The Beslan Massacre was horrifying. The details are even worse than you can imagine.


As Mark Steyn said the following the 9/11 attacks on our country, however:

I remember a couple of days after September 11, writing that weepy candlelight vigils were a cop-out: the issue wasn't whether you were sad about the dead people but whether you wanted to do something about it.

So what can you do about it? Well, after the 9/11 attacks, aid and sympathy flowed in from all over the world. A small, poor, tribe in Africa was even moved to donate some cattle to our prosperous country. If you feel moved at all to show your concern and compassion for the victims of Russia's 9/11, please give whatever you can. A fund has been setup at this web site: Help Beslan Children. Infidel Cowboy has donated $100. If you feel moved to donate, leave a comment and encourage others to do so as well.

update: Mark Steyn also has advice on what else can be done, namely elect leaders willing to tackle the challenges we face head on:

What happened in one Russian schoolhouse is an abomination that has to be defeated, not merely regretted. But the only guys with any kind of plan are the Bush administration. Last Thursday, the President committed himself yet again to wholesale reform of the Muslim world. This is a dysfunctional region that exports its toxins, to Beslan, Bali and beyond, and is wealthy enough to be able to continue doing so.

You can't turn Saudi Arabia and Yemen into New Hampshire or Sweden (according to taste), but if you could transform them into Singapore or Papua New Guinea or Belize or just about anything else you'd be making an immense improvement. It's a long shot, but, unlike Putin's plan to bomb them Islamists into submission or Chirac's reflexive inclination to buy them off, Bush is at least tackling the "root cause".

If you've got a better idea, let's hear it. Right now, his is the only plan on the table. The ideology and rationale that drove the child-killers in Beslan is the same as that motivating cells in Rome and Manchester and Seattle and Sydney. In this war, you can't hold the line against the next depravity.