They were given autonomy in 1996.

Autonomy seems to work reasonably well for the other autonomous Russian republics.

Why not for the Chechens?

For all I know, a majority of them would be willing to settle for that but are prevented from doing so by a terrorist minority.

Don't get me started on the Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank. Never will they be able to form a viable state that exists in peace alongside Israel.

Like everybody else they have a natural right to live in a democratic state among their own kind and elect their representatives.

Gaza ---> Egypt
West Bank (~ 90%) ---> Jordan

We're not part of Britain.

So you think these are all roses by another name?

Odd that you neglect to mention Tibet, the Basques, the Catalonyans, the Corsicans, Sardinia, Scotland, Wales, the Laplanders, Mindanao, Quebec, the Sikhs, Christian Exodus, Aztlan... or just click here.

Sorry, Cechens and Palestinians, I have a general rule: if you promote your cause by intentionally murdering civilians and schoolkids, your cause gets zero sympathy from me.

You left out Desert and Hawaii.

But then there are the places like the Falklands and Gibraltar and Hong Kong and Northern Ireland and East Timor that don't want to be handed over to the nearby countries that claim them. (Funny how most of that list is related to the UK.)

Or the Karens in Burma, Aceh in Indonesia, most of India, Xinjian, and who knows how much of Africa. Self-determination is certainly an important principle, but it is not the sole determinant. The problem with OJ's statement is that it implies that only those separatist groups willing to kill other people are important enough to get their own state.

I think the Czechs and Slovaks are the only people to peacefully separate in the last 100 years.

And I suppose the Arabs involved in the bloodbath are their versions of Lafayette?

Somehow I doubt Putin (or any Russian at all, really) is a Wilsonian...

Scotland is already well on its way. Does anyone doubt Tibet will be an independent nation again soon? Any people of sufficient size who considers themselves a nation already is going to have a state.

brian:

Of Irgun.

Chris:

Indonesia will devolve into several more states besides East Timor which is a perfect example.

And, of course, America seized its independence at the barrel of a gun.

Raoul:

Ireland did.

You're aware, aren't you, that among the numerous "white power / white nation" groupings, New Hampshire figures highly as a target state for a takeover by relocation and eventual secession.

This is ethnic, therefore meets your requirement. You O.K. with that? How about the "Christian Exodus" or the Aztlan crowd?

Why is Russia taking on all this grief to keep Chechnya? Are you certain that a majority of Chechnyans would not settle for autonomy, if they did not have Bassayev and his killers to fear?

Eugene:

America isn't premised on such things, which is why we kept the South and why there's no serious separatist movement even inplaces like HI which once was.

I've asked Russians I know about Chechnya. They all support keeping it. I felt this was weird given the fact that the region has no mineral or agricultural wealth and that Chechens have a centuries-old reputation for criminality and brutality, just ask Lermontov. ('the dirty Chechen with his knife in the dark')

They make an interesting point though. Russia has a significant Muslim population, even after the secession of the Central Asian SSRs. Among them are something like 12 million Tatars. For Russians, the memory of the 'Tatar Yoke' from 800 years ago is far worse than even that of Stalin's terror. If the Muslim Chechens get away with it, what happens in Tatarstan? And if real war breaks out with Tatarstan, don't all the goofy nations along Russia's border with the hordes of Islam join in the fight?

One by-product of the EU has been the strengthening of the constituent nationalities of larger countries. Bretons, Alsatians, Catalans, Basques, Scots, and the rest all feel that a larger EU will give them greater autonomy in their own lives than do the UK, France and Spain. If the European 'super-state' gets formed, each of these national groupings, as well as countless others like Flemings, Sorbs, Tyrolers and Frisians, expects to be allowed to secede from their respective nations. Why remain attached to archaic entities like France or the UK when you can all be part of one big, happy Euro-state? Would the EU ignore the peculiar needs of Alsatians and Bretons more than Paris already does? If EU documents get translated into Estonian or Greek, why not Catalan which has twice as many speakers as Greek and 5 times as many as Estonian?

