War on Errorism

Betcha didn't see that coming, did ya? Muslim terrorists again, but Chechen Muslim terrorists. I'm betting you don't even know what a Chechen is.

Here are two of them. Fighting for the Taliban.

You should know of course. And we all shoulda seen this coming because Chechen rebels have a long and loud history with Al Qaeda - thousands of them went to Afghanistan in the early days of the war to fight alongside Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, just for starters. But Chechnya has been a blind spot through the entirety of the War on Terrorism for the stupidest of reasons, like old Cold War prejudices.

Russia: "American friends! Please help us with Chechen-Al Qaeda!

America: "Up yours, commie!"

Russia: "We do not understand. You say you fight terrorism and is terrorism in our backyard. Rebels -"

America: "Oh, rebels you say? Well, we'll just send our Special Forces to train them!"

Russia: "...But they murder children at school..."

America: "Let freedom ring, Stalinistas!"

Russia: "o.O"

That's paraphrasing of course, but not too far from the reality. Chechnya has been a hotbed of terrorism for years but knee-jerk Russophobia has made it invisible to Washington, which went out of its way to dismiss any argument that Chechen separatism, with its Al Qaeda ties, was somehow part of the grander War on Terror. "It's just a war of indepenence!" the particularly dumb pundits claimed. Another war, technically. They sorta won the first one in 1996 and celebrated their newfound liberty from the Kremlin with kidnappings, Sharia law, and invading Dagestan.

The Washington response to all of this? Cozying up to the Chechens. This was back in the Bush years and as an appropriate counter to Democrats always being the best on national security, Republicans always do what's worst for the country. Even last week, with the FBI and Boston PD on a manhunt, Senate Republicans voted against any sort of gun regulation. Because God forbid we have a national gun registry that, say, could've helped identify the Tsarnaevs when they armed themselves for their impending shootout with police.

Playing kissy face with a crowd that openly brags about its AQ ties is stupid enough, but to then make it easier for them to kill Americans because you want to keep getting NRA kickbacks? That's a whole new grade of stupid right there. Really, the entire War on Terror has just been one stupid bungle after another. It focused the reflexive racism of many Americans on the Middle East since the 9-11 hijakers were almost all Saudi trust-fund brats, which allowed a natural transition to Iraq because all those darned wogs look alike. The entire culture has conflated "terrorism" with Islamic fundamentalists in a desert shouting and hollering and being dirty oriental stereotypes so that when a serious threat shows up we're all caught with our pants down.

And Chechens are serious. They've been giving Russia the business for twenty years now, no matter how many of their apartment blocks get swiss-cheesed by ZSUs. They've got a generation of young men raised in urban guerrilla warfare - as demonstrated by the Boston bombers putting up one hell of a fight against police. Arab and Af-Pak holy warriors are way more suicidal, typically using themselves as a delivery vehicle and getting blasted to Paradise. While sad and awful and blah blah blah, that approach does make them something of a self-correcting problem.

ZSU: For all your anti-aircraft and urban pacification needs!

Chechens, in contrast, conduct themselves like proper soldiers. When confronted by police, the Boston duo responded with gunfire and tactical retreat and I don't doubt they had plans for more attacks if they'd gotten away. And taking the worst case scenario that this wasn't an isolated incident, we should all be fucking scared.

Except this time we've got Obama. Not to sound like a fanboy but the guy really is excellent at irregular warfare, as much as I despise his Chicago Schoolboy fiscal policies. If Bush were still in charge he'd probably invade Greece, the dumb cokehead.