In days like this

[Ivo Skoric]

"In days like this..." begins a recent TV ad for pain killer medication.

F16 airplanes collide in the air, senators die in plane crashes, the 
Beltway sniper terrorist turn out to be a strange case of parental 
bonding in a $250 car, Chechen's take over a theater in downtown 
Moscow taking 700+ hostages, and that's only what made the top 
news.

The plane crash today was reminscent of the death of Gov. Mel 
Carnahan of Missouri days before the 2000 election in the crash of 
a small plane. He was in a fierce Senate race with the Republican 
incumbent, John Ashcroft, who is now the attorney general.

At the time, most political strategists said the tragedy had 
diminished the Democrats' chances of taking the seat, but Mr. 
Carnahan win the seat posthumously. His widow, Jean, was 
appointed by Mr. Carnahan's successor as governor to the Senate 
seat, and she is in a tight race of her own and is considered the 
most endangered Senate incumbent.

It was also reminiscent of the death of Dzemal Bjedic. 
In the waning days of former Yugoslavia, an airplane with the 
moderate high ranking communist party official from Bosnia, an old 
friend of Tito, who was supposed to take over the federal 
presidency, Dzemal Bjedic, crashed in the mountains of Bosnia. 
The accident was never fully explained. Bosnian delegate to the 
federal presidency who sat in place of Bjedic, behaved remarkably 
docile in that historic closed doors conference (albeit videotaped - 
and later presented on BBC in Laura Silber's 'Fall of Yugoslavia'
documentary). The issue was about military taking over the country 
and removing nationalist leaders, then returning the country under 
the control of prime minister. Milosevic, because at that time he did 
not yet establish full control over the army, was against. Finally, 
however, the vote hinged on the Bosnian delegate - and Bosnia 
was the country to lose the most in case of Yugoslav collapse 
(which it did once that happened) - but the Bosnian delegate 
surprisingly sided with Milosevic. Basically, if Bjedic did not die in 
the plane crash the history in the Balkans may have unraveled 
differently.

With Wellstone's death, Democrats essentially lost the majority in 
Senate in a crucial moment, plus they are left with a need to 
replace a popular candidate within 2 weeks, and Bush 
administration lost an important and vocal anti-war opponent. But 
the presence of motive does not guarantee that Bush ordered a kill, 
of course. Planes crash.

More interesting for the observers of the sick sense of humor 
possessed by the most prominent global terror foundation, is not 
only the coincidence of terrorrist attacks on the capitals of U.S. 
and Russia, but also how each of the two attacks was tailored to 
the specific configuration of each society and its response to 
violence - this point was brought up to me by one of my closest 
sources.

In Russia, as it was a case in Bosnia, individual deaths from sniper 
killings, would not cause such a widespread panic - post-
communist societies are more plastic, more used to hardships, 
people would just adjust their daily lives to accomodate one bad 
thing more. The sniper would eventually get caught, but that would 
not be as a result of a methodic, systematic, patient and slow 
police work, it would be by accident, and maybe it would happen 
sooner, maybe later. But the effect on Russian society would not 
be that great, as it was on the American society.

American society prize highly every individual life, it does not 
tolerate any disturbance of its suburban peace and it is media 
driven. Therefore, again, it is vulnerable to relatively low-cost 
terrorism. One marksman with a sniper-rifle and a wreck of a car is 
enough to paralyze a country with fear. It is the repetition - which in 
Bosnia after a while was greated by a shrug - that will drive the 
people crazy.

However, Russians are vulnerable to the 'siege mentality', too, just 
in another way. A single, more expensive terrorist venue, like 
taking over a theater in downtown Moscow and holding hundreds 
as hostages at a moment, which, is indeed similar to sniper in its 
effect of spreading fear: he also held thousands, millions as 
hostages, because nobody could predict who would be shot next, 
but it is also different because all the victims are corraled and 
exposed together as a collective - their immediate number being 
what instigates fear in Russian society.

As they started killing of hostages as promised, the theater might 
have become a startling killing field. Putin obviously did not want to 
go down in history as someone under whose presidency terrorists 
slaughtered hundreds of people in Moscow downtown. So, he 
ordered Russian troops to take over the building. Americans 
always talk publicly about not negotiating with terrorists, but 
secretly they usually do negotiate. Russians repeat over and over 
publicly how they are open "for any kind of contacts," while they 
are amassing troops, and instead of the promised envoy, they send 
in soldiers. 

Military operation lasted less than an hour. Yet, it took about two 
hours for a sad parade of ambulance vehicles to take all the 
wounded out. Russian spec-ops are not really gentle. About 90 of 
750 theatergoers died as the consequence of terrorists or Russian 
troops killing them - an 8% collateral damage that would send any 
American president down to his ranch, but an action that would 
make the Russian president a hero.

ivo