Certain events defy comprehension. Some of the same events, as a direct result of their offensive nature, truly discourage any possible bridge between wanting to understand, and actually getting the rationale and ideologly behind mystifying actions. As the people of Beslan start to bury their dead, i'm left with a number of questions for the alleged mixed ethnicity/Chechen force, truly terrorists in my eyes. I know most of them are dead, so they can't explain what they were thinking, and how killing people taking their kids to school was a rational protest, and how the siege could possibly give them leverage for independance. I just don't get it. By doing this, they've alienated even those of us who want to understand all sides to an argument and give everyone a chance to speak. By carefully planning the hostage taking, and then killing a largely innocent population of people who had little, if anything to do with your problem just doesn't make sense. i haven't been able to find any reporting that tries to explain their vantage point, and i'm distressed. I would like it to be insane ranting, that would easily be dismissed as the raving of a group of cult like extremists. I want to separate them from a people who have a completely legitimate claim regarding their violent disenfranchisement. I don't want this situation to become so unreasonable as to facilitate the acts of further genocide "validated" by the quest for revenge. There will be 40 days of orthodox mourning and then (if not before then,) the shit will hit the fan.