BTW, OJ, the Irgun never engaged in any activity which could legitimately be called terrorism. The alleged massacre of Deir Yassin, in reality no more of a massacre than we saw in Jenin, was the result of Arab attacks on Jewish settlements where Jewish women and children were butchered. Blowing up the King David Hotel was a legitimate military act. It was British military HQ at the time. It was used for the storage of munitions used in Britain's attempt to strangle Jewish nationhood. And the Irgun did publicly warn people in Hebrew and English language newspapers that they would target the King David Hotel and why they were doing so. It was quite analogous to the German sinking of the Lusitania in 1915. The Lusitania was being used to ship munitions to the Brits so they could continue their wrongful war to support Tsarist imperialism in the Balkans. The Germans did advertise in American newspapers that many ocean liners were being used by the Brits in just such a manner, specifically naming the Lusitania, and that this was a violation of international maritime law, which it most certainly was, and that the Reichsmarine felt it was appropriate to target those ships to compel the Brits to stop violating international law.

They don't call it perfidious Albion for nothing.

No opinion stated here is meant to imply anything about Lehi(better known as the Stern Gang) and their activities which did cross the line.

At some point the Chechens, like the Palestinians, crossed the line between having legitimate grievances deserving the support of civilized peoples and the current circumstances where I can find only contempt and the desire to see their total annihilation.

Orrin,

In other words, you have no knowledge of what the majority of Chechnyans would be willing to settle for if Bassayev wasn't holding a gun to their necks. (Neither do I.)

Also, nothing from you on why Russia has decided to preserve its Union, even at the cost of terror to its civilians. Is their choice irrational? It is surely not illegal under their own constitution or under whatever international law may apply.

Your "Irgun" throw away remark would have better been left unsaid; the Irgun were not altar boys but not remotely as evil as the Chechen terrorists have been in the past weeks alone.

Since you have written thoughtfully in the past on the implications of the President's June 24, 2002 speech setting out the conditions for yet another Palestinian state (after Jordan and Israel), you are surely aware that the chances of the West Bank/Gaza Arabs ever meeting these conditions are virtually nil, never mind the impossibility of sustaining a geographically disjunct state (remember Pakistan / Bangladesh) and the insufficient size.

Which leads inevitably to the least bad fallback scenario: Jordan gets most of the West Bank with all that good quality farmland, making it about four times the size of Israel (good for the ego of the "Palestinians"), and Egypt must take back (Eyeless in) Gaza.

It's going to take a lot of armtwisting (not to mention money), but what better alternatives are there. The hope is that integration into the populations of the acquiring states will bring about a dilution of the "Palestinians'" hatred; the risk is that the accepting countries will become infected.

However, permitting the establishment of a disjunct terror state is even more risky.

Scotland?

Ha hah ha.

Destroy the terrorists and let the Chechens get on as an autonomous Province within Russia.

Eugene:

Let the Chechens vote--what do you think they'll choose?

The Palestinians will have their state by next summer

MB:

How many more centuries of oppression before Russia crosses the line?

Bart:

It's never terrorism when we or our friends do it. Only when the "others" do.

OJ,

If you don't see the difference between blowing up a military headquarters or a munitions ship and blowing up a school full of children, then I can't help you.

We'll kill more children before we're done with the war on terror, actually already have--though it will be with conventional military bombing and sanctions and the like--than the Chechens ever could. This is just a debate about style.

If we kill children the reason is that the terrorists hide behind children as the Israelis have discovered. It is not our intent to murder children. It is the intent of the terrorists to murder children.

The difference is about more than style and if you don't see that, then you're pretty pathetic.

oj: The Irgun? So the Muslims of the world are trying to set up an Islamic homeland, dreamt about for thousands of years, in Chechnya? Wow, I never knew that that is what's going on...

OJ:

I am making my own simple judgements here as to what is right and wrong, moral and immoral, acceptable and unacceptable. In my own simplistic view of the world there is nothing honorable or noble in the deliberate slaughter of children in pursuit of one's goal whether it be the Chechens, Palestinians, or anyone else with a grievance of any kind. To reward such despicable and depraved behavior is something I cannot find within myself.

Bart:

We don't mind that we kill them because it furthers our ends. Intent is obviously incidental to the dead.

MB:

How many died because of our Iraq sanctions? How many at Hiroshima, hamburg, etc.

brian:

So thousands of years justifies terrorism but hundreds doesn't? Odd line to draw.

OJ, your arguments are pretty bizarre. Are you playing devil's advocate here?

We don't purposely kill children. Not for any reason, not to impose sanctions on Saddam, not to destroy Saddam's regime, not to [attempt to] convince any government to change its ways. We didn't even purposely kill British children during the American Revolution.

