The mildest comment that the denouement of the Chechen hostage situation permits is that the Russians do things differently from us. The less polite but fair comment is that the drastic approach to the situation in the Moscow theater taken by President Vladimir Putin's government was premature, and that most of the deaths that occurred were probably unnecessary.
One must grant the political point that the Russians could not yield to the hostage-takers' demand that all Russian troops be withdrawn from Chechnya. But Russian authorities could have pursued talks with the hostage-takers through mediators. Even though the International Committee of the Red Cross does not undertake mediation, its representatives had already been inside the theater to provide medical care.
There would have been at least two reasons to prolong talks. First, the crisis in the theater might have been resolved eventually without the assault. Second, talks would have bought time; in fact the hostage-takers were in the process of releasing captives, if on an uneven schedule. Some children, foreigners and people with medical problems already had been freed, thus drawing down the number of people at physical risk when or if an assault became unavoidable.
The Russians would argue that the Chechens had already killed hostages when they attacked. Looking at what occurred retrospectively, however, it would have taken a long time at the rate they were doing that to have killed 117 people, the number of hostages who have died from the assault as of yesterday.
The use of gas may well have been motivated by a desire to lower the number of casualties, but miscalculation, apparently based on a lack of experience in using the gas, instead resulted in the deaths of many of the less robust innocent people held in the theater.
There will be a temptation for Americans to excoriate the Russians for the early Saturday morning attack, given its harshness and the alternative of playing a waiting game.
Such criticism might be satisfying to dish out, but it won't change anything. The appropriate posture for Americans at this point is to grieve with them. Americans, after all have known such national tragedies themselves.
Grieve publicly at the deaths. Grieve privately that the Russian government still hasn't found methods for dealing with problems like the theater seizure that don't involve horrendous casualties. After the furor has died down, the United States quietly can suggest talks between U.S. officials and their Russian counterparts about how such agonizing events can be resolved with less loss of life.
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