This is a quote attributed to Cyril Richard Rescorla. Rescorla was British and originally trained as a Paratrooper in BA. He later found himself as a Platoon leader in AirMobile Infantry [0] distinguishing himself in la Drang Valley 1965 in the first American encounter with NVA.
Hard-core as they come.
A measure of a persons character is how they conduct themselves under extreme pressure. Rescorla would sing Welsh tunes to calm his troops in that desperate battle reported by reporter Joe Gallaway. A book was co-written with the Commander, Hall Moore and later turned into a film, "Once we were Soldiers"
It was reported Rescorla, a Security Officer for Morgan Stanley also present in the '93 bombings (great side story, Rescorla infiltrated and identified a radical Iman at a NY Mosque who was later charged) made his views clear that MS should have moved out of the WTC.
Rescorla was in his office on the 44th floor
at 8:48 a.m., when the first plane struck the
neighboring tower. At 9:10 a.m., a plane hit
the second building where Morgan Stanley,
an international financial services firm,
had offices between the 43rd and 66th floors.
Survivors said Rescorla grabbed a bullhorn
and cleared out 3,800 workers from 20 floors. [0]
In being unsuccessful, Rescorla organised and drilled all MS employees every three months in fire evac procedures. [1]
"Rick could be heard saying "... be proud to be an
American ... everyone will be talking about you
tomorrow," and singing God Bless America and other
patriotic and military songs over his bullhorn
to help evacuees stay calm as they left the tower." [2]
The title of the article comes from when Gallaway put the image of Rescorla [3] on the front cover. Rescorla is reported to not have read the book, nor wanted any recognition saying, "The real heroes are dead".
I wonder how that worked - certainly today I doubt you could just show up in the US as a foreign national and get a commission in the US Army. The nearest equivalent would be enlisting in the French Foreign Legion.
"You see, for Rick Rescorla, this was a natural death.
People like Rick, they don’t die old men. They aren’t
destined for that and it isn’t right for them to do so.
It just isn’t right, by God, for them to become feeble,
old, and helpless sons of bitches. There are certain men
born in this world, and they’re supposed to die setting
an example for the rest of the weak bastards we’re
surrounded with."
Ironically, this doesn't make me want to be a hero. Instead it makes me see the thanklessness of duty. Society loves a dead hero because they can be used without asking for anything.
For my family? For those I love and those who I really care about? No question. But for some abstract like society, as part of a job for a paycheck, or out of some internalized sense of duty? No.
Bin Laden lists a rather long litany of grievances stretching all the way back to the crusades. He also blames the US for East Timor's independence[0], not a very terrible crime unless you believe in Islamic supremacy. Are you seriously suggesting that bin Laden would not have become a racist mass murderer had the US not helped overthrow the Iranian government?
No, that's not what I'm suggesting. I'm suggesting the events in Iran and the ideology of Ayatollah Khomeini are some of the many influences on his ideology. I think this would be obvious to anyone arguing in good faith, so I'm out of this conversation.
I'm having trouble lining up the history dates exactly. It seems to have been one of the forgotten conflicts of the retreat of the British Empire; Wikipedia dates the "Bush War" to 64-79, slightly after the 63 that this guy is supposed to have fought there.
White Supremacists vs. Communists. Not really something anyone involved should be very proud of. But that appears to have been after Rick left. He would have been in the British colonial police, which was a pretty ugly position to be in but the British government was also attempting to ensure that Rhodesia did not secede as an apartheit state.
As for how it got to promoting Mugabe into turning one of the most prosperous nations in Africa into the new Weimar Germany, one interesting reading of the situation:
The Rhodesian Selous Scouts (the new, mixed race, elite force responsible for 3/4 of the enemy casualties during the Bush Wars) made the decision to go after the "moderate" party (ZAPU, led by Nkomo), weakening his troops shortly before the final election (where all Rhodesian troops were called back to the barracks and guarded by British troops).
They correctly expected Mugabe to win the election, since he could take over the countryside with no opposition, and the plan was that he had such an awful reputation that the British would not allow the election result to stand, whereas they'd be fine with Nkomo. Unfortunately, they underestimated a. how much the British were annoyed with Ian Smith and UDI and b. how little they cared about Mugabe's true nature, and generally about the fate of the "natives" in their own colonies, just wanting to wrap up the whole thing as quickly as possible and stop being the centre of global attention.
In fact you can trace Mugabe's rise to the assassination of the moderate, educated, highly competent leader of ZAPU and later ZANU, Herbert Chitepo, a national hero and the country's first black lawyer, by a former British SAS soldier working half on contract, half out of ideology for the Rhodesians. The assassination, which was followed by Rhodesian disinformation to make it look like it was a faction war, was supposed to seed dissent within the enemy camp. Instead, Mugabe took advantage of the chaos to emerge as the leader and the rest is history. For all we know, Chitepo could have been the African Lee Kuan Yew.
The rise and fall of Rhodesia is one of the most fascinating parts of 20th century history and I really recommend getting acquainted with the period. If anybody has ZANU/ZAPU/ZANLA-side sources, I'd love to read them as I could find very little on the subject and much I heard from that point of view was from Zimbabweans whose family members were fighting on that side of the conflict.
