti-Muslim prejudices in the US. The Chechens are not a politically correct people subjected to persecution by a stock villian like the Nazis or White South Africans. They are a tradtional, patriarchial and Muslim people subjected to genocide by the USSR, an Allied Power that was fighting against Nazi Germany at the time. As such they do not generate much sympathy in America’s liberal society. I personally think this is unfortunate. But, there really should be no expectation that the US press and popular media would do anything to counter it.
March 30, 2010 at 3:24 am
dana
I’m not sure the existence of scholarly literature excuses the media. Surely anyone inclined to look at the scholarly literature would have concluded that Iraq’s aims and those of al-Qaeda didn’t coincide; it still would have been nice had the media done their jobs.
Let’s distinguish between an expectation and a justification. I don’t expect them to know their asses from a hole in the ground, but I don’t think that justifies reporting this attack as if it’s the same kind of thing as London or Madrid.
March 30, 2010 at 9:08 am
snarkout
Dana, the September 1999 apartment bombings have already disappeared down the memory hole, and ose were at least plausibly a false-flag operation designed by Russia’s intelligence services to propel Vladimir Putin to the presidency. If American media can’t bring it upon themselves to describe a plot that would make for a pretty good Jason Bourne movie, there’s no way anyone’s going to bother breaking down a bunch of ugly reprisals and counter-reprisals (some going back even before the Yeltsin years!) involving people with funny names.
March 30, 2010 at 9:17 am
dana
But what if we film it in that jittery style? And use supermodels?
March 30, 2010 at 10:03 am
ari
urbino! Come back! Please.
March 30, 2010 at 3:23 pm
Erik Lund
“But what if we film it in that jittery style? And use supermodels?’
Supermodels are usually distractingly bad actors. And some have funny voices, like Kathy Ireland.
I vote for starlets. And possibly Scarlett Johansson in the leading role as the Black Widow (she’s a Russian agent!)
Look. I’m just trying to find a way to bring recent Russian history to the screen. With catsuits.
March 30, 2010 at 3:39 pm
kevin
Look. I’m just trying to find a way to bring recent Russian history to the screen. With catsuits.
Wasn’t that the goal of “Night Watch”?
March 30, 2010 at 5:18 pm
Erik Lund
There’s catsuits in “Night Watch?” Maybe I’ll have to stop ignoring it.
But it’s got vampires in it, and they always make me feel inadequate.
March 30, 2010 at 8:07 pm
urbino
urbino! Come back! Please.
Says the guy who hardly ever posts.
March 30, 2010 at 8:07 pm
ari
If you were around more, I’d post more. For you.
March 30, 2010 at 8:10 pm
ari
Also, I just posted, you flippin’ anti-semite.
March 31, 2010 at 6:20 pm
urbino
And I commented. Is there no pleasing you?