This morning I was awakened by a timid tap on our bedroom door. It was still dark and I heard our eleven year old calling her mom. She had experienced a nightmare. I comforted her and asked her about her dream. She said she was at a friend's house and there were gunshots and police with flashlights and that she was locked in a room and couldn't get out.

Later this morning I asked her if she had heard anything about the problems they were having in Russia concerning the school children. She is more likely to be using her TV time on MTV than CNN so I wasn't surprised when she said that she didn't know anything about the schoolchildren in Russia. But these things have a way of working their way into the dreams of young girls.

When Russian troops stormed the school in Beslan, North Ossetia, yesterday, ending a two-day siege by militants demanding independence for neighboring Chechnya, at least 322 people, half of them children, died.

Events like this appear in the nightmares of little children. Strikes against the most vulnerable are the truest and the cheapest and probably the most effective strain of terrorism. It makes you fear for the lives of your children and it makes children fear for their own lives. It echoes the Oklahoma City bombing where the day-care center was destroyed.

But that is the premise of terrorism, to attack at the weakest points.

The Poet's Eye notices that the places where terror proliferates bear a certain commonality. These are places like Palestine and Chechnya, where the residents feel hopelessly oppressed and dis-empowered. The Chechnyans are under the thumb of the Russian Army and the Palestinians are dominated by the much superior forces of Israel. It's a David and Goliath situation.

David resorted to primitive weapons and deadly aim in his asymetrical conflict with Goliath. The simplest weapons were used to the greatest effect. Like a box cutter, a rock or a sack of fertilizer.

By using simple and ubiquitous weapons and attacking targets of opportunity, the terrorist fights a war that is impossible to defend oneself against. Terror only manifests as a result of a desperate cause. The only solution is to remove the cause.

All the concrete walls and razorwire and x-ray machines in the world cannot defend us against terrorism. Nor can we defend ourselves by precaution against insanity or calamity or natural disaster. If some nut thinks god wants him to strap a bomb on and walk into an elementary school, there is really nothing we can do to stop him. Terrorism is the insanity of desperation.

But what we can do is this: We can remove the major complaints that spawn desperate acts like the ones we have seen in Russia in the past two weeks. What the US government should do, if it really wants to curtail terrorism is exert pressure on the Russians and the Israelis to stop their domestic oppression of Chechnya and Palestine. And it wouldn't hurt to cease our military and economic occupation of the muslim world, either.

The Poet's Eye sees that little girls will be having nightmares, not until terror is vanquished because it can't be vanquished. Terror is a tactic, not a person or a force or a principality. Even our President said as much inadvertently recently. The nightmares will stop only when we have vanquished the Causes of terrorism.

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"The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left."
Ecclesiastes 10:2 (NIV)

...just not the way the author was hoping, I'm sure.

Indeed. The cause of terrorism is the terrorist. Kill them, problem solved.

Unlike the author, I do not believe we are ultimately the problem.

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What have you done for your people today?

Interesting twist of logic. It starts off with talking about the atrocities committed against the children in the Russian school, and continues to talk about the "disempowered and oppressed Chechnians".

If an uninformed person was to read that post, they could very well get the impression that was the Russians who committed the atrocities against school, not the so-called "Chechen Separatists".

The U.S. should pressure Russia, you say. What makes you think Russia will listen, especially after what happened? Why are you advocating that our country take the side of terrorist murderers?

In another post, entitled "Reasons for Chechen terrorist spree", I wrote about the situation in the Russian North Caucuses, of which Chechnya is a part of, and the real goals of the so-called "Chechen Separatists" and the Al Qaeda fundamentalists who are behind them. I would urge you to read it, I do not want to repeat the same post everywhere.

If all poets are like you, I am glad that poets are not running the country.

LIGHTENINGROD WROTE " Poet's Eye--Nightmare In Russia

That is one very bloodthirsty poet. But then again, Hitler was an artist. Thank God I was born without any artistic skills.

Just one question, though. More than half of the children killed in Beslan were not ethnic Russians, they were Ossetins. Did they deserve to die also, or is your hate reserved exclusively for ethnic Russians?

Curious wrote: I don't think that "the Poet" expressed any hate. No sane person wants children to die or would condone acts that kill children. I think what the poet was saying was that the Chechens committed a desperate act. What he should have also said was that the act of killing any child is a barbaric act.

What I am saying is that maybe now Russians can understand what all of the other people have understood -- barbarism in the name of ethnic cleansing, ideology, or political movements is horrific.

I highly doubt that any of the parents and definitely none of the children in the small town of Beslan had anything to do with Soviet political decisions of the 1950s - 1990s. So stop with the "dose of your own medicine" defense. This is a case of mass murder, plain and simple. There is nothing in this world that will make me feel any form of empathy for people who attack children. No matter how ruthless, cruel, or violent the Russian government responds to these "separatist" it will not be harsh enough in my book.

On the subject of appeasement, what happens when the terrorist want more? Do you give in and what are the limits to appeasement? Thats like having a new credit card and going on a huge spending spree. Someday the bill will come. What about the silent majority? Do they get what they want? Or do you have to perform a terrorist act to be heard? By giving in to everyone that commits a terrorist act you would actually be inviting more terrorism.

What is alarming to me is the success of this attack coupled with its simplicity. With no logistic support and minimal manpower this attack proved to very effective. The world is appalled at the murder of children and for days this situation was high in the western press. It is also alarming that it is easy to attack schools in the US, the children can even do it. Think of the press following Columbine. What would the press be if a terrorist plot similar that in Beslan occurred in the US?

It is events like this that cause me to support the war on terror no matter where it leads. The US has not fought a war on its own soil (with the exception of the Revolution and Civil Wars). That has been a blessing of the people of the US. If the war on terror is brought to the civilian population of the US, our personal freedoms, that have been bought by the lives of our past military will be gone. IMHO the best way to prevent this is to stay on the offensive and fight the war on the terrorist turf.