Who?
The terror attack on the Nevsky Express from Petersburg to Moscow is the same as attacking the Metroliner on the New York to Washington run, a major stab at the comity of the Russian Federation. My information is that it was jihad related. A renegade military munitions expert named Kosalapov who went over to the notorious, romantic, homicidal Shamil Besayev and the Chechen diehards. Basayev was slain in 2007 by a Russian op that intercepted him on his way to a massive martyr operation in Petersburg. The Russians have been hunting Kosalapov since 2006. The man-hunt is ceaseless but likely futile. The Chechens have joined the jihad in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia. Vladimir Putin rose swiftly by boasting he would got through an "outhouse) to get the Chechens. Basayev's ghost haunts Russia.
What are you saying, John? That once viral terrorism sets in, there is no going back; no way of defeating it; that containment is the only policy? When even Putin can't stem the tide, how can we be expected to do it? We, with all our laws that ironically bind us to protect our freedoms. Except, since terrorism raised its ugly head, we have not been free. And we grow less free with every incident. Until (it is already apparent to where it ultimately leads) we find ourselves shallow breathing, buried in a coffin of our own making on some suitably theatrical wind-swept hillock.
Every opportunity, we give up a little more. The Russians clamp down harder, becoming more brutal, approaching the mindset and methods of the terrorists themselves. Neither approach seems to work. We must always continue to be on guard. Terrorism haunts us like death haunts old age. Perhaps if we were to ignore it altogether, it would go away and leave us alone.
We should fight terrorists by not stamping their visas. It's so easy that even a government employee should be able to figure out the concept, it's cheaper than rebuilding downtown Manhattan, and it doesn't involve littering the Middle East with depleted uranium.