Ravished Armenia

My first real contact with Armenians was while serving as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in St. Petersburg, Russia.  We regularly ran into Armenians in our efforts to preach on the streets.  One of the members of the branch in Pskov was an ethnic Armenian.  One of the sister missionaries in one of the districts I served in was from Armenia.  It was from her that I first learned about the Armenian alphabet, which was like nothing I had ever seen before.  Since then, I have had a few chances to get to know more Armenians and learn a little about the history of this small country in the Caucasus that has outsized sway around the world because of its ubiquitous and rather tight-knit diaspora.  The diaspora is so large and so widespread, in part, because of the World War I time-frame killings Armenians were subjected to.

Ravished Armenia: The Story of Aurora Mardiganian, the Christian Girl Who Survived the Great Massacres by Aurora Mardiganian (Arshalyus Mardiganyan) is an autobiographical account of the Turkish oppression of the Armenian people in the Ottoman Empire starting in 1915.  The Mardiganian family, relatively wealthy financiers, are warned by their shepherd that he had a dream about the Armenians’ imminent destruction, but his prediction is dismissed.  Soon, though, it comes true, as the family is driven from their home, along with all the other Armenians.  Occasionally, leniency is shown to those who will renounce their Christian faith and adopt Islam, but even then, the freshly converted Armenians are killed by their Turkish and Kurdish oppressors.  Aurora, like most of the women and children, is driven from place to place, guarded by Turkish policemen.  Those who are too slow to keep up during forced marches are dispatched quickly and usually cruelly, although Mardiganian’s account does point out a few instances of decency and humanity from guards or locals in the places the Armenians were marched.  Her story, like many of those who lived during this time, is made all the more tragic because she was there to see the deaths of her father, mother, a sister, and a brother.  She was sold multiple times to be a harem girl.  This never worked out for the buyer because Aurora was never willing to accept Islam.  It really didn’t work out for her, either, though, because her refusals were usually met with abuse and deprivation.  After wandering the Ottoman Empire under the care of the Turkish police or as the property of various rich Turks, having seen so much killing, rape, and pillaging, her old shepherd friend, then working for a Turk trying to get Aurora to submit to Islam before being fully accepted into his harem, helped her escape.  She stayed with friendly Kurds before eventually being helped by Americans in the region and then making her way to Russian-controlled territory and under Russian and Armenian military oversight, made her way to Tbilisi, then Russia, and then the United States.

Anyone who has spent more than a few minutes with Armenians will have heard of what they refer to simply as the Genocide.  There are some political implications involved in using that term, but that is what the Armenians refer to it as, and it was, undoubtedly, a terrible time for them.  There are not many things one can compare their suffering to, although maybe the treatment of the Bosniaks when the former Yugoslavia fell apart is a decent comparison.  Aurora’s story was one of suffering and tragedy.  As a memoir meant to tell of her people’s travails, there is no larger discussion of world politics at the time or even the regional situation (in short: it’s the Caucasus and the Middle East, so it’s somewhere beyond complicated).  The reader just gets a relatively young girl’s take on a horrible situation.  On the other hand, despite all the destruction, violence, and despair, there is hope in the book.  I found the willingness she had, along with a few others, to not renounce Christ despite the often gruesome consequences extremely brave and inspiring.  The will to survive and the resourcefulness displayed by those in a tight spot to do so were admirable, too.  There are also lessons in the book about avoiding the totalitarian and authoritarian impulses that so often afflict those in power that lead to so much death and destruction of human life.
 

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13 Hours

Benghazi, a port city in Libya, was site to a terrorist attack on American diplomatic and intelligence facilities in 2012.  Ever since that event hit the news, it has been the subject of much speculation and no less than ten U.S. Congressional inquiries.  Like many other events in today’s hyper-politicized world, the attack and the response have been politicized by both the Left and the Right.  Africa isn’t usually on my radar (although, with China’s activities there, it probably should be more of a concern to more people), but like the story told in Black Hawk Down, there are occasionally stories set on that giant continent that grab my attention.  The politics surrounding the U.S. response to the attack have been a bore, but the story of the people on the ground has made me take notice.

13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi by Mitchell Zuckoff (ISBN: 978-1-4555-8229-7) tells that story from the perspective of the contract security officers, referred to as “operators” in the book.  This small team of men was assigned to provide security to the diplomats and analysts working out of the small diplomatic facilities in Benghazi.  The book gives us a little background on each of them and then jumps right in to the fateful day when two of them, the ambassador, and a government computer specialist would die.  The security officers all had military backgrounds.  They would put that to the test when the facilities they were hired to protect came under attack.  The diplomatic compound came under attack first and was, sadly, overrun before the security officers could do much.  It was there that the U.S. ambassador and one of the IT specialists lost their lives.  As told by the security team, that may have been preventable given a quicker or a more powerful response, had more U.S. assets been able to respond in a timely fashion.  They got their truest test a little later, when the annex where they lived came under fire.  They repulsed three separate attacks, but since the third attack included mortars, two of the contractors were killed.  All, though, fought bravely, as did some of the other government employees involved.  The story presented by the author, who worked directly with the surviving team members as he wrote the book, is lively, action-packed, and keeps its distance from anything political.  The security team is presented as a few guys who were there to do their job, and like hard-working Americans everywhere, worked extremely hard and sacrificed to get the job done.