Yes, children have been killed by the US military--and other Western countries militaries, too. Butu never with the goal of "kill children".

ray:

They aren't killing children as an end either, but as a means. we have no problem with it as our means because we believe in our end. If their end too is just--and all they want is their own state like everyone else got--then all we're left arguing about is the style of their means.

The distinction between involuntary manslaughter and first degree murder may elude you, OJ, but it doesn't elude most sentient people in First World countries.

When Bomber Harris fire-bombed Dresden, the reason was to destroy a major manufacturing center and especially a major transit hub. It was the 1940s, and sadly there were civilian casualties. However, when a bunch of PLO terrorists walk into a pizzeria full of civilians eating pizza, there is no military target, their interest is to destroy that pizzeria, killing as many civilians as they can. When a bunch of Muslims fly a plane into the WTC, they are not attacking a military target, they are targetting civilians. That is the difference between what the terrorists do and what we do.

We dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to save millions of American and Japanese lives. Had it been necessary to invade and had the civilians resisted as they did in Okinawa, most estimates are that we would have lost over a million soldiers and that tens of millions of Japanese would have been killed. Is that a preferable outcome to what happened?

Bart:

I'm not arguing that national security doesn't justify killing innocents.You are.

Really, OJ?

It seemed to me you were arguing that attempts to minimize civilian casualties in wartime are no different from killing civilians indiscriminately. There is about 1700 years of Christian 'Just War' doctrine that would say otherwise. Killing non-combatants is wrong but sometimes unavoidable. The terrorists target non-combatants when they bomb an airliner, a pizzeria, or a school. When terrorists lodge themselves in a hotel and fire from the windows, a tank shell might hit the hotel and kill a few non-combatant guests and employees. Those deaths are a misfortune but sadly were excusable because the terrorists behaved in such a way as to make excusable.

Yes, for the Chechens killing civilians is wrong but unavoidable. They can't win their just war in the field. They'll have to kill civilians until the Russians leave them alone. It's worked for the Palestinians and will for the Chechens--the only question is how many more Russians need to die before they admit defeat.

The question oj puts before us:

We don't mind that we kill them because it furthers our ends. Intent is obviously incidental to the dead.

needs answering. I'll give it a try. For now, my rebuttal is based on these points:

Rebuttal 1
Intent does matter, and ours (removing a tyrant, making the world safer for freedom-loving people) is noble.

Counter-rebuttal 1 (CR 1)
According to the Black Book of Communism, 100 million people were killed by communism, an ideology whose adherents claimed noble intentions (with even the atheists among them often citing Jesus' Sermon on the Mount), during the 20th century.

Counter-counter rebuttal 1 (CCR 1)
The people at the top -- Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot -- were brutal rulers who only cared about power, they were not communists.

CCCR 1
That is the inevitable outcome of applying Marxist-Leninist ideology. Centralisation of power without checks and balances, esp. by a freely elected body of representatives, always yields the same result. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

CCCCR 1 .... this could go on endlessly, I'll prune the tree here.

Rebuttal 2
Not only are our intentions are good, our cause is morally superior.

CR 2
Difficult to argue against because the claim rests on belief. For the same reason, unlikely to convince those who do not share the belief in the same cause already.

Line 2 self-terminates here, the Rebuttal is not very effective.

Rebuttal 3
Quantification: Weigh the (unintentional) loss of life caused by us against the lives saved due to our intervention. By one count this number is now some 70,000 people.

CR 3
This one is very effective. However, it is esthetically not at all attractive, conjuring up the image of some accountant dweeb with green eyeshades doing addition in a dusty backroom.

CCR 3
It may not be pretty but it is effective as you say. Deal with it!

CCCR 3
Okay, but how do you justify helping the Iraqis but not others, such as the victims of genocide in Ruanda. It's all about OIIIIIL, you self-serving hypocrite.

CCCCR 3
Doesn't change the fact that 70,000 Iraqis are alive today who otherwise wouldn't have been... and if we averted nuclear war in the Middle East that number needs to be at least an order of magnitude higher. We can't be everywhere, we can't save everyone.

(Boy this is taking much longer than I thought and I have only scratched the surface. I'll take a break here!)

Eugene:

Try stopping at rebuttal one, which is the case I've made. Checnya has been victimized by a tyranny for two hundred years (the black book's pages include Chechens) and it should be removed.

If the Chechens attacked a military installation and in the course of their attack accidentally killed some children visiting that day, that's sad but legally and morally permissible. They attacked a purely civilian target for the purpose of killing civilians. That is the difference and that is what is inexcusable.

