I wish it really were all like Four Lions

In the proud tradition of violent Islamic extremism being mostly counterproductive, a suicide bomber who seems to have been supporting Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan (which has claimed responsibility against a rival group who had been taking over territory from TTP. They are referred to as "the Salarzai tribe," (though my reading in more specialized places suggests that going straight to tribal classifications is often not the best course, cough, understatement).

The counterproductive part is that while the bomber (gender apparently still in contention, no ID that I've seen anywhere) took out several of the intended targets, the chosen place for this event was...a World Food Programme event. The words coming to my mind go something like "I mean, honestly" but that doesn't seem right. It just seems, again, counterproductive--there was no other way to do this? Of course intimidation is a major part of coercing the local populace in any insurgency effort, but this sort of thing is not too far off from what lost al-Qaeda a lot of support elsewhere.

At any rate, 43 people were killed in this incident, and:

On Friday, a force of 150 militants in Mohmand Agency (just south of Bajaur), had targeted 5 checkpoints of the Frontier Corps, a Pakistani government paramilitary unit, killing 11 troops in the Safi and Baizai districts. Some 24 of the rebels were killed in a riposte by government sources. This attack also came in revenge for the Taliban having been expelled [by the Salarzai] from those areas of Mohmand Agency.

On Saturday, Pakistani troops using helicopter gunships came back after the insurgents, allegedly killing 40 of them in Baizai and Lakro villages.

This leaves the headline at "Over 80 Dead."

Juan Cole has a pretty good roundup of what all went down.

If only Four Lions were all there was to it.


[Note: embedded video is even worse now than it was before. Once upon a time I could adjust the size in the code, but not now, noooo. Link is all you get. Sorry.]

Once again, there's just nothing to say

On Wednesday morning, a suicide car bomber slammed into a Frontier Corps convoy of vehicles heading to inaugurate a girls school in the village of Kad, in the Lower Dir district of northwest Pakistan, killing 7 and wounding at least 130. Among the dead were 3 US troops in Pakistani dress and a Frontier Corpsman. The others were schoolgirls. The attack occurred as the convoy was reaching two girls' schools, one an elementary school and one a high school rebuilt with US funds. The force of the blast collapsed the high school's walls, but it was empty. Most of the wounded were schoolgirls in the elementary school, hit by flying glass and debris; ironically, given that the Taliban claim to be Muslims, some were having their class on Islam when the shrapnel hit them.

H/t Juan Cole.

Compassion

I will here reproduce Mark Blumenthal's post on the Holocaust Museum shooting in full. I can think of no better meditation.

This is Personal

By Mark Blumenthal

Regular readers will probably remember my that my father-in-law Frank Burstin, who passed away about a week before last fall's elections, was a survivor of the Auschwitz death camp. For that reason, as you may imagine, the news this afternoon about a shooting at Washington's Holocaust Museum hits pretty close to home for me and for my family.

But you don't know the half of it.

I have a special memory of Pop (as we knew him) from last summer. It was a few weeks before he received his cancer diagnosis, during what turned out to be his last visit to the Holocaust Museum. Because he lost his parents and all of his siblings to the Nazis, and because no grave site exists for any of his family, Pop made it a habit to visit the Museum at least once a year. It fulfilled for him the custom that many Jews practice of visiting the cemetery of loved ones once a year. I only got to accompany him on one of these visits, that one last year, along with my wife's nephew Jake.

I described him last year as "kind and optimistic soul," and he certainly was. But when he entered that museum, something changed. He was not unkind, but in that place, as I soon learned, he suffered no fools (nor anyone else).

We wandered into the museum, through the same doors and into the same foyer where shots rang out this afternoon. My wife had given us visitor passes that she receives as a member of the Museum. The lines were long, and it was not obvious which line we needed to stand in.

Pop was having none of it. He walked away from me and wandered up to the museum staffer standing at the head of the long line leading to the elevators that takes all visitors to the museum exhibits. I thought for a moment that Pop was going to ask directions. I was wrong.

He thrust out his arm in the direction of the staffer, displaying the number the Nazis tattooed on his arm at Auschwitz just a few inches from her face. Without making eye-contact and barely breaking stride, Pop kept walking. Understandably, the staffer barely blinked. She didn't make a move to stop him.

Pop kept walking right into the elevator that had just filled with the visitors that had been waiting in that long line. And even though the elevator was already quite crowded, he walked right in. Jake and I had to run past the guard to catch up. "Pop, Pop," I said, feeling a little embarrassed, hoping to talk him into at least waiting for the next elevator.

The staffer inside the elevator must have heard me, because he smiled, held the door and said with smile, "We have room for Pop. You guys too. C'mon in."

And up we went. I have been to the Holocaust Museum many times, but none as memorable as that visit.