Overall, I enjoyed the book.  As mentioned above, it’s fast paced and tells an interesting story.  I appreciated that it steered clear of politics.  This was the story of the security team.  It certainly had their opinions in it, and since they are all self-assured people, the opinions are strong, but they also come off as genuine people, real patriots, guys who were just trying to do their jobs.  These were dangerous, somewhat thankless jobs that most people are unwilling to take despite the good pay.  It was a quick read thanks to being drawn into the story and being able to feel oneself there with smoke in the air and bullets flying.  The security team was decorated, although not very much compared to some of the others even though they likely did more than the others, but did come across as pretty humble about that and the fact that they were just doing their job, a job they had signed up for because they believed in their country and its ideals.  I sensed some bitterness about their downed comrades and their perceived shackling when it came to just how they would’ve responded, but it didn’t bother me, probably because most people feel that way at one time or another about a supervisor or some regulations they have to deal with.  The reported dialogue was salty, as one would expect from career military and security men.  My feeling at the end, though, was that they should be held up as people worth emulating given their hard work, sacrifice, and patriotism.

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Savage Continent

My high school offered a number of Advanced Placement® classes.  I availed myself of the opportunity of taking some of them, but European History was not one of them.  It seemed too far removed from anything involving me, too obscure.  Since then, thanks to things like serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Russia and my wife being from Europe, as well as a greater appreciation for my family history, which has a lot of Europe in it, I’ve developed a greater interest in Europe and European history.  The AP class typically starts with events in the XIV century, and my interests don’t usually go back that far, as the XX century and today are usually what intrigue me, likely because I see the connection, just like I didn’t see the connection back in high school.

Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II by Keith Lowe (ISBN: 978-1-250-03356-7) takes a very raw look at the immediate post-World War II period in European history.  The author catalogues the side of post-war Europe that is not usually highlighted in articles and books: genocide, ethnic cleansing, corruption, and violence.  The wartime years are famous for those, but they continued, usually on a smaller scale and in a more isolated fashion, for years after the Allies defeated the Axis powers.  Lowe examines the post-war conditions and how they created the ideal setting for further violence.  While the Allied armies tried to gain control and figure out just what they had on their hands, displaced persons and refugees wandered Europe.  There were plenty of instances of vigilante justice and people looking for revenge against the Germans or other people that had truly or only purportedly wronged others.  In Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and a few other places, the German concentration camps were still being used, either has temporary housing or by the Soviets or others for their original purposes, just against a new type of inmate.  Ukrainian and Poles fought.  Greece went into a civil war.  Jews continued to find no quarter.  The Allies and international organizations worked hard to remedy the harsh conditions, but given the level of destruction the war had wrought, it was often slow going.  Finally, the emerging struggle of the Cold War meant that some of these problems were not given the focus that some would have liked them to have been under.

The book was a very interesting read, although it is easily one of those that is often described as “hard” because of the vivid descriptions of man’s cruelty to his fellowman.  The descriptions of the trials and judgements (or lack thereof) against Nazi sympathizers and collaborators in many European countries was interesting and presented interesting arguments on why they were conducted in the manner that they ultimately were.  I thought a lot of the content was new to me in that I didn’t know about this or that specific situation, but none of it surprised me, having spent time in and trying to learn about the Balkans.  It seems that a lot of the areas where post-war conflagrations happened are the same areas that are still thought of as potential flashpoints today.  People should be aware of the history and the potential consequences of various actions in these places.  I thought the book was somewhat anti-victor (both Western and Communist), laying blame for some of the post-war atrocities at the feet of the Allies.  I wasn’t convinced that was accurate or appropriate, but the book was interesting and provided a good view into a part of European history that is not often discussed.

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Flashpoints

In the end, the problem of Europe is the same problem that haunted its greatest moment, the Enlightenment.  It is the Faustian spirit, the desire to possess everything even at cost of their souls.  Today their desire is to possess everything at no cost.  They want permanent peace and prosperity.  They want to retain their national sovereignty, but they do not want these sovereign states to fully exercise their sovereignty.  They want to be one people, but they do not want to share each other’s fate.  They want to speak their own language, but they don’t believe that these will be a bar to complete mutual understanding.  They want to triumph, but they don’t want to risk. They want to be completely secure, but they don’t wish to defend themselves.

Europe has always been a hotbed of military activity.  I never really understood that in the 1700s and 1800s because so many of the nobility were related.  Even as World War I approached, the situation was much the same, and the leaders England, Germany, Russia, and others were all related in one way or another.  I would think that would’ve kept things calmer, but it didn’t.  Obviously, World War I and World War II followed the pattern of violence.  From then on, though, Europe has been relatively stable or, at least, the famous parts that people want to visit have been.  Always lurking under the surface, especially during the Cold War, though, was the threat of war.  It makes for interesting study and reading.

In Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe by George Friedman (ISBN: 978-0-307-95113-7), the author examines the history of Europe between the great wars and then wants to know if Europe will continue in its post-World War II ways or return to its long history of war.  He argues that Europe’s history of conflict has not come to an end.  The war in Bosnia & Herzegovina after Yugoslavia disintegrated and Russia’s invasions of Georgia and Ukraine are given as the most prominent examples of how Europe has not been very peaceful since the fall of the Soviet Union, and that’s relatively recent.  He discusses many of the problems Europe is facing, such as immigration from predominantly Muslim societies, the UK’s distance from the EU (the book was written before Brexit was finalized), friction between northern Europe and southeastern Europe, and economic concerns throughout the European Union.  Friedman bases a lot of his analysis on what he calls borderlands, which are areas where cultures, nations, and ethnic groups meet and mingle.  People grow up speaking three or four languages and are involved in cross-border trade, but always seem to maintain some sort of identity, be it religious, ethnic, or national.  When conditions get worse, such as when the economy takes a hit, these borderlands can turn into flashpoints that have the potential to turn into war (or a larger war if multiple flashpoints go off at the same time).  The book is predictive in nature, so only time will tell.

While already a few years old, the book seemed relevant to today’s Europe.  Bosnia & Herzegovina is still unsettled with the ethnic Serb entity, the Serb Republic, defiantly worked towards ever-greater autonomy.  Kosovo is still a major sore point for the Serbs.  The Greeks and Turks are always on edge with each other.  The Greeks and Macedonians continue to squabble over just who was there first and whether the name of a country can infer violent intentions.  The EU itself has a member in Cyprus that is home to a frozen conflict.  Other frozen conflicts on the European periphery like Nagorno-Karabakh and Russia’s incursion into Ukraine are keeping things warm.  The author placed a lot of weight on Germany’s economic domination of the EU and how other countries resent that (which is likely true — as the story goes, a few years ago, a German missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Athens was beat up when some Greeks learned he was a German, and the Greeks were of the opinion that Germany had caused most, if not all, of their economic problems).  I continue to think Russia, immigration, and energy (all of which Friedman touched on) have the biggest potential to add a spark to the flashpoints.

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The Smoked Yank

While reading A P.O.W.’s Story, I learned that an entire body of literature exists about the time people spent in P.O.W. camps, concentration camps, and the like outside of the Holocaust and outside of the Soviet gulag.  Since man’s inhumane treatment of his fellow man seems to be as old as time, many of these works are also quite old, including a number exploring P.O.W. prisons during the American Civil War.  I have never been a huge Civil War buff, but I do hold an appreciation for the role it has played in America’s great history.  Some of that appreciation has been gained while visiting the famous battlefields like Gettysburg and Manassas.  Some has come from reading and coming to better understand the conflict and the stakes at hand.

The Smoked Yank by Melvin Grigsby (available for free from Google Books), tells the story of one soldier’s time in the Confederate P.O.W. prison in Andersonville, Georgia.  It is really the author’s entire wartime experience, so we learn about his role in the Union cavalry before being captured, his time in Andersonville and other prisons, and, then, his time on the run as an escaped prisoner.  The account is very interesting and quite adventurous as there are battles, chases, escapes, secret plots, first love, hide-outs, and a happy ending.  The author was a patriotic Northerner who believed that black people deserved better treatment.  He left school to join the army.  He fought honorably in the cavalry before being captured.  His initial few months as a P.O.W. were sometimes uncomfortable, but not too much trouble, as he and the other men were treated more-or-less humanely.  Some Southerners were even kind enough to provide supplies to the prisoners or lend them books.  Later, though, they were transferred to Andersonville.  The prisoners didn’t know what awaited them there, but they soon found out.  Hygiene was almost non-existent thanks to swampland that served as a latrine for a camp that often housed triple (or more) the number of people it was designed for.  Food was in drastic short supply.  Disease, which was the number one killer in the war, raged in the camp, too.  There were also executions of the Union soldiers, which the author didn’t seem to find too out of line, and Union-on-Union violence, which is one of the larger subtexts to the prison’s story in later academic studies of the prison.  Eventually, the author finds a way to make his escape, and then spends (if I was following things correctly) a few months on the road running from Rebels back to the North.  The story of the escape is just as intriguing as his time in Andersonville, if not more so.  He is helped at almost every turn by the slaves, who, with one notable exception, are grateful for the Northerners’ sacrifices in securing their freedom.  There are many close calls, a lot of time spent hidden away in the swamplands of the South, and a lot of risk.  Eventually, the author makes it back to his family in the North.

I enjoyed the book and, as mentioned, thought it had a nice mix of information and adventure in the telling of the story.  I was, maybe, a little underwhelmed by the author’s description of the infamous prison, but I think his experience, which was not as lengthy as that of many others, was a little different.  It was very similar to other stories in the same vein because Grigsby was someone who wasn’t going to let things just happen to him.  He was always looking for the next way out, the next work party join, or the next scheme inside the prison yard to stay active.  The story of his escape, which simply would not have been possible were it not for the help of what was essentially the Underground Railroad, although he never called it that, was a highlight for me.  It seemed the good in the human spirit was on display as so many people, who were still technically slaves, opened their homes to a white man and provided him with food, blankets, medicine, sometimes at great personal risk.  Like most good books, this one had a few good lessons packaged inside an intriguing and inspiring story of adventure.

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Dachau and the Nazi Terror

. . . humanity — that is, resistance against [a] system forced upon the people . . .
 — Hermann Langbein

I was ashamed of my passivity and ignorance.

This was where the path of an unpolitical person living in seclusion led.

