Russia under attack

Two passengers blown up. A massacre at a school. The terrorists are at war with the world. What can the Russians do?

Postrel cites an item she saw over at Belmont Club. Excerpts:

America's unmatched power allowed President Bush to select the most humane course of war available. No European power, nor all of them put together, could have embarked on such a precise campaign for lack of means. It was a rich man's strategy, a guerre de luxe.

But no one who has seen the rags and hodgepodge of equipment issued to the Russian Special Forces can entertain any illusion that Vladimir Putin can go around launching raids with hi-tech helicopters, or follow around perps with robotic drones before firing, or use satellite-guided bombs to wipe out enemy safe houses that have been seeded with RFID chips. Nor will those detained by Russia gain weight the way detainees have done at the "inhuman" Gitmo prison. That's an American way of war which even Europeans can only regard with envy. The poor must respond with less.

Frum has these observations. Excerpts:

Who doubts that al Qaeda would have liked to carry out an attack like this on American soil if they could?
...........
The Chechens had a once-good cause – a much better cause for example than the Palestinians or even the Kashmiris. But their cause has been infiltrated and hijacked by Islamist extremists, and the world must demand that Chechen nationalists repudiate both the ideology and the vicious methods of the Islamic extremists. Independence movements that commit such atrocities lose all moral standing, no matter how sympathetic the origins of those movements.

I hate to be morbid but what is going on in the minds of Al-Qaeda?

If they want Sen. Kerry to win, they should "take a vacation." I don't see the US public turning Bush out if they perceive that the danger is still present.

Al-Qaeda only cares about killing and destroying. I don't think they even care who is President of the USA. They would attack whenever they have the chance regardless of the consequences.