I'd say nominal communists. Cold war liberation politics was...complicated. British colonial authorities were allied with the west by default, so the "liberation" movements could only get funding, training and arms from communists. In exchange, they would have to show outwards signs of supporting communism, but that was not what they were fighting for.
Oh, indeed. It was practically the only way to be anti-colonialist. ISTR the IRA declared themselves to be Marxist at some point for this reason, despite not really having any Marxist or Communist doctrine.
To the point they had to hide it when they had American Visitors "quick take own the posters of che" - as this would have impacted passing the hat for the "boys behind the wire" in some Boston pubs
It's not necessarily the case in war that either side is "good". It certainly wasn't the case in the Rhodesian war, though we have to be careful to distinguish the actions of the leaders from the actions of individuals who get caught in events outside their control.
I really don't know. There aren't many models for successfully transitioning out of a dictatorship. A few European countries have done it but in a vastly different context.
As for what will actually be done, that's fairly easy to guess: in all likelihood nothing, unless Zimbabwe somehow starts to threaten western interests.
I think this article could have been a lot better / more touching had they chosen people who were more relatable. Both Susan and Rick pretty much embodied the stereotype of the people close to the towers --- rich and privileged, aloof and out of touch to the Everyman's concerns, etc.
Of course, that doesn't change the message of the story, but it does affect how powerfully it will be heard.
I think this comment could have been a lot better / less embarrassing had you chosen to read the article. A couple in their early sixties who live somewhere in New Jersey in a house that they didn't even own outright is not wealthy. A month after he died, she had trouble paying the mortgage on the house. That isn't very privileged.
She had a job as an administrator at a college which she took to support her children after her marriage didn't work out and she found herself without many job skills. He had a job that he'd like to retire from at the age of 62 but an inadequate retirement fund. You almost literally could not invent a more "everyman" couple in their early sixties.
> Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
Let me be clear: I'm not just talking about money here. Rick clearly had money for the vast majority of his life. But even Susan was described as being part of a high socio-economic class:
> It was obvious to Hill that Susan was from a higher social class, which made him a little self-conscious.
You may have gotten a different impression, but it's not like mine came out of the blue. The article paints them as pretty well off, especially eventually.
Fair enough and apologies for saying that I didn't think you read it - I wasn't trolling, I was genuinely surprised by that reading.
I don't think it is clear that Rick had money for the majority of his life, he looks like someone who grew up in modest circumstances (his mother was housekeeper!), enlisted at the age of 16, ended up eventually joining the US army, was eventually selected for OCS, and then used military benefits to go the University of Oklahoma to study literature and law. He taught for a while, then moved to do corporate security in his 40s.
That sounds to me like a relatively clever working class boy who eventually worked his way up to a pretty good professional job.
Susan is obviously from a higher social class - note in the article, the contrast is between Rick's friend and her, not between Rick and his friend - but by the time of the article she is essentially working a non-career track pink collar job. That's not unusual for an upper middle class divorced woman of her generation of course but it's a big economic step down from her previous life.
In October, Susan’s mortgage payment came due. Though her husband had earned a good salary at Morgan Stanley, he wasn’t paid like an investment banker, and, after alimony and child support, they weren’t wealthy. Their town house was attractive but hardly ostentatious; the mortgage and maintenance payments combined would barely rent a studio apartment in a Manhattan high-rise. Susan had to draw on a home-equity line of credit they’d opened to help pay for Rick’s memorial at the raptor preserve.... Susan felt that she was all but reduced to begging for money. She appealed to the United Way of Morristown, which did come to her assistance. And the National Red Cross eventually sent a check.
I think the point of the article is not how everyman Rick Rescorla was, but how _exceptional_ he was. Because of him almost all employees of Morgan Stanley survived and he died a selfless heroes death in the tower.
I agree with you, and I may be missing the point. I just know that a lot of the people who are callous about 9/11 are that way because "it was a bunch of rich people" or something like that. So a person who was more of an Everyman might have been more convincing.
Then again, maybe there was no Everyman who conveyed what Rick did as well (and who the reporter had enough information on to write a good story).
This is a quote attributed to Cyril Richard Rescorla. Rescorla was British and originally trained as a Paratrooper in BA. He later found himself as a Platoon leader in AirMobile Infantry [0] distinguishing himself in la Drang Valley 1965 in the first American encounter with NVA.
Hard-core as they come.
A measure of a persons character is how they conduct themselves under extreme pressure. Rescorla would sing Welsh tunes to calm his troops in that desperate battle reported by reporter Joe Gallaway. A book was co-written with the Commander, Hall Moore and later turned into a film, "Once we were Soldiers"
It was reported Rescorla, a Security Officer for Morgan Stanley also present in the '93 bombings (great side story, Rescorla infiltrated and identified a radical Iman at a NY Mosque who was later charged) made his views clear that MS should have moved out of the WTC.
In being unsuccessful, Rescorla organised and drilled all MS employees every three months in fire evac procedures. [1] The title of the article comes from when Gallaway put the image of Rescorla [3] on the front cover. Rescorla is reported to not have read the book, nor wanted any recognition saying, "The real heroes are dead".[0] http://www.weweresoldiers.net/rick.htm
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Rescorla
[2],[3] http://history.army.mil/news/2015/151100a_Rescorla.html