322 and Counting

We could compare it to the numbers of losses in other terrorist actions, but let's not. Each tragedy is unique, and comparing numbers would trivialise them. This one might be singular, though, in the number of children who were killed, and in the depth of suffering caused to individual families in what must be a rather small geographical area. From the BBC:

One woman, who was looking for her nephew, told the BBC what she saw.

"I've been to the morgue to look for him," she said. "There were so many bodies - so many small children. I saw one woman sitting there stroking the heads of two children, she didn't even have the strength left to cry."

I read a comment somewhere today from someone who suggested that this just shows the level of the desperation among the Chechen rebels, as if we ought to have at least a little sympathy for the captors along with our sympathy for the Russian children, their families and their community. Leaving aside for a minute the fact that more than a few of these terrorists were not Chechen, how does extreme desperation ever justify the purposeful killing of young children? It doesn't, and anyone with an ounce of moral fibre understands that. Shooting fleeing children in the back is cruelty. It's as pure and as simple as that.

Okay. That's it. I'm done spitting tacks. For today, anyway.