Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

In a powerful essay, "The road to the apocalypse leads through Beslan", which appeared in Le Monde on Wednesday, the philosopher Andr頇lucksmann considers the implications of the Beslan massacre. "We cannot run away from these images," he says. "They are prophetic. The apocalyptic scenes that played out before our eyes on the third of September have a future. An appalling future. Like a three-stage rocket they are aimed not only at the Caucasus and Russia, but at all of Europe." Glucksmann rails against the passivity of the "peace camp", which chanted "War begets terror" in the run up to the war in Iraq, but is now oddly silent about the Chechen horror. "Everyone knows that the Chechen population has been reduced by a fifth to a quarter," writes Glucksmann. "For those without imaginative powers, this bloodletting would represent the loss of 10 to 15 million people in France. Chechnya is suffering the worst of the wars being fought on earth at the moment: 40,000 children killed, no images, under the cover of darkness."

Glucksmann has had Putin's number for some time now. He placed the dictator-to-be in the pseudo-"camp of peace" back in March in a Wall Street Journal article titled "The World of Megaterrorism", which he wrote in response to the Madrid bombings. An excerpt: "Time has come for decisions. Either Europe unifies to resist the engineers of the apocalypse, following Tony Blair. Or it poses as an opponent of the United States, following the pseudo-'camp of peace' led by Jacques Chirac, Vladimir Putin and the hesitating Gerhard Schroeder. The 'viva la muerte' chanted by the Islamist legions vindicates Tony Blair. But the terror they spread, petrifying European citizens, threatens to lead to resignation after resignation."

For more of Andr頇lucksmann's ideas, check out this excellent Innocents Abroad posting, "Ouest contre ouest, The Cowboy contre the Tsar". And, yes, where is the "PACE" crowd these days? They must have heard about Beslan by now. Perhaps they're on holidays. Yes, that's it. They're taking a vacation from protesting about Iraq, the peace protestors.