Iraq: "A woman suspected of recruiting more than 80 female suicide bombers has confessed to organising their rapes so she could later convince them that martyrdom was the only way to escape the shame."
Algeria: "Evil al-Qaeda chiefs are raping young male converts to shame them into becoming suicide bombers, it emerged yesterday. "
posted by davidstandaford
on Feb 4, 2009 -
140 comments
War Torn: kickoff of the New York Times' penetrating new series investigating the violence that comes home when our soldiers do.
posted by hermitosis
on Jan 14, 2008 -
58 comments
Operation enduring chaos: ... the death squads are the result of US policy. At the beginning of last year, with no end to the Sunni insurgency in sight, the Pentagon was reported to have decided to train Shia and Kurdish fighters to carry out "irregular missions". ... From killing everyone named Omar (a Sunni name) who passes thru the wrong checkpoint, to simply marking businesses (and their owners) they want gone with red crosses, how various squads and militias and "armies" and "brigades" are running Iraq.
posted by amberglow
on Oct 29, 2006 -
48 comments
What’s "Sacred" about Violence in Early America? Susan Juster discusses the "oversized colonial martyr complex" with its attendant paradox: "colonial martyrs were everywhere, religious violence... in short supply." She begins:
One of the most chilling images in early American history is the deliberate firing of Fort Mystic during the Pequot War of 1637. Five hundred Indian men, women, and children died that day, burned alive along with their homes and possessions by a vengeful Puritan militia intent on doing God’s will. "We must burn them!" the militia captain famously insisted to his troops on the eve of the massacre, in words that echo the classic early modern response to heretics. Just five months before, the Puritan minister at Salem had exhorted his congregation in strikingly similar terms to destroy a more familiar enemy, Satan; "We must burne him," John Wheelwright told his parishioners. Indians and devils may have been scarcely distinguishable to many a Puritan, but their rhetorical conflation in these two calls to arms raises a question: Was the burning of Fort Mystic a racial or a religious killing?
She avoids easy answers and makes some interesting connections. If you want to find out more about the Pequot War, there's good material in the History section of
this site. (Main link via
wood s lot.)
posted by languagehat
on Jan 9, 2006 -
35 comments
'No real planning for postwar Iraq' "The officials didn't develop any real postwar plans because they believed that Iraqis would welcome U.S. troops with open arms and Washington could install a favored Iraqi exile leader as the country's leader. The Pentagon civilians ignored CIA and State Department experts who disputed them, resisted White House pressure to back off from their favored exile leader and when their scenario collapsed amid increasing violence and disorder, they had no backup plan.
Today, American forces face instability in Iraq, where they are losing soldiers almost daily to escalating guerrilla attacks, the cost of occupation is exploding to almost $4 billion a month and withdrawal appears untold years away."
Bring 'Em On!
posted by owillis
on Jul 12, 2003 -
64 comments
A Pyrrhic victory in a catastrophic "March of Folly"? - historian Barbara Tuchman asked:
why do leaders persist in pursuing catastrophic policies? Regardless of
Baath regime executions of Iraqis, the Islamic world will witness mainly "American Atrocities" - and
be outraged by gruesome images, on Al Jazeera and elsewhere, of every single child killed by American bombs. Iraqi tactics - of
suicide bombing, ambushes, and faked surrenders - will erase the civilian/combatant distinction, leading to more and
more incidents like this (to be televised to an appalled Islamic world): and all this merely a
foreshadow of what may be
urban
warfare on a scale seldom seen in the 20th century.
Grozny comes to mind. Mainstream US media asserts that the solution for the whole
"miscalculation" is
just more US troops
But the war is tailor made to provoke tribalistic, Pan-Islamic fury (and corresponding, furiously tribalistic US patriotic support for war). Escalation is in the air: statements by
Rumsfeld,
Powell, and
the US State Dept. indicate an awareness that the current war could spread,
drawing
in Syria and Iran. Consequences also could include the
destabilization or the
takeover,
of nuclear armed Pakistan, by Islamic militants, and a
Nuclear
miltarization across a wide region, from Iraq to Japan.
If only this were
"South Park: The Movie", where the onset of Armaggeddon can be stopped by an heroic act of sacrifice by Kenny.
posted by troutfishing
on Mar 31, 2003 -
27 comments
Another thoughtful article
Open the Washington Post to it's editorial pages, and war talk dominates:
Henry Kissinger: Destroy the Network.
Robert Kagan: We Must Fight This War.
Charles Krauthammer: To War, Not to Court.
William S. Cohen: American Holy War.
There is no column by Colman McCarthy talking peace.
posted by mapalm
on Sep 14, 2001 -
19 comments
A Scourge of Small Arms "The root causes of ethnic, religious and sectarian conflicts around the world are of course complex and varied, typically involving historical grievances, economic deprivation, demagogic leadership and an absence of democratic process. Although small arms and light weapons are not themselves a cause of conflict, their ready accessibility and low cost can prolong combat, encourage a violent rather than a peaceful resolution of differences, and generate greater insecurity throughout society--which in turn leads to a spiraling demand for, and use of, such weapons."
posted by Calebos
on May 31, 2000 -
7 comments
