There is some cruel irony in the fact that Russia, which has been the perpetrator of so many terror attacks in recent years from Syria to Ukraine, was itself struck by terrorists on Friday night. Heavily armed marauders attacked Crocus City Hall, a concert venue in Moscow, killing at least 133 people and injuring more than 100.
The Islamic State quickly claimed responsibility, and it soon emerged that U.S. intelligence had warned the Kremlin that Islamic State-Khorasan (ISIS-K), the ISIS affiliate based in Afghanistan, was planning an attack in Moscow. The U.S. Embassy in Moscow had even told Americans in the capital to avoid concert halls.
Yet Russian dictator Vladimir Putin — focused on imaginary threats from supposed Ukrainian Nazis rather than actual threats from Islamist terrorists — blithely dismissed the prescient U.S. messages. Providing insight into his twisted psyche, Putin earlier this week described the American notification as a “provocative” statement that resembled “outright blackmail and an intention to intimidate and destabilize our society.”
That Putin ignored the U.S. attempt to help — only to have his own security forces fail to prevent the Moscow attack — tells you all you need to know about the nature of his regime. Putin is not interested in serving the Russian people or protecting them from actual threats, and his regime is more adept at repressing peaceful dissidents than violent terrorists.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini.../?itid=mc_magnet-oprussia_inline_collection_6
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...?itid=mc_magnet-oprussia_inline_collection_18
Putin’s goal is to attain imperial glory for himself as a latter-day czar, no matter the cost to the long-suffering Russian people. Now, rather than going after his actual enemies, he may well try to find some way to pin the Moscow attack on Ukraine and the United States and use it to justify further assaults on innocent Ukrainians.
The Kremlin’s failure to stop an ISIS-K attack comes only a few months after the U.S. intelligence community had provided a similar warning of an ISIS-K attack to Iran — only to have the mullahs also turn a deaf ear to the words of the “Great Satan.” The Islamic State was able to carry out two bombings in Iran on Jan. 3, killing more than 95 people in the town of Kerman who had gathered to commemorate the death in a U.S. airstrike of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, himself one of the chief organizers of terrorism in the Middle East.
The Iranian regime, like the Russian one, has undoubtedly overdosed on its own propaganda about America as its enemy — and thus refused to lend credence to what this supposed enemy was telling them. It does not require a psychology degree to detect the projection: Neither Vladimir Putin nor Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could imagine informing Washington of a terrorist plot in the United States to save the lives of ordinary Americans, so these tyrants cannot imagine Washington trying to save Russian or Iranian lives. They must have imagined that the U.S. warnings were some kind of trap, because they could not conceive of Americans (whom they routinely accuse of convoluted plots against their regimes) being so guileless as to help their enemies.
After the earlier U.S. warning to Iran became public, some Americans, too, were critical of the Biden administration for notifying Tehran. After all, Iranian proxies have been attacking U.S. forces in the Middle East for years. Why not give them a taste of their own medicine? But that is not the way the U.S. intelligence community operates, and we should be glad of that, because Washington draws a distinction between combatants and non-combatants; U.S. enemies ignore such distinctions.
The U.S. intelligence community has a “duty to warn” the victims of impending terrorist attacks, and while such warnings have normally gone out to U.S. citizens and U.S. allies, it makes sense that the Biden administration also warned Moscow and Tehran. Terrorists should be considered under international law as “enemies of mankind,” and all states should have an obligation to hunt them down. Just because Russia and Iran are complicit in terrorism of their own doesn’t mean that America should be complicit in terrorism against Russian or Iranian civilians.
The Islamic State quickly claimed responsibility, and it soon emerged that U.S. intelligence had warned the Kremlin that Islamic State-Khorasan (ISIS-K), the ISIS affiliate based in Afghanistan, was planning an attack in Moscow. The U.S. Embassy in Moscow had even told Americans in the capital to avoid concert halls.
Yet Russian dictator Vladimir Putin — focused on imaginary threats from supposed Ukrainian Nazis rather than actual threats from Islamist terrorists — blithely dismissed the prescient U.S. messages. Providing insight into his twisted psyche, Putin earlier this week described the American notification as a “provocative” statement that resembled “outright blackmail and an intention to intimidate and destabilize our society.”
That Putin ignored the U.S. attempt to help — only to have his own security forces fail to prevent the Moscow attack — tells you all you need to know about the nature of his regime. Putin is not interested in serving the Russian people or protecting them from actual threats, and his regime is more adept at repressing peaceful dissidents than violent terrorists.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini.../?itid=mc_magnet-oprussia_inline_collection_6
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...?itid=mc_magnet-oprussia_inline_collection_18
Putin’s goal is to attain imperial glory for himself as a latter-day czar, no matter the cost to the long-suffering Russian people. Now, rather than going after his actual enemies, he may well try to find some way to pin the Moscow attack on Ukraine and the United States and use it to justify further assaults on innocent Ukrainians.
The Kremlin’s failure to stop an ISIS-K attack comes only a few months after the U.S. intelligence community had provided a similar warning of an ISIS-K attack to Iran — only to have the mullahs also turn a deaf ear to the words of the “Great Satan.” The Islamic State was able to carry out two bombings in Iran on Jan. 3, killing more than 95 people in the town of Kerman who had gathered to commemorate the death in a U.S. airstrike of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, himself one of the chief organizers of terrorism in the Middle East.
The Iranian regime, like the Russian one, has undoubtedly overdosed on its own propaganda about America as its enemy — and thus refused to lend credence to what this supposed enemy was telling them. It does not require a psychology degree to detect the projection: Neither Vladimir Putin nor Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could imagine informing Washington of a terrorist plot in the United States to save the lives of ordinary Americans, so these tyrants cannot imagine Washington trying to save Russian or Iranian lives. They must have imagined that the U.S. warnings were some kind of trap, because they could not conceive of Americans (whom they routinely accuse of convoluted plots against their regimes) being so guileless as to help their enemies.
After the earlier U.S. warning to Iran became public, some Americans, too, were critical of the Biden administration for notifying Tehran. After all, Iranian proxies have been attacking U.S. forces in the Middle East for years. Why not give them a taste of their own medicine? But that is not the way the U.S. intelligence community operates, and we should be glad of that, because Washington draws a distinction between combatants and non-combatants; U.S. enemies ignore such distinctions.
The U.S. intelligence community has a “duty to warn” the victims of impending terrorist attacks, and while such warnings have normally gone out to U.S. citizens and U.S. allies, it makes sense that the Biden administration also warned Moscow and Tehran. Terrorists should be considered under international law as “enemies of mankind,” and all states should have an obligation to hunt them down. Just because Russia and Iran are complicit in terrorism of their own doesn’t mean that America should be complicit in terrorism against Russian or Iranian civilians.