Why the Russians Cut Off a Moscow Bombing Suspect’s Ear and Made Him Eat It

Last Friday, terrorists attacked Moscow’s “Crocus City Hall” music venue, killing over a hundred people. My condolences to their families. Within a day, leaked footage showed a suspect getting his ear cut off and being made to eat it. Additional footage showed a suspect in great pain with electrical equipment attached to his genitals.

It was the type of gruesome footage from which we tend to turn away. We form our private opinions and don’t discuss them. I fear the silence allows some observers to regard this as extreme but effective justice. Perhaps people will tell themselves the word that has justified centuries of Russia’s self-inflicted tyranny: “order.” Marquis de Custine wrote 200 years ago, “Officially, such brutal tyranny is called respect for unity and love of order.”

To say nothing about the dangers of presumptions of guilt and unconstrained authority, this episode points to important differences between Russia and the West, which most of us do not understand and, I fear, cannot understand. But I will try to explain them anyway.

Russia is a society held together by fear and threat. Creating fear is almost always the first thing they do. When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, one of their first actions was to kidnap Simferopol resident Reshat Ametov, a Tartar activist, and leave his body to be discovered later with signs of torture. Weeks later, when they invaded Donbas, one of the more outspoken pro-Ukrainian city council members, Volodymyr Rybak from Horlivka in Luhansk Region, was similarly kidnapped. He was drowned, and then his body was mutilated and left to be discovered. These stories never gained much traction. Russian disinformation was so good that everybody was discussing if Russia was invading and never got to describing how they were invading.

The terror worked for Russia. It drove opposition underground and helped the Kremlin’s propagandists and useful idiots in the West proclaim that the regions were pro-Russian. We in the West do not think that lies could be so vulgar and horrific, but they are. For Russia, this is normal. The world is held together not by laws, customs, and social norms but by barbarism. If you want to be beautiful, just murder everyone who might say otherwise, and you will be beautiful.

Read more at American Thinker

 

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Saddam Hussein and the Dark Princes of Love
Television - a story about the Iraq War
Convoy Home
Fire and Forget
Home of the Brave: Stories in Uniform
The Tea Party Explained
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Saddam Hussein and the Dark Princes of Love
Saddam Hussein and the Dark Princes of Love
Television - a story about the Iraq War
Television - a story about the Iraq War
Convoy Home
Convoy Home
Fire and Forget
Fire and Forget
Home of the Brave: Stories in Uniform
Home of the Brave: Stories in Uniform
The Tea Party Explained
The Tea Party Explained

Nine Lessons of Russian Propaganda

After visiting repeatedly, I moved to Ukraine from the United States in 2012. My parents had been born in Ukraine and taught me some of the language during my childhood in Queens, NY.

Being so close to Ukraine’s Maidan revolution and the subsequent Russian invasion gave me perspective on American perception of these events. The audacity and effectiveness of Russian propaganda has left me in utter awe. After two years of close observation, some strategies and motifs of Russian propaganda have become evident. Hopefully these lessons will lend some clarity on the information war which overlays the kinetic one. . . .

http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/nine-lessons-of-russian-propaganda

The Conflicting Nat’l Myths of Ukraine – Russia & the strange union w/ Putin – Europe’s Right

(previously unpublished essay)

The national myths of Ukraine and Russia are not just different, they are mutually exclusive, and while Ukraine’s can exist without Russia, the Russian idea plunges into an identity crisis without Ukraine.

Both claim the legacy of Kievan Rus, the mythologized and idealized kingdom is considered a well-spring of Slavic culture and Orthodox Christianity. It was obliterated by the Mongols in 1241. Here, the narratives diverge.

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On the Day of Calamity

A strange story from my workshop days has been republished on NHNovella. It originally appeared in the now defunct Steel City Review.

“2010. It was a warm November second or first. The clouds spent the day gathering and breaking apart and gathering again.