It is tough to say that Russia since the fall of Gorbachev is a tyranny.

They can't win their just war in the field. They'll have to kill civilians until the Russians leave them alone. It's worked for the Palestinians and will for the Chechens

This, however, is atrocious. An intelligent man like Orrin Judd should know better.

As everyone and their dog knows by now, the "Palestinians" -- which is shorthand for (1) non-Israeli Arabs who fled the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, their children, grand-children, great-grandchildren, today living mostly in Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, Arab and Western countries... (2) pre-1948 Arab population of Gaza and West Bank and their descendants... (3) frauds and impostors from Muslim countries claiming to be (1) or (2), who came to profit from the generous welfare handouts and free medical care administered by the UNRWA or for reasons of jihad -- DO NOT WANT TO BE LEFT ALONE BY THE ISRAELIS, THEY WANT TO DESTROY ISRAEL AS A MAJORITY-JEWISH STATE.

They had their chance for a state of their own more than once since 1947, the last one they missed was at Camp David/Taba 2001. Even today Pres. Bush is holding out yet another chance for them.

Orrin you are willfully misrepresenting the Palestinians' war aim, that makes me angry!

On the other side, the Israeli side, most Israelis have been willing to trade land for peace ever since 1967.

You have it exactly backwards. It is the Israeli war aim to be left alone! To live, on 0.2% of the landmass of the Arab states, on less than the land promised to the Jews, even at the risk of living with borders that are hardly militarily defensible, even at the risk of calling down G-d's wrath (a discussion which I won't enter for lack of learning).

They can't beat the Russian military. They can raise the cost of continued Russian interference in their affairs so high that the people won't pay it.

Not a tyranny? Seen Grozny?

http://www.time.com/time/europe/photoessays/grozny/

Eugene:

The PLO won but can't afford a state because the Palestinians won't need or want them anymore, which is why Ariel Sharon and George Bush are just imposing one on them. The Chechens won't want to be governed by the black widows either, but they want a state and they'll have it.

Try stopping at rebuttal one

And just coincidentally, this gets you off the hook Orrin.

For rebuttal number 2 is the "universalist mission" espoused by you!

You are arguing against yourself.

Eugene:

If you want to go through them all I don't mind.

You're right #2) is the universalist mission to get rid of tyrannies and let people govern themselves. Chechnya for the Chechens!

Whether or not the Palestinians will want to keep the PLO if and when they get their sovereign terror state is totally beside the point!

UNTIL they profoundly accept the existence of Israel (and no b.s. like "right of return to Israel proper" for them), a state for them is just giving them a secure platform for pursuing their ultimate war aim.

I would like to ask you, for your benefit and that of your guests, to put up a post on your blog with an excerpt from Palestine Is Our Land And The Jews Are Our Dogs, by Francisco J. Gil-White.

I think you will learn something about Palestinian psychology.

oj: My point is that the presence of so many Arabs in this attack shows that the Chechen movement is no longer racial (Chechen), but religious (Islamic). That's a different ballgame than the one you're so cool with.

Eugene:

No, it's precisely the point. Everyone hates the Jews and Israel but Egypt and Syria and the rest aren't killing them because they've got their own imternal problems theyt can't deal with and if they attack it's a war in which Israel can crush them with impunity. Give the Palestinians a state and it's the same deal. That's what Sharon and Bush are doing.

brian:

Yes, it would have been helpful if Russia had done the right thing a hundred fifty years ago. They didn't.

"Chechnya for the Chechens"

Nice try, but this discussion has been turning about your comment below:

We'll kill more children before we're done with the war on terror, actually already have--though it will be with conventional military bombing and sanctions and the like--than the Chechens ever could. This is just a debate about style.

In other words, you raised the question whether what we -- the U.S. -- do in Iraq and Afghanistan can be distinguished morally from what the Chechen terrorists do.

Iraq. And Afghanistan. Not Chechnya.

oj: Chechnya was de facto independent after crushing Russia in their first war. The fact that they weren't satisfied with that should tell you something.

Eugene:

Okay, why was it okay morally for us to kill tens of thousands of Iraqi children to free Iraq but not okay for Chechens to kill hundreds of Russian children to free Chechnya? Presumabl;y you don't think Afghanistan or Iraq is significantly different than Chechnya in terms of statehood, so it's really just a matter of us being allowed to kill kids to vindicate a principle but not Chechens.

brian:

They were, but Russia invaded again in '99 for its own domestic political reasons.

