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Was the Russian response a success?
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There has been a lot of talk about the Russian gassing of the theater. Some people are calling the raid a success. I cannot agree.

The argument seems to be that the terrorists are dead, and at least most of the hostages survived. That seems a pretty poor definition of success. Over one hundred people are confirmed dead, several hundred are in the hospital, and over one hundred of those are known to be in serious condition. The death count will almost certainly rise. These people are dead due to the gas that the Russian officials used.

I don’t know if an assault was justified. Right now, no one does. There is very little information on what actually happened, and the reports are contradictory. However, the goal of any hostage crises has to be the survival of all the hostages, and the arrest or death of the hostage takers. Even if the assault was justified, it was still a failure. To judge it a success just because the terrorists were killed seems to me to be a mistake. How many of the hostages would have had to die before the raid was considered a failure? 10%? 25%? 60%? This was not about the terrorists, it was about the lives of the hostages.

The Russians used tactics that resulted in carnage. The fact that they are not revealing the name of the gas implies that it was possible to foresee that the gas would cause such carnage. Even if it wasn’t, it should be clear now that the combination of these tactics with that gas was a failure. One hopes that Russian authorities have learned from their mistakes

October 28th, 2002 General | 2 comments

2 Comments

  1. julia writes:

    Up to 200 people may eventually die, the Russians knew the only shooting was by a panicking Chechen teenager three hours earlier, and there’s a good possibility they broke international law by using the gas they did.

    Which decision they compounded by attempting to cover it up at the cost of the lives of hostages who could have been saved if the doctors had knows what they were dealing with.

    I’m saying not a huge success.

    Comment 10/28/2002

  2. Wank You writes:

    According to this Reuters article:
    “the operation would be considered a success in military terms, defined as fewer than 30 percent casualties”

    http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/reuters20021028_99.html

    Comment 10/30/2002

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