Slack request.

Slack request.

     I have actually heard comparisons to 9/11. That event killed 1000s of times more people and did 1000s of times more economic damage.

     Another talking head or government official (Guiliani?) was talking about how a lot of Chechens got training in Afghanistan, which is true.  But clearly not these guys, since that training happened mostly back during the Russo-Afghan War of the 1980s.

     I support secession, even for seemingly stupid reasons, if enough of the population supports it.  South Ossetia and Abkhazia, in the same mountain range as Chechnya, want to break away from Georgia, moving them closer to Russia, and Russia supports that.  When the Chechens want to break away from them, they attack.

     Personally, I would tend to side with the people in those provinces, on what they want to do.  It's clearly not a passing fancy in any of these cases, as these situations have been ongoing since roughly 1991.

     The Tsars seem to have killed or expelled, maybe, NINETY PERCENT of the Chechens.

     Stalin forcibly relocated them all, ONE THIRD TO HALF DIED before they were allowed to return, decades later.

     And now it seems Yeltsin/Putin/Medvedev have killed AT LEAST TEN PERCENT MORE.

     Now, it's up to you, but you might consider cuttin' them some slack.