Korsfarare
F. Barker om korsfararens mentalitet Ett utdrag ur Crusades, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1973
Han kunde slakta alla tills han vadade till fotknölarna i blod och därefter falla på knä på kvällen och snyfta av glädje vid Den heliga gravens altare, ty var han inte röd av Herrens vinpress?
Judarna i Rhenlandet fastnade i denna vinpress som nästan malde dem till döds. Dessutom påverkades de själva av en annan typ av masshysteri: en morbid längtan efter martyrskap. Enligt den hebreiske krönikeskrivaren Solomon bar Simon, allmänt ansedd som tillförlitlig, gav Mainz judar, ställda inför valet mellan att döpas eller dö för pöbelns händer, en förebild för andra församlingar genom att besluta sig för kollektivt självmord:
I en efterliknelse i stor skala av Abrahams beredvillighet att offra Isak slaktade fäder sina barn och äkta män sina hustrur. Dessa handlingar av outsäglig fasa och hjältemod utfördes i den rituella slaktformen med offerknivar vässade enligt judisk lag. Det hände att församlingens främsta skriftlärda, som övervakade denna massdöd, var de sista som lämnade livet för egen hand. ... I masshysterin, helgad av det religiösa martyrskapets glans och kompenserad av den förtröstansfulla tron på belöning i himlen, syntes ingenting betyda något utom att sätta punkt för livet innan man föll i de oförsonliga fiendernas händer och måste träffa det ofrånkomliga valet att dö för fiendens hand eller omvända sig till kristendomen.
När vi går från massaker till torr statistik får vi en grov uppfattning om de judiska samhällenas storlek i Tyskland. De hebreiska källorna enas om 800 offer (i massakrer eller självmord) i Worms och skiftar mellan 900 och 1300 i Mainz. Det måste givetvis ha funnits många som föredrog dopet framför döden, och källorna anger inte antalet överlevande.
Källa: Den Trettonde Stammen av Arthur Koestler,
sid 190 OCR-skannad som en test
“THIS IS WHAT Westmoreland was
doing in Vietnam,”
says a top Special Forces commander, referring to the
firepower-heavy tactics favored by the military’s
senior commander in Vietnam, Gen. William Westmoreland,
who lost sight of America’s essential mission in
that lost war: winning the hearts and minds of the
people.
One center of private concerns with America’s
Iraq strategy is the Defense Policy Board, a collection
of outside experts—mostly heavyweight
conservatives—who regularly consult with
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Disquiet in this
quarter is particularly significant, since the DPB
pushed from the outset for the invasion of Iraq. Last
week one of the more colorful and outspoken members of
the group, former House speaker Newt Gingrich, went
public with his worries and ideas in an interview with
NEWSWEEK. He was careful to say that he does not speak
about the board’s deliberations “on or off
the record,” but he proceeded to hold forth in
his insightful, if mildly bombastic, way about the
shortcomings of administration policy in Iraq.
Sitting in his office in downtown Washington, Gingrich
searched on his computer for the Web site of the
Coalition Provisional Authority, set up in Baghdad to
oversee the reconstruction and democratization of Iraq.
“I’m told over there that CPA stands for
‘Can’t Produce Anything’,”
says Gingrich. “Home page of the New Iraq,”
he quotes. Then: “The opening quote is, of
course, by [CPA chief Paul] Bremer. Next quote is by
Bush. Next quote is by U.S. Ambassador Steve
Mann.” He scrolls down. “Now this is a big
breakthrough. They do have the new Iraqi ambassador to
the U.S. On the front page. That is a
breakthrough,” he repeats, adding, sotto voce,
“I have been beating the crap out of them for two
weeks on this.” His basic point: where are the
Iraqi faces in the New Iraq? “Americans
can’t win in Iraq,” he says. “Only
Iraqis can win in Iraq.”
Gingrich argues that the administration has been
putting far too much emphasis on a military solution
and slighting the political element. “The real
key here is not how many enemy do I kill. The real key
is how many allies do I grow,” he says.
“And that is a very important metric that they
just don’t get.” He contends that the
civilian-run CPA is fairly isolated and powerless,
hunkered down inside its bunker in Baghdad. The
military has the money and the daily contact with the
locals. But it’s using the same tactics in a
guerrilla struggle that led to defeat in Vietnam.
“The Army’s reaction to Vietnam was not to
think about it,” he says. Rather than absorb the
lessons of counterinsurgency, Gingrich says, the Army
adopted “a deliberate strategy of amnesia because
people didn’t want to ever do it again.”
The Army rebuilt a superb fighting force for waging a
conventional war. “I am very proud of what
[Operation Iraqi Freedom commander Gen.] Tommy Franks
did—up to the moment of deciding how to transfer
power to the Iraqis. Then,” said Gingrich,
“we go off a cliff.”
In essence, the Americans never did transfer power.
They disbanded the Iraqi Army and the government,
realized that was a mistake, and quickly tried to
cobble together an Iraqi police force and military. But
the Iraqis in uniform today are seen by too many Iraqi
citizens as American collaborators. Gingrich faults the
Americans for not quickly establishing some sort of
Iraqi government, however imperfect. “The idea
that we are going to have a corruption-free, pristine,
League of Women Voters government in Iraq on Tuesday is
beyond naivete,” he scoffs. “It is a
self-destructive fantasy.” (The White House
insists that it is paying close attention to local
politics and has speeded up the timetable to turn over
power to the Iraqis.)
The rumor mill in the Pentagon suggests that
Bush’s “exit strategy” is to get
American troops coming home in waves by next
November’s election. Obliquely, Gingrich
indicates that would be a huge mistake. The guerrillas
cannot be allowed to believe that they only have to
outlast the Americans to win. “The only exit
strategy is victory,” Gingrich says. But not by
brute American force. “We are not the enforcers.
We are the reinforcers,” says Gingrich.
“The distinction between these two words is
central to the next year in Iraq.”
Gingrich’s voice rang with his customary
certainty. Hard to know if Rumsfeld and Bush are
listening.
källa: 15 dec. 2003 Newsweek
Detta är en film som borde visas överallt
där man talar om landet Afghanistan.
I den svenska [SAK] exempelvis...
An anti-war documentary film
In 1972 Eric Siegel, an early pioneer
of video art, set out on an extreme adventure
[...]
Allra bäst tycker jag om scenen med
nedsågning av alléträd på
vägen mellan Herat och Kandahar.
