Today is the sixtieth anniversary of the discovery by British troops of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, the site where Anne Frank spent her final days.
Thanks to Alan at Petrified Truth for the reminder and this set of relevant links.
Day: April 17, 2005
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A Particular Soldier’s Letters Home
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette‘s David M. Shribman has the tale of letters from a certain World War II soldier, letters that are just now surfacing.
The sad thing about our time is that war letters have become a genre. We’ve all read them. They’re in books, they’re online. They’re also in our own homes. In this country, in this age, is there a family that does not have a file of letters from a soldier, sailor or aviator tucked away in the closet or the attic? In some of our homes, those files get thicker every day.
Right now there’s a new set of war letters circulating. Not exactly new, it turns out; they’ve been around for 60 years. But almost nobody knew about them, including the fellow who wrote them. They have been hidden away, until now.
They are the war letters of an Army grunt named Robert Joseph Dole, and the people who first looked through the trove inevitably described them as “extraordinary.” But they aren’t extraordinary at all. They’re ordinary, which in the end makes them even more extraordinary.
Yes, that Robert Dole. Former senator, vice-presidential and presidential candidate.
Go read more about the words from the pen of a great man, and how those words are just now reaching the public as the man confronts adversity again.
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General Predicts Taliban’s Demise
The U.S. commander in Afghanistan has predicted that the Taliban would cease to even resemble a cohesive military threat shortly. Surprisingly, the Taliban agrees.
The top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan predicted Saturday that the Taliban militia would collapse as a viable fighting force over the next several months as rank-and-file members accept a reconciliation offer from the Afghan government.
Lt. Gen. David W. Barno warned, however, that remaining Taliban extremists financed and trained by al Qaeda allies may attempt to compensate by staging a high-profile attack in Afghanistan within the next six to nine months.
“As these terrorists’ capabilities grow more and more limited, the hard-core fanatics will grow more and more desperate to try and do something to change the course of events in Afghanistan,” Barno said at a news conference in Kabul, the capital. “I expect they will be looking … to garner media publicity and to try and score some type of propaganda victory.”
Yes, matters are progressing, but they are not safe. Things are not secure by a long shot when the enemy knows that there are headlines yet to be grabbed. But now, on to the interesting part of the story.
Earlier Saturday, a senior Taliban official said in an audio tape released to the Reuters news agency that militia leaders were planning to shift from guerrilla warfare to terrorist-style attacks.
Maulvi Abdul Kabir, who is considered second in the Taliban hierarchy, said the group was training suicide bombers to target government officials, foreign forces and aid workers in major cities and to infiltrate various security forces.
“The change of tactics is an easy way for us to have a longer-term war of attrition and would also not cost many lives for us,” Kabir reportedly said on the tape.
Please allow me to translate for you:
Dear Reuters,
That great spring offensive we’ve been threatening? Forget about it.
We took a headcount recently and decided it was time to think outside the box. Outside the killzone, actually. First, we repeatedly got our asses handed to us on the battlefield by forces that were generally only assisted and supported by the Americans. After that series of failures swept us from our cruel, despotic rule, we bravely switched to guerrilla tactics. Okay, so our record was dismal in that, as well, and we were unable to dent the growing legitimacy of the new government or severely harm the Americans. Oh yeah, we were also getting shredded. That tends to harm morale, we admit.
Now, we have bravely decided to become the thugs and terrorists the world already knew us to be. In this, we may be able to kill more innocents while bravely saving some of our own asses.
Sincerely,
the TalibanAnd just how good is the Taliban at terrorism? Well, of course they’re a threat, but they’ve still got some things to work on before their reign of terror can really take hold.
Several incidents have also been reported in Kabul in the past several days, including the discovery of a small amount of TNT on a trash truck attempting to enter the U.S. military headquarters compound Thursday.
Lt. Cindy Moore, a military spokeswoman, said the explosive material, which was stuffed in the well of a headlight and detected by a bomb-sniffing dog, was very degraded and not attached to a detonating device. Moore said she did not know the driver’s nationality or whether that person had been detained.
Foreign workers in the capital have been on edge since last Sunday, when armed assailants seized a U.S. citizen and forced him into the trunk of a car. According to U.S. Embassy officials in Kabul, the man used a lug wrench to unlock the trunk from the inside and jumped out of the vehicle while it was speeding away. Afghan investigators have arrested three suspects in the incident.
