tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post8811767032778425263..comments2024-03-27T13:13:25.164-04:00Comments on johnshaplin: Fallujah by James Hiderjohnshaplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post-19880578403762264462009-10-23T19:54:28.010-04:002009-10-23T19:54:28.010-04:00"Garryowen" from the 1941 film "The..."Garryowen" from the 1941 film "They Died With Their Boots On", concluding with a speech by "Crazy Horse":<br /><br /><br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nikMneu7H90johnshaplinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post-19831887755714254692009-10-22T14:29:03.809-04:002009-10-22T14:29:03.809-04:00"The Spiders of Allah; Travels of an Unbeliev..."The Spiders of Allah; Travels of an Unbeliever on the Frontline of Holy War" by Jame Hider, "Times" (UK) Middle Eastern Bureau Chief; St. Martin's Griffin, N.Y. , 2009johnshaplinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post-4918801827511771652009-10-22T14:28:19.451-04:002009-10-22T14:28:19.451-04:00Despite the hi-tech American operation to stamp ou...Despite the hi-tech American operation to stamp out the Mujahedin, the battle of Fallujah did not put an end to the jihadist horrors. You can't remove n idea, even a nightmare, through surgery. Rather, it wa like a seed pod smashed open with a sledgehammer, spreading its spores across the country. Most of the guerrilla leaders had fled before the Americans close in. Already, in the north, Mosul was in flames, with insurgents taking over whole swathes of the city and the police force fleeing their bases in droves. Standing in a street reeking of decomposed bodies, in front of the wreck of a five story apartment block, the Kurdish army officer I had met believed that the horrors and destruction would put the people of Fallujah off supporting insurgents in the future.<br /><br />'When the people of Fallujah come back and see their houses, they will kick out any terrorist. This will be an example to all Iraqi cities,' he told me, recalling that in the Middle East, brute force had been the lingua franca of government for thousands of years. Wasted cities and strong leaders earned respect, he believed. In fact, what calmed Fallujah in the end was the strict cordon the marines imposed on it after the battle, making all residents undergo retina scans and security clearance checks before they were allowed back in. It not only tranquillized the city, but paralyzed it. A colleague of mine aptly described the pacified post-war city as resembling a lobotomized psychopath.johnshaplinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post-68957191321311128962009-10-22T14:26:20.596-04:002009-10-22T14:26:20.596-04:00The last time I 'd heard 'Garryowen' w...The last time I 'd heard 'Garryowen' was when I was still a kid, maybe ten years old. The Irish drinking song, picked by George Armstrong Custer as battle hymn for his Seventh Cavalry, was the tune his pipers played as the doomed regiment road to annihilation at the hands of the Sioux nation at the Little Bighorn. Sandwiched between "Dixie" and Shenandoah" on the 1976 double vinyl album released to commemorate the bicentenary of America's declaration of independence, it always sent a shiver down my spine. My mother was enthralled by the song too, and we'd played it time and time again on our crackling record player, she carefully lifting the arm of the stylus back to the beginning as soon as it had finished, and off we'd go again.<br /><br />I didn't hear 'Garryowen' again until a gray afternoon in November 2004. This time, it was blaring through loud speakers fixed to the tops of metal poles that supported row after row of white plastic tents in the vast, dusty camp on the edge of Fallujah. And this time, it was announcing to the hundreds of troopers of the Second Battalion of Marines, Seventh Cavalry, that they were, once again, about to ride into battle....<br /><br />An Iraqi friend of mine, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, was the only journalist brave enough to actually take up a Mujahedin offer to report from their stronghold on the eve of the battle. He told me later that while the cavalrymen I was with were getting pumped up on death-metal and Rocky, the foreign fighters were ribbing each other like suicidal frat boys, joshing about how many virgins each would receive in paradise. A Yemeni recruit, who had sold almost all his worldly possessions and left his wife and kids to get to the battle, was joking that when he and his comrades died, as he was sure they soon would, the Saudi in their volunteer unit would only get twenty-five girls, while he himself would get the full quota of seventy-two promised in the holy scripture.<br /><br />In fact, the promise of scores of virgins is believed by some Islamic scholars to be a mistranslation of the ancient Aramaic word 'hur', meaning juicy white grapes, a rare delicacy in the early days of Islam when the followers of the Prophet were fighting in the deserts of the Hejaz. In Arabic, the word 'hur' means virgin. <br /><br />While the muddled Arab volunteer kamikazes prepared to trade their lives for the delights of the produce aisle, their Iraqi comrades were already ripping them off in the here and now: the oal jihadists often treated them as simply car-bomb fodder, charging them exorbitant prices for food and lodging and rarely bothering to give them any military training. As the first American shells fell around them, one of the Gulf Arabs was fiddling with the safety catch of his Kalishnikov. He looked at Ghaith and hopefully asked if he could show him how to use it.<br /><br />Not all the men gathered in Fallujah for battle were religiously inspired Mujahedin, however. Instead of a new Salahedin's army ready to deliver Jerusalem from the infidels, many of those my translator's cousin came across girding themselves for battle were former Baathists, Syrian agents or local criminals on the payroll of Al-Qaeda, or tribesmen simply defending their turf. Many of these were the men who had turned Fallujah into a new Taliban mini-state, beating men who failed to respect their unforgiving ideology and exporting car bombs to the capital. This was not the fight to give up his life for, he promptly decided,and sneaked out of town before the battle began...johnshaplinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.com