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| Caucasus |
| Basayev primer |
| 2004-09-04 |
| EFL from the original document dating back to the late 1990s and while it's still long its also very informative concerning Basayev and the possible strategy he's attempting to duplicate with respect to Breslan. Like most controversial figures, there are a number of widely different assessments of this Chechen leader. For many Russians, he embodies the ruthless, criminal characteristics of a terrorist. His name became well known during the bloody events in June 1995, when Basayev and a handful of Chechen combatants, held some 1,500 Russian civilians hostage within the Budennovsk city hospital. Among his countrymen, however, Basayev is a great hero; a composite mix of Robin Hood, George Washington and his 19th Century namesake, Shamil. On more than one occasion, when Russian forces were on the threshold of destroying the remnants of Chechen resistance, Basayev managed to strengthen Chechen resolve and strike the Russians where it hurt. Other than his birthplace, there is nothing in Shamil Basayev's early biography which would indicate his future martial prowess. He was born in 1965 in the small Chechen village of Vedeno. This village is adjacent to the fortress where a century earlier the great Chechen leader Shamil surrendered to Russian forces. For a young Chechen, the exploits of this distant ancestor must have been a source of pride and inspiration. Like many of the other ethnic groups which inhabit the Caucasus, the Chechens value highly the attributes of personal courage, clan loyalty, and expertise in warfare and weaponry. There could be no better role model for a young Chechen than the brave Shamil. Basayev spent his childhood in Vedeno, completing secondary education there in 1982. Upon graduation, he spent two years in the Soviet military. Little is known of his Soviet military record, other than he served as a "fireman". He intended to become a policeman but could not get into law school and so worked in agriculture. By the time he finished school (1990), the first cracks were beginning to appear within the Soviet Union. The Berlin Wall had fallen and the national republics of the USSR were beginning to clamor for a greater degree of independence. Glasnost permitted the publication of many of the previously repressed histories. Non-Russians were at last permitted to read uncensored accounts of how they lived before being subjugated by Russian and Soviet power. Ethnic and nationalist symbols of pride were rediscovered. Freedom was in the air, and its scent invigorated these formerly repressed peoples and ethnic groups. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #6 "H&I fire" I'm not familiar with this term, badanov. Harrassment and Interdiction, maybe? |
| Posted by: SteveS 2004-09-04 1:23:26 PM |
| #5 All hail Rantburg U! I learn so much here not otherwise available to me in my sheltered little life. And I truly appreciate the gift of learning from you all, instead of the hard way. Most sincerely, thank you. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2004-09-04 1:18:49 PM |
| #4 You wrote: "...expressed by an American officer in Vietnam: 'In order to save the village, we had to destroy it.' That expression was not made by an American officer, but by anti-American protesters. Technically, it was said by an American officer. That American officer was John Kerry. One of the truly stupid things Kerry said when he lied to the Fulbright committee in 1971 is one of the most annoying, was his use of the term harassment and interdiction fire. I played military games against some artillery officers neat Fort Sill, and I learned that H&I fire is a time honored means of breaking an enemy's static defenses down; to break an enemy's will to fight by bringing under artillery fire points on a map the enemy uses to resupply, redeploy and maintain force coherence. Targets such as depots, supply points, supply routes, switchlines, headquarters and the like. All of these are legitimate targets for artillerymen in war, but Kerry used the term quite glibly, trying his damnedest to make it sound as if US forces directed such fire against non-military targets, or to make it sound like gunfire was being used for the sole purpiose or harassment, presumably against non-military targets. This needs to be addressed because when Kerry loses this election, Kerry's serial lies, will be used by domestic opponents of the military to try to alter the things our forces do to protect themselves and to hurt the enemy. Heck, I may even try a page at my little site to 'Fisk' his spoutings on the subject at rkka.org Anyways, hadda vent. But I consider this subject important. |
| Posted by: badanov 2004-09-04 10:25:45 AM |
| #3 Whoops - what I wrote above was wrong. Mona Charen pins down the source, Peter Arnett, who made it up from whole cloth: This is hardly Arnett's first slip. As it happens, Arnett makes an appearance in my book "Useful Idiots" for his reporting from Vietnam. Remember the phrase, "We had to destroy the village in order to save it"? It has become totemic. Arnett was the originator of the phrase. The trouble is, as first B.G. Burkett and then I discovered after a little investigation, the report was wrong. It wasn't the United States that destroyed Ben Tre (a town, not a village), but the Vietcong. And the soldier Arnett was most likely quoting remembers saying, "It was a shame the town was destroyed," not the fatuity Arnett made famous. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2004-09-04 5:20:05 AM |
| #2 A6313: You wrote: "...expressed by an American officer in Vietnam: 'In order to save the village, we had to destroy it.' That expression was not made by an American officer, but by anti-American protesters. Technically, it was said by an American officer. That American officer was John Kerry. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2004-09-04 5:10:07 AM |
| #1 You wrote: "...expressed by an American officer in Vietnam: 'In order to save the village, we had to destroy it.' That expression was not made by an American officer, but by anti-American protesters. |
| Posted by: Anonymous6313 2004-09-04 4:58:10 AM |