Helpless and lost, one is dragged along by the raging torrent.
 — Ladislaus Ervin-Deutsch

When I was a kid, World War II held a certain fascination for me, but it wasn’t really the war that was interesting, but the machines and planes that were used throughout the war.  I really liked to draw, and the large bombers, small fighters, and intriguing, unique vehicles like half-tracks, captured my young imagination and were some of the most common subjects of my early attempts at artwork.  As I got older, I came to better understand the horrors associated with World War II, including the Holocaust and the atrocities committed by the Empire of Japan.  There were also all the battles throughout the world that caused so many deaths and so much destruction.  I got a better understanding of the scale of that destruction while visiting Germany at the end of my mission to Russia.  I was also able to visit Dachau and get a small idea of the scale of the horror of the Holocaust.

Dachau and the Nazi Terror: 1933–1945: Testimonies and Memoirs edited by Wolfgang Benz and Barbara Distel (ISBN: 3-9808587-0-7) is a collection of memoirs written up by a variety of people who, in some way, experienced the Nazi concentration camps.  The volume contains thoughts from a couple different German Jews, a member of the French resistance, American liberators, Jews from other parts of Europe, including Poland, what was then Czechoslovakia, and even the further-away Latvia.  It was interesting to read the variety of experiences.  The common denominators were that everyone, sooner or later, experienced the terror of the concentration camps and that the vast majority of those interred were there because of their ethnicity or because of their political beliefs.  Other than the two short testimonies provided by American liberators, each of the former prisoners discussed the drudgery of prison life, the daily struggle for life that got harder and harder the longer the war dragged on, and extreme contrast between the brutality of so many and the kindness of a few soldiers and citizens who rose above the prevailing patterns of thought and behavior.  It was interesting to read about the various commentators’ lives before and during the war, their varying degrees of commitment to their religious or political ideals, and their varied responses to life in the concentration camps.

The book is, obviously, likely to be tough reading for some.  It is, nevertheless, extremely interesting and full, I found, of lessons.  I was impressed with the strength of all those who wrote.  Writing or speaking about such experiences is not often easy, but it is important, and I am glad these people made it happen.  Without their voices, the lessons of time are lost and forgotten.  It is said that if a people does not learn from history, it is bound to repeat history’s mistakes.  That thought did not leave me for one second as I read this book.  Entire peoples were slated for extermination simply because of their ethnicity.  An official policy of discrimination and hate was enacted by a government simply because someone looked different or had a different ethnic background.  In addition to the ethnic hatred, there was political intolerance and hatred.  People who thought differently than the official line were first ostracized, then imprisoned, and then killed.  The Nazis, socialists, had no love for the communists.  I, too, don’t agree with the tenets of communism, but as I read, I found it horrible that the marketplace of ideas wasn’t allowed to let people say their piece and have others make their own choices on accepting or rejecting those ideas.  Especially troubling was the experience of one prisoner who went from the Nazi concentration camps to the Russian gulag.  Both of the intolerant positions described above have similarities to what we see in politics today.  Another lesson to be learned from the memoirists is that political involvement is key.  One writer mournfully noted that he had always been apolitical, the same as so many of the people he knew.  That lack of involvement, he figured, had allowed the minority to take control and take things in such a negative direction.  A third lesson worth mentioning (although there are more) is that the writers did not display any hatred.  One told of coming across one of his former guards after being liberated.  While some of the prisoners did act out violently toward this former guard, some of the Jews, including the writer, turned away from the scene and did not take their turn attacking the man even though they could have easily made the case that they were justified in doing so.  Many writers commented fondly on the guards that treated them humanely or the civilians who risked punishment, but, all the same, tried to help the prisoners.  The prisoners often looked for opportunities to see the good around them and to persevere even in the face of intense trial.  One noted that this was a characteristic present in many of those who survived.  That is a powerful lesson for us.

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A Captain's Duty

Pirates are a fascinating subject and the subject of many a young boy's imagination.  I was fortunate enough to grow up when reading was still somewhat popular and encouraged by parents, so I read classics like Treasure Island more than once as a kid.  There was, of course, a certain romanticism about such stories that may not have been real, but it made for great reading and even better pretend play later with plastic swords, skull-and-cross-bones flags and costumes.

In the early 2000s, as people in poor countries got desparate and the security situation deteriorated in many parts of the world, piracy made a comeback.  There was nothing romantic about it, and it didn't involve the big ships with masts and sails, but usually small boats and a couple Russian-made machine guns instead of swords.  A Captain's Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs, and Dangerous Days at Sea (ISBN: 978-1-4013-1044-8) by Richard Phillips with Stephan Talty tells one such story with a happy ending for the good guys.  Phillips and his crew made international news when Somali pirates boarded the ship he was captain of and took him hostage.  He preserved the lives of his crew and saved his ship, but felt it was likely that he would end up sacrificing his life for that.  After a few harrowing days at sea with the pirates in one of the ship's lifeboats, U.S. Navy SEALs rescued Phillips and killed the pirates in a stroke of incredible marksmanship.  The book also includes a little bit of the story of what Phillips's wife and family were going through during the ordeal.