About a month ago, in a conscious effort to carry on her father's tradition and to commemorate his birthday, my wife Helen paid her own solo visit to the Museum. She arrived at the end of a busy work day, in a rush, just a few minutes before closing time. Unfortunately, given the late hour, they had run out of the candles usually provided in the Hall of Remembrance for visitors to light and leave in the niches of the outer walls.

Already feeling emotional -- her dad had passed away just six months before -- she broke down sobbing.

A staffer nearby immediately came to her assistance, asking if she needed help. She explained, and the gentleman asked her to wait. He soon returned with a candle, explaining with a conspiratorial wink that he kept his own special supply for such emergencies.

The guards and staff at the Holocaust Museum have a special duty. The do more than just protect and operate one of Washington's many heavily trafficked museums. On a daily basis, they help open the doors to the elderly survivors of the atrocities of World War II. As my stories attest, they do it with a remarkable degree of kindness and professionalism.

As far as I know, the Holocaust Museum personnel that we encountered were not armed guards, though it is possible they were. But when I heard about the shooting this afternoon, and more specifically that at least one of the victims is a security guard now apparently in critical condition, it struck very close to home.

This is personal.

As far as I am concerned, the staff members of the Holocaust Museum are part of our family and the Museum itself is hallowed ground, and we pray for the recovery of the wounded guard. "Never take your guard force and security people for granted," William Parsons, the museum's chief of staff said on television a few minutes ago. Our family never will.

May Stephen Tyrone Johns rest in peace. And may his family find some soon.

Oh, no.

Oh my god.

Dr. George R. Tiller’s clinic was one of the few in the country to provide abortions to women late in their pregnancies, and for decades, women had traveled there from all over the nation and from overseas. It was also the only remaining abortion clinic, even for first trimester abortions, in the Wichita region.

“The family of Dr. George Tiller announces that effective immediately, Women’s Health Care Services, Inc., will be permanently closed,” according to a statement issued on Tuesday morning by the family’s lawyers.

And, as if one needed more reasons to worry:

Even some abortion opponents, who had long devoted their efforts to closing down Dr. Tiller’s clinic, said they did not wish to see it happen under these circumstances. Last week, Troy Newman, the leader of Operation Rescue, had said that closing the clinic now would send a worrisome message. “Good God, do not close this abortion clinic for this reason,” he said in an interview with The New York Times. “Every kook in the world will get some notion.”

H/t Balloon Juice

Meditation 17

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee..."
--John Donne, Meditation 17


George Tiller is dead.

I am heartbroken, angry and sick at heart, all at once.I feel as though I've been punched in the stomach.

Tiller has long been a focal point of protest by abortion opponents because his clinic, Women's Health Care Services at 5107 E. Kellogg, is one of the few in the country where late-term abortions are performed.

"It's a terrible loss. I'm just really sad about the whole thing," said a former employee of the clinic who asked not to be identified. "He was a great guy. I understand people were against a lot of what he did, but for those who he helped, they'll never forget the kind of person he was."

He went through a lot to help those people:

Protesters blockaded Tiller's clinic during Operation Rescue's "Summer of Mercy" protests during the summer of 1991, and Tiller was shot by Rachelle Shannon at his clinic in 1993. Tiller was wounded in both arms, and Shannon remains in prison for the shooting.

The clinic was bombed in June 1986, and was severely vandalized earlier this month. According to the Associated Press, his lawyer said wires to security cameras and outdoor lights were cut and that the vandals also cut through the roof and plugged the buildings' downspouts. Rain poured through the roof and caused thousands of dollars of damage in the clinic. Tiller reportedly asked the FBI to investigate the incident.

I read about him somewhere years ago and I remember being shocked that anyone would have done such things to such a man and deeply grateful for his service. His story stuck with me ever since. As soon as I read the headline I was hoping that name was ringing the wrong bell, but to my deep sadness, I was right.

(The epigram, I know, is cliche and overused, but it encapsulates the way I feel connected to him and to this.)

As Digby said,

If you think that women should have to endanger their lives in order to give birth to a fetus with no brain, then you probably think this man was a murderer. For the women who went to him, and for whom he put up with a horrifying amount of harrassment and violence before they finally managed to kill him, he was a Godsend.

May he rest in peace.

D'awww

Some lighter fare: a British man was caught in the Mumbai attacks and "shattered his body" trying to escape. During his recovery (back in Britain) he missed an Eddie Izzard show he had been really looking forward to, and his father wrote Izzard asking for a letter of condolence or somesuch.

Well, Izzard decided that a much better idea would be to come to the hospital and do the routine by his bedside. All 90 minutes of it.

This isn't that, but here's the clip of Izzard they embedded in the article. Bloody hilarious as always.