The Democrats were poised to take back Congress, and even though we didn’t know too much about politics, my friends and I were all jazzed. We were grad students, and smart enough to know the obvious — that Bush and friends had started a war for oil, that he was evil and/or stupid, and that things were about to change.

I think America felt guilty about our illegal war. I know I did, and a big Republican defeated would vindicate us all.

Anyway, I was en route to a belated Halloween party.” (Read more on NH Novella)

Featured on NHNovella & Upcoming Book Release: FIRE AND FORGET: SHORT STORIES FROM THE LONG WAR

I’m very excited to have one of my Homefires narratives featured on a literary website closely association with New Hampshire’s Free State Project — NHNovella.com.

Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War I’m also eagerly anticipating the release of Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War next month. It’s a collaboration of fifteen recent veterans.

Here’s an excerpt from Nathan Webster’s Amazon.com review:

“At some point there will be a definitive novel-length account of the Iraq or Afghanistan war. There have been a couple good ones, but none that tell (or try to) the whole story – there are too many experiences, perspectives and points of view for one book, with one voice, to accomplish all that. At least for now.

This short story collection pulls off that difficult task: it ‘collects’ 15 unique voices, each with their own perspectives. In these short forms, taken as a whole, it does give the reader almost all the viewpoints of a soldier and veteran’s experience. While each story might not be perfect (and there were a couple I didn’t like), the entire book adds up to a greater sum than its individual parts.

I have my favorites – “Television” by Roman Skaskiw presents an excellent day-in-the-life description of the grinding days of little obvious reward, when the “mission” isn’t what a soldier expects or wants. “And Bugs Don’t Bleed” by Matt Gallagher is a look at the homefront divide between compassion and rage. Siobhan Fallon’s “Tips For a Smooth Transition” is an accurate look at an awkward reunion between a returning soldier and his wife. Phil Klay’s “Redeployment” is a story of a man and his dog.

. . . .

But the audience should be civilian readers who are looking for a fuller view of the war than a nonfiction “combat” story can really tell. It’s a success of this collection that only one story, Brian Turner’s “The Wave That Takes Them Under” really describes combat, and it’s so poetic I barely noticed. A soldier’s experience is much more than combat; these stories show a lot of the human feeling that gets missed behind pictures of guys all turtled-up behind body armor and black sunglasses.

It’s a powerful collection; for now, probably the best, most comprehensive – fictional – look at the wars that has been written. As I said, the individual stories might have their own flaws and some are better than others – but the sum is much greater than the parts.”

Blurbs:

The range of stories in Fire and Forget displays a remarkable depth and breadth of the experience of the Iraq war.

– Paul Harris, The Guardian

Captures the messiness of soldiering when the mission and endgame are unclear. Though fiction, each work reads true, filled with tension, fear, and anger.

– Booklist

Searing stories from the war zones of Afghanistan, Iraq, and the USA by warrior writers. Fire and Forget is about not forgetting. It is a necessary collection, necessary to write, necessary to read.

– E.L. Doctorow

I’ve been waiting for this book for a decade. I laughed, shouted, and cried while reading this kaleidoscopic collection. So many facets of war and the people who do our fighting are covered here. Fire and Forget is a literary history of this latest period of American wars. It’s a profound and telling work of art.

– Anthony Swofford

From Siobhan Fallon’s moving anatomy of what a waiting spouse has to look forward to after her husband’s third deployment, to Brian Van Reet’s brilliant gloss on Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River,” these stories mark the territory of Return, in a manner both rich and essential.

– Anthony Giardina

A diverse anthology on our long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan united by the extraordinary talents of its authors. These stories are exceptional.

– Kevin Powers

A resonant, moving collection of stories from writers who know firsthand about the incongruous beauty and constant tragedy of war.