Oops! It’s good to see that in terrorism, as in so many other matters, the devil is in the details.
Now, back to that amnesty program.
Neither Barno nor Afghan officials would disclose how many Taliban members have accepted President Hamid Karzai’s reconciliation offer, which seeks to bring in members hiding in Afghanistan or in other countries. Under the arrangement, Taliban members must recognize the legitimacy of the elected government in exchange for assurances that they will not face arrest by foreign or Afghan forces.
Human rights groups and some Afghans say they fear the offer will enable many former Taliban members to escape justice for past wrongdoing.
Members of Karzai’s administration have stressed that the offer does not constitute a permanent amnesty program and does not extend to roughly 100 top Taliban leaders implicated in serious crimes. A commission charged with determining the exact details of the program has progressed slowly, but some Taliban members have already begun negotiating with U.S. military commanders and Afghan officials.
And here’s the money shot.
Barno said he believed that large numbers of the Taliban force, which once numbered in the thousands, would eventually accept the offer.
“More and more Taliban realize they don’t want to be in this fight that goes against the tide of history here in Afghanistan any longer,” he said.
It’s good to have news of progress for the good guys confirmed by both sides.
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Quote of the Week, 17 APR 05
Well, we did not build those bombers to carry crushed rose petals.
—General Thomas S. Power
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Iraq Kidnap Reports May Be Exaggerated
Stories of mass kidnappings in a small, divided Iraqi town flew through the media Saturday. Now, one day later, it looks as if reports of huge numbers of hostages among the residents of Madain were overblown, if not almost entirely fictional.
Iraqi security forces backed by U.S. troops had the town of Madain surrounded Sunday after reports of Sunni militant kidnappings of as many as 100 Shiite residents, but there were growing indications the incident had been grossly exaggerated, perhaps an outgrowth of a tribal dispute or political maneuvering.
The town of about 1,000 families, evenly divided between Shiites and Sunnis, sits about 15 miles south of the capital in what the U.S. military has called the “Triangle of Death” because it has become a roiling stronghold of the militant insurgency.
An AP photographer and television cameraman who were in or near the town Sunday said large numbers of Iraqi forces had sealed it off, supported by U.S. forces farther away outside Madain.
The cameraman said he toured the town Sunday morning. People were going about their business normally, shops were open and tea houses were full, he said. Residents contacted by telephone also said everything was normal in Madain.
And American military officials said they were unaware of any U.S. role in what had been described as a tense sectarian standoff in which the Sunni militants were threatening to kill their Shiite captives if all other Shiites did not leave the town.
[…]
The confusion over Madain illustrated how quickly rumors spread in a country of deep ethnic and sectarian divides, where the threat of violence is all too real. Poor telephone communications, and the difficulty of traveling from one town to the next because of daily attacks on the roads make it difficult even for government officials to establish the facts.
National Security Minister Qassim Dawoud warned Parliament on Sunday of attempts to draw the country into sectarian war and said three battalions of Iraqi soldiers, police and U.S. forces were sent to Madain. He said the Iraqi military was planning a large-scale assault on the region by week’s end.
[…]
Iraq’s most influential Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, urged government officials to resolve the crisis peacefully, his office said.
[…]
Also on Sunday, Sheikh Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi, a spokesman for the Association of Muslim Scholars, an organization of Sunni clerics, denied hostages had been taken in Madain. “This news is completely untrue,” he told al-Jazeera television.
Even al-Quida in Iraq, a group oh so eager to claim part in any or all hardship, has denied involvement and called the reports of mass hostages fabrications.
Whatever happened in Madain began Thursday when Shiite leaders claimed Sunni militants seriously damaged a town mosque in a bomb attack. The next day, the Shiites said, masked militants drove through town, capturing Shiites residents and threatened to kill them unless all Shiites left.
Shiite leaders and government officials had earlier estimated 35 to 100 people were taken hostage, but residents disputed the claim, with some saying they had seen no evidence any hostages were taken.
Security forces began raiding sites Saturday in search of those abducted, Dawoud said.
The story does illustrate the confusion of war-time reporting, especially when the media seem all too willing to report troublesome rumors as certain news.