The book was an easy read, in part because it was interesting.  I read through it quickly, but with great interest even though I knew what was going to happen, both because I read the headlines just like everyone else when this happened, but because I'd seen the movie about the events, too.  Still, it was good to get the story from the captain himself, as it's always a little different than second-hand through the media or a filmmaker.  I wasn't as interested in the homefront aspect of the story, but it is a real dimension of the story that cannot be dismissed.  There were a couple holes in the story, such as whatever happened to the lead pirate and how he came to have Navy gear, which is something that is alluded to over and over, but never fully explained.  I could've handled less R-rated language, too, but it seems that these days, people don't know how to express emotion any other way, which is sad.  These shortcomings notwithstanding, I enjoyed the story.

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This Is Serbia Calling

In all wars and under all authoritarian regimes that I have heard of, there has been an underground movement of some sort or another.  I admit that I know very little of many of them.  Whether it be the Underground Railroad of the American Civil War period or the resistance efforts during Germany’s World War II-era conquest of Europe or the people in the former Soviet Union who yearned for freedom and did what they could, the stories are spell-binding.  Some, of course, are better than others, but I find it hard to pass judgement on those who made only small contributions to resistance movements; they did what they could in an atmosphere where even the littlest action against a tyrannical government could and often did result in death, sometimes for one’s family and friends, too.  I hadn't really heard about such people when it came to the Bosnian War, but I figured there had to be some.

This Is Serbia Calling: Rock 'n' Roll Radio and Belgrade's Underground Resistance by Matthew Collin (ISBN: 1-85242-776-0), tells about a few of the people who tried to change the minds of Serbians during the war with Bosnia & Herzegovina.  I found the very idea of someone going against what Serbia's ironically-named (his first named means free) despot, Slobodan Milošević, worth reading about.  The book tells the story of how what is now Serbia's second-largest TV and radio station came to be, how it presented a constant message that went against the ultra-nationalist propaganda of the Serbian ruler.  It was often a dangerous message, one that resulted in jail time, seized property, and the constant fear of death and beatings.  Most of the radio station's personnel suffered only lightly, but others in the political opposition were murdered.  B92 struggled to present a message that would galvanize the people of Serbia against the war, and once that was over, against the government that had brought so much trouble to their land.  B92 was no great supporter of NATO or the West when they started bombing Serbia during the Serbian campaign in Kosovo, but mostly stayed on message as they continued to denounce the their corrupt president.  They brought a message of hope and freedom to the people, which ultimately resulted in the people of Serbia taking to the streets and quickly, with minimal bloodshed, throwing Milošević out of power.

The book was an interesting history told from an unusual perspective (and in the highly charged vocabulary of the Balkans).  The other resistance movements I've read about have not had such an open presence as B92, a radio station, did.  Milošević had a strategy that left those dissenting voices around that he figured didn't really matter, so there's probably an argument to be made about the real threat B92 presented the regime, but the fact that they were eventually taken over, probably means they were too effective for the regime's liking at the spreading of their pro-democratic message.  I was intrigued by their dislike for the West, even though Western governments were pumping money and manpower into keeping B92 and other anti-Milošević organizations relevant.  I liked reading about how, once Milošević was deposed, most people involved in the movements against him just returned to their everyday lives.  They weren't seeking power or fame, just freedom.  They were willing to stand up for what they believed, some at considerable risk to their physical safety or even lives.  It was great to read about people desiring freedom, taking matters into their own hands, and working to get it.

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Blood and Vengeance

The stories of war are always fascinating.  It seems to me that when I read about it, the best and the worst of people come to light, and those extremes are interesting.  The vast majority of my experience with learning about life during war comes from WWII.  Its stories have captivated me from an early age, likely because I heard my grandpa’s stories of being a soldier in the Pacific theater and the stories of my grandma and grandpa on the other side as civilians in wartime Germany.  I have always been exposed to both sides and found worthwhile stories in both.  Modern warfare also has its heroes and bravery and villians and cowardice.  War is, of course, an overall saddening thing, usually rather senseless, but there are incredible stories and great lessons to be learned.

Blood and Vengeance: One Family’s Story of the War in Bosnia by Chuck Sudetic (ISBN: 978-0-393-33548-4) is, indeed, and incredible story.  It follows one Bosniak (Muslim) family from the final few years of Yugoslavia through the end of the Bosnian War.  The information about life in an obscure village on the border of Bosnia and Serbia serves a great purpos in the book; it sets up what life was like in so many places.  Ethnic hatred simmered under the Communist cover of “brotherhood and unity.”  When the lid provided by party was gone, it boiled over and escalated quickly.  Based on personal interviews in the first few years after the war, the stories of fights, flights, bomb shelters, forced marches, and genocide are raw and personal.  The Muslim villgers, chased from their homes, their neighbors floating face down in Bosnia’s famous Drina river, seek shelter in neighboring villages progressively farther and farther from the fields and dirt paths of their nativity before finally reaching Srebrenica, where many would meet their ultmate demise.  Along the way, they face a very personal enemy, their former friends and neighbors.  At Srebrenica, the Bosniaks think they have found relief since the UN has provided for them a safe zone.  They soon find out that the realities of international policy are far from cut and dry, and the safe zone has little in common with the word “safe.”  Here, Sudetic relies on articles, documents, and archive material, painting a picture of great power ineptitude.  Eventually, the war comes to an end, but not without changing forever the lives of those involved, some, paradoxically, possibly for the better.

