October 29, 2002 -- HERE'S the difference between the American way of combating terrorism and the way taken by other nations:

When American troops captured al Qaeda combatants in Afghanistan, the hundreds of fighters were sent to a prison camp on a U.S. base in Cuba, where they are fed (and fed well) in accordance with Islamic religious practices, given the freedom to pray and given time to exercise.

When Russian special forces decided to take action against the Chechen terrorists holding hundreds hostage in a Moscow theater, they pumped gas into the air vents that knocked the terrorists out. And while the terrorists were unconscious, the Russians shot them. Fifty of them. In the head. Dead.

Let's go through that again: The Chechen terrorists were shot in the head rather than arrested, even though they were unconscious.

The contrast between these two examples should cause all Americans to take a minute and think about what it means to be an American. And to thank God for the wondrous privilege of having been born or having found a home in this shining city on a hill.

The Moscow rescue effort is now the subject of heavy and painful scrutiny, given the horribly high death toll among the hostages - 117 killed by the gas pumped in through the grates by the people who were trying to rescue them.

It's easy to second-guess the Russian action from a distance. The rescue effort was a gamble, just as all hostage rescues are a gamble. Some work amazingly well, like the Israeli raid on the Entebbe airport in 1976. Some are disastrous, as when U.S. special forces badly bungled a rescue effort of the American hostages in Iran in 1980.

But these are the kinds of hard choices that terrorists force upon nations. The moral determination, however, is not difficult at all: The death of every single Russian hostage in that theater is the responsibility of the Chechen terrorists and them alone.

Both Russians and Chechens have long and bitter experience with each others' savagery. But the legitimate nature of Chechen grievances against Russia can never legitimize the viciousness of the Chechen terror assaults of the last decade, which have included hijackings, ship bombings and a horrendous spree of apartment-building explosions that killed more than 300 in 1999.

The Russians had reason to believe that the situation inside the theater was deteriorating last week. The terrorists may have been getting ready to massacre the hostages well before the deadline they had set, owing to confusion inside the theater caused by a panicky 3-year-old.

And when Chechen terrorists massacre, they do a disgustingly thorough job of it. But they cannot massacre anybody when they're unconscious. And that's the astonishing element of this story, and the element that should give Americans cause to celebrate our own system and our own way of life.

The Russian special forces killed the unconscious terrorists, surely, because they did not want to give other Chechen terrorists a rallying point for future acts. If Russia had taken these Chechens into custody, other hostage-taking might well have ensued whose purpose would be the release of their brethren from the Moscow theater.

This primitive and barbaric justice gives one a sad sense that the deep strains of bloodlust in the Russian military have not been settled down by the end of the Cold War.

And it was wrong from a practical standpoint as well. We don't know what sorts of information the U.S. military has gleaned from the al Qaeda prisoners at Camp X-Ray in Cuba, but it appears the interrogations have been useful. What might the Russians have learned from the Chechen rebels? They'll never know now.

Mostly, though, the events in Moscow present us with an image of the path America did not take in the War on Terror. And what we can see is that our nation's humanitarian treatment of the prisoners at Camp X-Ray proves we've kept faith with the moral order.

-- Anonymous, October 29, 2002