459 Why we need to pay very close attention to Beslan massacre

Melanie Phillips (British) comments on the blindness of many westerners about the terrorism in Beslan that murdered and maimed and terrorized so many school children. She draws comparisons and points fingers at the ineffective Russian response to Chechen terrorists.

“When the US was repeatedly attacked by Islamic terrorism throughout the 1980s and 1990s, it merely sat on its hands, made token responses, or decided to cut and run. Osama bin Laden concluded from this that the US was weak. We know this because he said so. And so he unleashed 9/11.

But instead of learning the correct lesson that the current horrors are the result of such a failure to act, the west has succumbed to historical amnesia over those previous attacks. It is convulsed instead by hysteria over the war on Iraq, with absurd conspiracy theories about Zionists and ‘neo-conservatives’ surfacing instead almost daily in the mainstream media and driving out rational debate.”

See the complete article at A war like no other

From her bio: Melanie Phillips is a British journalist and author. She is best known for her controversial column about political and social issues which currently appears in the Daily Mail. Awarded the Orwell Prize for journalism in 1996, she is the author of All Must Have Prizes, an acclaimed study of Britain’s educational and moral crisis, which provoked the fury of educationists and the delight and relief of parents.