The highly charged (the book is littered with Bosnian swearing, which is very representative of the linguistic realities of the Balkans) narrative is raw, personal, and oftimes graphic.  An accurate portrayal of the horror of war compounded by the atrocity of genocide is not likely possible to portray any other way.  I, a far removed observer, found it interesting.  These personal stories have a place in history.  Living in the Balkans, I wish I had an opportunity to hear them with my own ears, but the younger generation doesn’t remember them because they were not a part of it — at least not significantly — and it’s usually an impropriety to ask the older generation about it.  This made the book a gripping read.  I was somewhat skeptical at first because the author is distantly related (by marriage) to the main family in the book.  I found, though, that the story was objective.  There were mistakes on both sides.  In addition, like many families of the times in Yugoslavia’s dying years, the Bosniaks of the book were intermarried with Serbs.  There was really no clear-cut delineation between the ethnicities (throughout the book, soldiers, gangs, and others resorted to what was the only sure-fire way to tell if a man was Muslim or not: they demanded prisoners drop their pants to check for circumcision), making the whole genocidal aspect of the war that much more senseless.  The author had a clear anti-UN bent, but painted NATO in a more positive light, which probably aligns with my own thoughs on that matter.  The massacre of Srebrenica was just as depressing as always.  The truly eastern European moments of deeply rooted superstition and bizarre folk belief mingled with the Koran and an Orthodox view of Christianity (both willing to accept a certain degree of mysticism) provided some lighthearted moments in an otherwise dark book, mostly because it brought to mind my own run-ins with the eastern European mentality.  A witch riding a broom around a yard to remove a hex from a cow is something to never be forgotten.  Finally, out of the mess there was a ray of hope, which also mirrors my personal experience in eastern Europe.  A Bosniak who had never seen himself doing anything but walking behind a yoke of oxen in field in a village named for cabbage, now found himself living in the capital city, forging a way forward through owning a business and seeing it as a step up and a way forward.

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It Is about Islam

Ever since September 11th, 2001, Islam has been a big part of what America thinks about.  As with most things in modern American culture, the general American has been content to let a few blabbermouths on his favorite 24-hour news channel serve as his source of information regarding a religion that claims nearly 1.6 billion adherents.  I am not fully free from this sin.  Having lived for some time in Bosnia & Herzegovina and having spent a couple months in Azerbaijan, I like to think I’m not as clueless as the next guy.  What I do know tells me that there are certain people who believe that Islam teaches them to do horrible and disgusting things to people.  I see that line of thought as a threat to America, to the West, and to liberty in general.  Overall, the religion, schools of thought based on the religion, and the culture, like all things foreign, are intriguing, especially since they have a real influence on the world today, and I enjoy the chance to take in something new that touches on many areas of interest at once.

In It Is about Islam (ISBN: 978-1-5011-2612-3) by Glenn Beck, part of Beck’s “Control” series (although I’m not entirely sure because it doesn’t fit the government overstep discussion that is so central to the other two books in the series), the reader is given a crash course in Islam, then typical media and government lies about Islamic extremism (Beck uses the word “Islamism” for this) are discusses and exposed, and then Beck gives a couple basic suggestions on how to move forward.  Based on my own understanding, the background information was solid.  I was intrigued to learn about the contact early Americans had with Islam and the process they went through to properly educate themselves about it.  The “Lies” section was good.  It was likely easy for the research team to gather the material.  There was no need to go into statistics or anything like that.  Simply gathering material from the Koran, the Hadith, and the words of the extremists themselves, did it and showed just how the extremists come up with what they believe.  Finally, there were a couple suggestions on how people should arm themselves with real information and not be willing to be stuck with what the media and politicians try to feed the American public.

I really wasn’t sure how I’d feel about this book.  I know a lot of Muslims, largely because I have spent (at the time of this writing) nearly two years in a country that has a majority Muslim population (~51%, but still a majority).  Bosnia & Herzegovina, though, is famous for being a Muslim lite country, although that has changed a bit since ISIL came on the scene.  I know that the nuts believe they are carrying out the will of God according to the Koran.  I also know some really solid people who are Muslims and don’t live anything like the extremists.  In the end, I ended up agreeing with Beck’s argument that while there are many Muslims that don’t agree with the extremists, it doesn’t really matter because we’re not worried about them; we’re worried about the extremists because they themselves believe they’re engaged in a holy war and that they themselves are carrying out God’s will according to the Koran.  It doesn’t matter what regular Americans think or what elites think or what non-extremist Muslims think.  What matters is what the extremists think, and it would behoove us to call it what it is so we can actually move forward against what is a real threat.  I was probably most disappointed by the section at the end of the book because it lacked any real, concrete suggestions.  The other book in the series have, but this was a bit fuzzier and just asked readers to be educated (one thing I hope to do is read the Koran even though Beck quoted from the Saudi-approved English translation).  I agree that’s important, but in our very literal world today, I think that most people need to be given the step-by-step guide.  My advice would be to not swallow the lines the politicians are always giving us along with doubting just about anything one hears in the media.  Once one figures out the real story, wield the truth and demand justice and common sense by getting vocally and actively involved in local politics.  The book gives the example of some city in Texas having a local sharia court.  If more people who believed in the Constitution stood up, that wouldn’t be happening.

