Moscow’s Innocent Victims
Deaglán de Bréadún
There was a Fenian back in the 19th Century who said, “Terrorism is the legitimate weapon of the weak against the strong” but this really won’t wash. The Moscow Metro bombing is the latest atrocity in which innocent civilians have been killed.
Having spent some time reporting for this newspaper from Moscow in the mid-1990s, I was a regular user of the city’s remarkable Metro system, the biggest in the world, which moves huge numbers of people around the city day by day.
Whatever perceived injustices motivated the women who allegedly set off those bombs in the Russian capital surely cannot justify this appalling misdeed. The same applies to suicide bombings elsewhere – regardless of what may have been done to the Palestinians, Tamils or whoever.
I am not unconscious of the fact that mighty states have over the years carried out horrific air raids on cities and towns in which many hundreds of thousands, if not millions, have been horribly incinerated.
That includes Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the London Blitz, the fire-bombing of Dresden. I have heard it suggested that the great task of this century should be to End All War. The ultimate aim would be to abolish war the same way legalised slavery was abolished in the past.
Not a bad idea at all.