– Nathaniel Fick

***

Review by Jeff Price: “In the recent anthology of fiction, Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War (edited by Matt Gallagher and Roy Scranton), Roman Skaskiw’s short story, “Television,” stands out among a varied set. Skaskiw renders what may or may not be an average sequence of days for an army platoon in Iraq as a Lieutenant Sugar is tasked with sorting out the aftermath of an Iraqi child’s shooting following the detonation of an IED on an army convoy. The blast “demolished a windshield and rang eardrums, but there was no follow-up ambush, there were no secondary IEDs, and it was just a single blast between trucks “not a daisy chain of detonations. No one was hurt, just a local kid they shot.” The sharp final clause, “just a local kid they shot” captures the general sentiment within this clutch of US troops, whose lives are guided by orders first, and looking after each other second. Yet, as do the masters of subtle fiction” Chekov, Babel, Didion — Skaskiw freights the clause in such a way that his story lives in contradiction to it: medics break from watching a DVD to treat the wounded boy, only to return to the movie as a group and find “it wasn’t there the same way it had been.”; a colonel debriefs the sergeant who pulled the trigger by emphasizing he is not at fault while still encouraging him “to think about what he could have done differently, if anything at all, that would have resulted in getting these guys, or in not hurting the kid, unless of course the kid set off the IED.”; the next morning Lieutenant Sugar awakens “with morning too close to ignore.”

Fiction, like life, is all in the tension, and “Television” evokes it expertly, the kind that may be totally commonplace or of deep consequence, depending. In the same way, the experiences of a soldier’s daily rounds are a lived mixed message, tedium counterpoised by fear, and desire to channel the fear, of sudden and transfiguring harm.”

Finding the Birthplace of Ludwig von Mises

by Mykola Bunyk and Roman Skaskiw

The problem of determining the house in which the famous economist and liberal thinker was born acquired urgency several months ago with an initiative by Ukraine’s small Austrolibertarian community to unveil a memorial plaque this September for the 130th anniversary of Ludwig von Mises’s birth.

The initial relevant information about the Mises family concerned Ludwig’s great-grandfather Ludwig Mayer Rachmiel Mises. According to the website of the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe in Lviv, Ludwig’s great grandfather Mayer Rachmiel owned buildings on Market Square 18 and Old Jewish Street 7 (Rynok Square 18 and Starojevreis’ka 7), two prominent addresses in the center of Lviv connected by a courtyard.

(Read more from mises.org)

Bidding Farewell to Arms

For the past year, I could only provide a frustratingly long answer to the simple, frequently asked question, Are you still in the Army?

When I commissioned as an infantry officer in March, 2000, my contract specified four years of active service and four years in the inactive reserve (I.R.R.) — a name on a list. During graduate school, my answer was simple: Sort of. I’m still a name on a list.

At the eight year mark, I would have been allowed to resign my commission and irrevocably separate myself from the military, but my number came up at the seven year and two month mark, mobilizing me, as the letter said in all capital letters, “FOR 545 DAYS UNLESS EXTENDED.”

Of course, the military had the right to do this according to the contract I signed back in 2000. I was not a victim of new policy. I either knew or should have known — can’t remember which.

The 545 days came and went and I returned safely and soundly from Afghanistan’s Kunar Province to Iowa City where I began reassembling my life. . . .

(Read more from opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com)

Canoeing the Upper Iowa

We canoed the Upper Iowa, and spent most of the first day floating and fishing from the canoe. We’d cast into the dark deep swirls in bends behind rapids.

This was ideal. Where there were no such spots, we cast where little creeks flowed into the Upper Iowa, or behind fallen trees, or into deep spots.

When possible, we cast upstream, and pulled our lures down toward us ahead of the current, so they’d wiggle in the water. I caught the first fish, which was a joke. It was barely double the size of the lure. An ambitious little guy.

In places, the river was wide and no more than eight inches deep all the way across, the surface rippling over the stony bottom. Now and then, the canoe dragged, and we pushed against the bottom with our paddles.
(Read more from gonomad.com)

Climbing in Kunar

Rusty & Pack Animals.