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American Sniper

I am pretty old.  I don’t always feel it, but I am.  There are a couple ways I can tell this.  First, in high school and college, I played a lot of basketball and volleyball.  The first year home from my mission I played a lot of basketball.  I remember playing for hours on end on the courts at BYU’s now-demolished Deseret Towers.  I could do that every day.  Nowadays, on the rare occasion that I even get to play decent basketball, my skills have atrophied and I feel the effects of a couple hours of running around when I wake up the next day.  Second, I remember sometimes running around the neighborhood with friends carrying plastic machine guns.  We were often policemen or soldiers as we stole around a corner or pushed or way through low-growing brush in an empty lot.  Nowadays, guns kill people, not the person pulling the trigger, and helicopter parents everywhere try to keep their kids from touching anything even remotely gun-like.  My current, mundane desk job is a far cry from the excitement imagined as a kid on the NBA hardwoods or as an elite soldier racing down a zip line suspended from a helicopter in enemy territory, but sometimes it’s interesting to re-visit those day dreams.

American Sniper by Chris Kyle (ISBN: 978-0-06-223886-3) is a book that does just that.  It also visits, in a very personal way, the other realities of being a soldier, such as separation from friends and family, and the stress that comes from that and from always being in such high-adrenaline situations in war zones.  The book is the first-hand account of a Navy SEAL and his experiences throughout his time in the service of his country and his fellow man.  It follows him from high school to his helping form a company to train other security professionals once he got out of the military.  Most of the details in the book come during his time as a sniper in Iraq.  He explains how the American soldiers went about their business in the hostile areas where they operated.  He explains what goes through a soldier’s mind before, during, and after action.  He goes through the extremely painful process of losing a friend in battle.  The book also describes the heroic efforts of those who were seriously injured to work hard to overcome their new disabilities and make something of their lives.  Readers are let in, to a certain degree, to the psyche of the author as he describes, mostly in general terms, his philosophy on life and on some of the things he did while in the Navy.  There’s a little fun along the way, but the journey is mostly hard work, a lot of sweat, and quite a bit of blood, too.

I remember hearing about the book a couple years ago, but not being super interested at the time.  Then someone decided to make a movie.  Books are always better than movies, so I got a copy of the book.  For the most part, it was pretty gripping.  It’s pretty much all action all the time (and includes all the typical foul language of a modern soldier’s memoir).  Even the parts where Kyle tells about being at home and dealing with his wife and children have an edge to them because he was on edge and not always dealing with his struggles in the best way.  In the end, he learns a lot from what he goes through and definitely becomes a better person, especially in his family life, and that was neat to read.  The war sequences are very interesting.  They are fascinating to me because I have never experienced anything like them.  Kyle makes a simple case for his belief that what he and the rest of the U.S. military were doing was right, and that was interesting to read, too.  It really had only two points.  First, by engaging America’s enemies on their home turf, they had little to no opportunity to engage us on ours.  Second, the people America was fighting against were people who wanted to kill Americans and subject others to their will.  The soldiers felt they were protecting Americans and helping the Iraqi people be able to live according to the desires of their consciences.  It was really that simple for him.  It’s that simple for us, too, and I am thankful that men like Chris Kyle were willing to put their lives on the line for the rest of us.  It is a sad subscript to the book that Kyle was killed a few years after writing the book by a former soldier he was trying to help, using his own experiences as something to learn from, re-adjust to civilian life.

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Balkan Ghosts

“So foul a sky clears not without a storm.”— Shakespeare, The Life and Death of King John, 4.2.108
My childhood featured a couple major actions by U.S. armed forces: the Gulf War and the U.S.-led NATO involvement in the Bosnian War.  The former was broadcast into our living rooms, and I remember watching live footage of bombs hitting Baghdad while preparing for my dad's birthday celebrations.  The second was a smaller operation and much less well understood in the U.S.  As a teenager, I know I certainly didn’t get it.  What probably brought that war home for Americans was when Capt. Scott O'Grady was shot down, survived for a few days on bugs and other gross stuff like that, and was rescued by marines.  It was nothing short of miraculous that the story had a happy ending.  It also made people, myself included, pay more attention to a little-known and little-understood part of the world.

Balkan Ghosts by Robert D. Kaplan (ISBN: 978-0-312-42493-0), is self-styled as a travelogue, but is more akin to a feature story in a national magazine on current affairs.  Kaplan weaves his extensive travels and living experience in the region and the accompanying interviews and everyday events with historical perspective and the relevant biographical information pertaining to the important figures in the Balkans’ history, his “ghosts.”  Kaplan’s definition of the Balkans is a bit wider than most Americans’, so not only the former Yugoslavia, but Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece, too, are included in the discussion of this fascinating geographical region.  Each country and each nation (ethnic group) has a few figures in its past who lived in such a way and made decisions in such a way as to continue to influence the way things are done and the way people think.  With the exception of Greece, the Balkans also deal with a specter of a different type, the continued need to deal with the harsh consequences of communist dictatorships that broke people and destroyed countries immediately after the Nazis and fascism gave the same thing a whirl.  It’s worth noting that the Nazis followed right on the heels of the Hapsburgs, who were, in most people’s estimation, better rulers than the succeeding ones, but on occasion no less ruthless.  The great figures and great histories of the various peoples are presented with all the raw emotion that is associated with Balkanization, and Kaplan points out that since the histories are great, the people pick those moments when their histories were at an apex and claim that cultural, linguistic, and territorial summit as the way things should be now before any other discussions can be had.  It puts them all in a hard place, but Kaplan argues that considering all the things these groups of people and these countries have been through, there’s really no way but up, although, as his reference to Shakespeare alludes to, it might be a painful process.