OJ:

I'm assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that you're being somewhat facetious in your arguments. It's Sunday, you're bored, why not stir the pot a bit. That being said, those slaughtered in Beslan were my children, my family. So too are the innocent dead in Israel, those Nepalese workers in Iraq, the people of Darfur, Buddhists in southern Thailand, Filipino and Indonesian Christians, Hindu Kashmiris, Afghani women registering to vote, and all those who wanted nothing more than to go about their lives only to be murdered in cold blood by fanatics wearing the guise of religion or nationalism. The only reward these thugs deserve is a bullet in the back of the head.

oj: So you believe those apartment buildings blew themselves up? Or perhaps Putin did it himself...

But those who died during our sanctions regime weren't our family? & didn't want "nothing more than to go about their lives"?

The ends can't be used to justify our means but not theirs. You have to argue that their end--an independent state after two hundred years of tyranny--is illegitimate in itself. And if that's so then why does anyone else need to be free? Why did Russia need to leave Poland?

brian:

Russia has some payback coming. It will have to anticipate an interval of terror even after it concedes defeat. Israel is grown-up enough to understand that which is why it's building the fence.

oj,

"so it's really just a matter of us being allowed to kill kids to vindicate a principle"

You're losing your dispassionate tone and becoming polemical! That's good, it shows me I'm getting through to you.*

"why was it okay morally for us to kill tens of thousands of Iraqi children to free Iraq "

Not even the leftist moonbats are claiming we killed tens of thousands of Iraqi children... unless you count the effects of years of sanctions and this is at the very least debatable (UNICEF accepting Iraqi government figures without checking, the WHO gave much lower figures for deaths due to UN sanctions.)

I don't have to argue to you why Operation Iraqi Freedom was justified since you yourself are a supporter.

"Presumabl;y you don't think Afghanistan or Iraq is significantly different than Chechnya in terms of statehood"

I am no expert on Chechnya. However, under Russian constitutional law and, from what I gather, international law it is an open and shut case: the Russians do not have to grant independence.

Why is it "not okay for Chechens to kill hundreds of Russian children to free Chechnya"

oj, throughout this discussion you have been assuming an absolute right of ethnic groups to secede from whatever country they belong to and form a state, by applying limitless violence against civilians if no other way exists. I deny that such an absolute right exists.

And that is the difference between Iraq/Afghanistan and Chechnya. These are two very different situations.

*Actually, I'm in over my head. Arguing against oj, I feel like playing chess against someone rated 400 points higher than me. If I try very hard and the opponent is distracted part of the time, I might hold my own for 20 moves, perhaps even win a single game just before the flag on my chess clock drops... but never a match.

I feel drained :-p ... think I'll go back to lurking for a few days.

Eugene:

The precise claim, by the UN, is that sanctions killed 500,000 Iraqi children. Let's agree that number's excessive. Say it's just 5,000. How many more school takeovers before the Chechens catch up?

Of course we were justified. So are they.

OJ:

Whether we or Saddam hold the blame for the affect of sanctions is debatable. Were the Iraqis my family. Damned straight they were! For all the debate and blather over WMD's, imminent threats, et al, my own reason for supporting the overthrow of Saddam was this: I supported the liberation of Kuwait. When G.H.W. Bush encouraged the Shia and Kurds to rise up in revolt, which they did, we abandoned them to be slaughtered by the Republican Guard. I was never more ashamed for my country. We owed them a blood debt which can never be fully repaid. The liberation of Iraq was the very least we could do to make ammends.

Do the Chechens have legitimate grievances? Most probably. Are the butchers of small children the popular representatives of the Chechen people? I have my doubts. But if they are then they are my enemy. I have chosen sides in this battle.

I was over at Instapundit and came across this link to a Mark Steyn article which is relevant to this conversation: Mark Steyn: No other word for it but slaughter
.

Bart, although Orrin classifies himself as a Christian, he accepts hardly any of the doctrines that are generally associated with the religion, certainly not 'just war.' (The only widespread Christian doctrine I can think of that he espouses is censorship)

He's got himself in a bind with himself on several fronts here. His arguments in favor of independent Chechnya and how to get it contradict his arguments about independent Vietnam and how it got there.