I don’t imagine too many people would vacation nowadays in Afghanistan, especially not in Kunar Province, but maybe. The most likely (and cheap) way for an American to get there is to be in the Army, or, as in my case, get called back to the Army after three years of civilian life for one more combat tour.

Bull Hill was the name of one of the observation posts overlooking my base. Usually, we changed guards on Fridays, because Fridays are the weekend in Islamic countries, and a good day to reorganize. There were generally fewer attacks.

Also, since we were a Provincial Reconstruction Team and did business with local government officials, tribal elders, contractors and other Afghan big shots, there wasn’t often reason to run missions on their weekend. . . .

Anyway, Bull Hill. Occasionally, I joined the soldiers making the climb to relieve last week’s guards. . . . (Read more on GoNomad.com)

Russia’s anti-Ukraine propaganda targeting the West is pervasive and mendacious

Recently, Donald Trump Jr. responded to a question by Timcast IRL co-host Luke Rudkowski about Ukraine.

Trump Jr. said, “We’re creating a class of billionaire oligarchs in Ukraine” by way of the country’s corruption.

Previously, he mocked Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky for seeming ungrateful for the aid received. Earlier, Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis described Russia’s full scale invasion as a “border dispute,” then backtracked.

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30 Methods and Characteristics of Communism

by Roman Skaskiw

French historian and philosopher Rene Girard observed, correctly in my opinion, that communism was not popular despite killing millions of people, but precisely because it killed millions of people.

I’m told that my grandfather climbed from the window of a school at which he was teaching when a breathless neighbor told him that “they” were coming for him. So began his trek across war-torn Europe with my then-four-year-old mother. Another relative, who would have been some sort of great uncle to me, was taken to a labor camp in Uzbekistan for belonging to an anti-communist club in his high school. He was sixteen. His family received two letters from him, the first saying it was extremely cold and asking for them to send a pair of boots, the second saying that the boots had been taken by another prisoner. He did not return.

http://romaninukraine.com/30-methods-and-characteristics-of-communism/

The Radical Left Will Never Tolerate a Messiah Who Actually Arrives

The worldview of the radical left offers many dizzying contradictions and fantasies. One of the strangest is the extent of indifference and even hostility with which radical leftists treat those who deliver on the very vision they so tirelessly advocate.

There are myriad examples, some so obvious that articulating them seems like shaking the foundation of the postmodern reality (or anti-reality) in which we live.

Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/09/the_radical_left_will_never_tolerate_a_messiah_who_actually_arrives.html

Leftism’s Casual Relationship with the Truth Is Intentional By Roman Skaskiw

In The Soviet Tragedy, Martin Malia describes many Soviet citizens feeling great relief at the outbreak of World War II. These were people less than twenty years removed from devastating wars, so they were unlikely to be naïve to the horrors, yet many welcomed the news of war because, as Malia describes, war provided a coherent, tangible reality again, in contract to the schizophrenic insanity of communism.

The incoherence is everywhere.

It’s difficult to believe, given modern rhetoric, but in the early days of communism, wealth was considered a good thing, and, they argued, communism was superior because it created more of it. By the mid-1950s, it became impossible to ignore communism’s poverty and deprivation, so rather than abandon their revolutionary ideology, the communists completely replaced what had been their fundamental goal. Yes, capitalism caused wealth, they conceded, but the wealth caused inequality, and inequality, not poverty, was the great evil against which all society’s resources must mobilize.

The intellectual bankruptcy is absolutely shameless and calls to mind an observation from the great black conservative Thomas Sowell: “Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.”

Philosophy professor Stephen Hicks’s excellent little book Explaining Post-Modernism details the many outrageous ideological pivots the radical left has been forced to make over the years to preserve a revolutionary posture, including even its abandonment of the presumption of truth.

Read more at the American Thinker.