I thought the book was a good read, although I was slightly disappointed by a couple things.  One was that the book had received so much press, I thought it was going to blow my socks off, and it didn’t.  The other was that although Kaplan makes a convincing argument for including Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece in his book because of their obvious geographical location but also because of their similar historical paths and current problems, I was hoping for something that focused more on the American definition of the Balkans, the former Yugoslavia.  Still, I think I came away with a little more understanding of the region currrently and a much better understanding of its history.  Like all people European and Asian, the Slavs of southeastern Europe know and appreciate their history.  The troubles in the Balkans are one of those cases where that appreciation goes too far.  There are endless debates about European and American culture and which is better.  I typically fall on both sides of the debate, preferring to pick and choose what I like from both.  Americans’ propensity to not worry so much about the past and get on with today is something the Balkan nations could learn from.  In the meantime, Kaplan has opened the door and illuminated a few feet beyond the threshold of an exotic and unexplored (at least, by me) world that is only barely removed from the Europe and Russia that I know.

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The Gift of Fear

Everyone fears one thing or another.  Some fears are what most people would consider rational.  Others, such as acridophobia (the abnormal fear of grasshoppers) and apiphobia (the abnormal fear of bees) are what most people would consider irrational.  Sometimes, we are gripped by fear of things that aren't even real, which is probably a step down from the usual phobias since at the very least, bees, grasshoppers, and the like are real things.  As a kid I had the occasional nightmare, just like most kids.  One that I remember particularly well was a dream about small, brown aliens.  The dream started out as a National Geographic-type show with a guy in a blind hunting these little aliens.  Later, the aliens made it to our house in Centerville, came through the window well (of which I was already deathly afraid because a muskrat had once fallen in and made the typical scratching and scurrying noises), and wreaked havoc in our house.  We were able to trap them in the basement bathroom, but when they learned how to flush themselves down the toilet, they were able to get out of the house and reintroduce themselves into the environment and again enter our house.  I awoke from that dream sweating profusely, sure that, in the middle of the night, all alone in my basement bedroom with two window wells, I was sure to become the aliens' next victim.  Odd shadows around my desk only assured me that hordes of the little creatures were hiding underneath or behind the desk.  I lay awake for a couple hours in an adrenaline-fueled vigil, tightly cocooned in multiple slowly-becoming-soaked-with-my-sweat blankets, waiting for the aliens to emerge from their hiding place to attack.  It never happened, and I fell back asleep.

In his book The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence (ISBN: 978-0-440-50883-0), Gavin de Becker attempts to help people push irrational fear out of their lives so they can be properly attuned to true fear, which he claims is a positive aspect of our bodies' natural reaction to things.  Fear, he says, helps us respond appropriately to situations that have a real chance of resulting in our being harmed or killed.  De Becker is an expert on security issues, criminal justice, and public safety.  His book reflects that in that most of the examples and the topics of discussion involve things like corporate safety, dating safety, and child abuse.  As one with a wide range of experience — personal, research, and professional — the examples given are not only gripping, but provide lessons learned.  De Becker explains how we can often predict violence and gives some suggestions on how to get out of those potentially violent situations with minimal damage done.  As someone who has found much of what Glenn Latham says in his book The Power of Positive Parenting: A Wonderful Way to Raise Children to be true, I was intrigued by de Becker's claim that stalking, whether from an estranged spouse to a crazed fan to a disgruntled employee or anything in between, can usually be solved by ignoring the stalker.  The overarching message of the book, of course, is that our natural intuition will help us in most dangerous situations, but only if we are informed enough to not have our head full of worries and anxieties caused by unfounded fear.

While the message of the book was a good one, I was rather underwhelmed by the book.  While child abuse, spousal abuse (mostly wife abuse), rape, and stalking are real problems, I found that robbery, burglary, and assault were under-represented in the book.  I wanted to know how to deal with walking down the street at night and being met suddenly by a few people out of nowhere.  I found de Becker's obvious political leanings to grate on the reading.  His explanations of fear were solid, but always included a final note about how we got this through evolution.  The explanation stood without evolution — evolution or creation doesn't matter in this discussion; the fact that we work the way we do is sufficient.  The same line of reasoning applies to de Becker's grossly unfounded position on gun control.  In an appendix, de Becker goes so far as to say the right to bear arms is a "so-called right."  He may be a security expert, but he's obviously no historian.  He should just leave politics out of it and tell us how to deal with violent people who happen to have guns.  Finally, I was no big fan of the author's philosophy, even though it's a wide-spread philosophy.  He claimed we only truly fear something when death is the result of that something (this is based, in part, on the current interpretations of evolutionary theory (and maybe on older interpretations, but I don't know enough about them to really comment)).  This is, of course false, and the author admits as much when later in the book he writes that we truly fear only that which can harm us or kill us.  There are many things I fear worse than being killed, and being educated about those types of crimes would vastly improve the book as would a little more effort on de Becker's part to focus on the subject at hand and not tangential opinions.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXI John Pruess.