Although Wilson enunciated a doctrine of self-determination for small peoples, he sold them all out at Versailles. As Bush has in southern Sundan, where the people have made it as clear as the Chechens have that they want independence from the large military state. Bush, however, has told them they must cease resisting and accept permanent slavery from Khartoum.

Rather more to the original point, I read the article and it found not widespread Arab unease or outrage at the school murders. It found 2 (count 'em -- two) Arabs against, one for and one who blamed the Jews; and I don't know where you put the king. He may have had Arab parents, but he's hardly a spokesman for Islam.

(Bart: I've read the advertisements placed by the Germany embassy. They do not explicitly name the Lusitania or any other ship, nor do they allege that liners were carrying munitions. They merely caution that the liners are subject to interference when they enter a war zone, which was defined on maps.)

oj,

Have you read the article by Nabi Abdullaev?

To put it kindly -- very kindly -- it does not support your argument. At all.

Monsieur, vous avez laiss� votre reine en prise!

I am declaring victory in this chess game, on account of a massive blunder by a nominally far superior opponent.

:-) :-) :-)

OJ:

Here's a link via Drudge:
Cleric supports targeting children

Would this be considered a legitimate tactic of self-determination based on your logic? If not why not?

MB:

So we killed members of our own family--children--for a higher purpose. And we were right to do so. I agree.

Harry:

North Vietnam was given its freedom. The South didn't want to be taken over by the North. We disgraced ourselves by leaving them in the lurch.

The Chechens want no part of Russia, so the Russians will give up in the long run. We're just determing the body count now.

MB:

Britain declared war on Iraq, why shouldn't Iraqis fight back any way they can?

North Vietnam may have been given its "freedom" but unfortunately the North Vietnamese people weren't accorded the same privelege. But all things being equal neither would the actual Chechens if the "freedom fighters" who murder children indiscriminately were to assume power.

You guys are all missing the point here.

What Orrin is really trying to do is to get you to be consistent in your thinking. You can't pick and choose and say that the end justifies the means in some cases and not in others. It has to be _always_ or _never_. To argue otherwise is to espouse moral relativism.

Surely it is a mistake for outsiders to accord moral legitimacy to the political objectives of an ethnic revolt simply on the basis of the strength of their sense of grievance and past oppressions. If you are going to do that, then most of the Balkans, Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Africa will be in permament ferment because they almost all have blood on their hands, are consumed by ethnic hatred, have all suffered horribly and are pretty much all irredentists with irreconcilable claims. The Chechens may have suffered horribly from the Russians, but who hasn't in that part of the world, including the Russians?

I can see how it can be an international moral duty to get an oppressor to stop oppressing, even to the point of removing the oppressor, but to move on from there and aid and abet certain political solutions like independence or federation or whatever for moral reasons alone is a mug's game more often than not. Yugoslavia had four wars in the nineties and everybody in the West just automatically lined up with the minority du jour without any knowledge of history or care for the likely consequences. Happy place now, isn't it?

Orrin, are you saying you are more tolerant of the school massacres than 9/11 or the worst of the intifada because the Chechens were treated rottenly for a long time? That's pretty much akin to mainstream leftist "root cause" theory, isn't it?

The practices of war have been getting progressivley more savage for about a hundred and fifty years, especially with respect to civilians. But if we lose all sense of the horrifically unacceptable, whatever the cause, we're back to the Vikings.

Peter:

The President's entire Middle Eastern policy is premised on root causes. There will not be peace in the Islamic world and we will not be safe--relatively speaking--until all its states are free and independent liberal democracies. The continued oppression of Palestine and Chechnya (or of the Kurds and Shi'a of Iraq, etc.) just delays the inevitable reckoning. Terrorism is abhorrent but what else is left to the people of a nation dominated by a stronger power?

If Canada were Chechnya would you grin and bear it?

"...until all its states are free and independent liberal democracies."

Super. Does that mean every nationalist movement must be accommodated by definition, especially the ones that are really, really, really sincere and determined?

I have no idea what I would do, but what I would do would not be determinative of universal tenets of morality all right-thinking people the world over should adopt in my support. Nor would the oppressions suffered give me a licence to kidnap and terrorize grade-schoolers, deprive them of food and water and then murder them as they fled. But if I did that, I would think that my cause would have abdicated a lot of its moral legitimacy and it would be my fault.

