(The Nationalist, 10 September 2004)
On 3 September 2004, the hostage-taking by Chechen guerrillas in the town of Beslan in southern Russia ended with 330 people – most of them children – killed, and 700 injured. No one who saw the TV pictures could be unmoved by the terrified children, and parents in an agony of bewilderment – some had lost children, some saw their children injured while others did not know whether their children were dead or alive. Children were used and sacrificed as hostages. Those responsible for this might argue that it was ‘All for the good of the cause’.
And remember Stalin, who said, ‘One death is a disaster; a million deaths is merely a statistic’. He knew what he was talking about – the Ukrainian kulaks he starved to death by the million, the purges, the Gulag holding between 12 and 14 million prisoners and killing one third of a million of them every year. All for the good of the cause.
Another story from another place: ‘Economic sanctions have probably taken the lives of more people in Iraq than have been killed by all weapons of mass destruction in history’. (See John and Karl Mueller, in “The Methodology of Mass Destruction: Assessing Threats in a New World Order”, The Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 23, No.1, pp.163-187)
Mrs. Madeleine Albright, then US ambassador to the United Nations, and later US Secretary of State, said in an interview on the CBS TV programme 60 Minutes, called Punishing Saddam, on 12 May 1996, was asked if the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children through sanctions were worth the price, replied, ‘I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it’. All for the good of the cause.
Those who put the institution, the ideology or the cause first, and the person second, would agree with what was said in the Gospel by the High Priest about Jesus, ‘It is expedient that one man die for the sake of the people’. All for the good of the cause.
That was not the way of Jesus. He spoke of searching for one lost sheep, one lost coin, one lost son. ‘I have called you by name; you are mine’. The good thief on the cross was the first person in the Gospel to address Jesus by name, and he was the first to be promised paradise. With God it is the person that counts – today, tomorrow and ultimately.