Orrin, the other problem here is that the claims of these people to widespread, even universal support and popularity are very suspect. The Palis seem to have a lot of support, but they spent thirty years executing moderates and terrorizing dissenters. You can't just assume all these various "nationalitles" are cautious, but well-informed, politically astute burghers exercising free and informed opinions. Four of the last five Chechen premiers have been assassinated. What do the think the man on the street is going to say say when the friendly Reuters hack sticks the microphone in his face.

Peter:

They are a nation:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/europe/chechnya/history.html

Joe,

"What Orrin is really trying to do is to get you to be consistent in your thinking."

That is true. I can't remember when I've been so challenged (in a good way) as by Mr. Judd.

Yet I respectfully submit that he, too, is grappling with this. We are all searching for the (political and moral) Archimedean point. There may be none -- there is none -- but I think all of us are learning something here.

Eugene:

Which is, at its best, the point of the whole exercise.

Orrin:

So what, exactly? So are the Albanians and Basques. Let's suppose post cold war Russia said: "Fine, you now have internal autonomy and can practice liberal democracy (which we all know beats in the breast of every true Chechen)to your heart's content. But we don't agree to independence--we're not breaking up the country." Does that mean if the Chechens don't agree and revolt, they are ipso facto justified and have a stronger moral licence to commit terrorism?

I misplaced my Chechen playbook somewhere, but your romantic attachment to revolution seems to be in conflict with your desire to spread constitutional liberalism. The last hundred and fifty years have taught us that ethnic self-determination does not necessarily go hand in hand with freedom and democracy and is often in conflict. Their history may be awful, but today, it seems to be Russia that stands more for what the war on terror is about than Chechyna.

BTW, if the correct moral position is to back the Chechen cause because they are a "nation", surely we have to accord equal treatment to others. We're going to be very busy.

Peter:

Moral? It has nothing to do with morality. It's just political reality. Once a people think of themselves as a nation they are.

Orrin:

Oh, good. Does that mean it's morally permissable to back the Russians against them? I like a long-odds gamble once in a while.

Orrin, thinking that you are a nation isn't a sufficient condition. If you cannot comand the power to gain and protect your freedom and sovereignty, then nationhood is just a fantasy. How many would-be nations have found their way into the dustbin of history?

If the Chechen "leaders" can't command that power, then they should make the best of their autonomy under the Russian system. A revolution that cannot succeed is a suicide pact.

Robert:

Thanks to terrorism everyone commands that power. Russia will leave Chechnya, it's just a question of when.

Peter:

Of course it's morally permissible, just a losing proposition.

Orrin:

That's ok. I'm a Canadian social conservative. I'm used to it.

And Orrin believes that Tibet will be free, altho' if that's to be so, it'll have to be pretty soon, because it is being sinicized.

There's a chance he's right about Tibet.

He also believes that Muslims want democracy and popular self-government. There is not the slightest evidence that this is so, and some thoughtful Muslims (like Bassam Tibi) have said flat-out that Muslims do not care about democracy.

But we're to alalow anybody license to kill on the basis that he says he's for the 'people's republic of . . .' Orrin does not accept that when the speakers are, say, Vietnamese. (The claim that the southern vietnamese wanted a separate nation has no evidence to support it.)

And if any group that says it's a nation, is a nation, then why has the U.S. -- originator of the concept of self-determination, Orrin says, though he's wrong -- not recognized the Basque state, the Indo-Fijian state AND the all-Fijian state, Atzlan etc?

These questions are all questions even if there were never a Chechnya.

There are two more specific questions.

One is, were the school terrorists interested in Chechen independence? I don't know, but I've been reading around and it appears to be an open question.

The other is, is the principal of popular sovereignty the greatest human good? If it isn't, then there can be crimes that invalidate a previous valid (or 'just') cause.

Anyhow, if Orrin's right, Lincoln was wrong.

Harry:

They don't need licenses. Any of them that are serious and have a coherent set of demands for freedom backed by their fellows will win.

Popular sovereignty isn't good--it's reality.

The Basques are serious -- deadly so -- and have a coherent set of demands, but we still do not have an accredited representative to the Basque government.

Popular sovereignty has failed to produce national self-government from Quebec to Kwa-Zulu/Natal.

The big powers control what they want to control.

The Basques are autonomous and that's satisfied most of them. Quebecers were never very serious and certainly never considered themselves a nation. South Africa will likely disintegrate over time.

I could have listed more failures.

Nigeria, for example.

The Biafrans were serious and had a program. We all know what happened to independent Biafra