Althouse: "She had no weapons and so she picked up a scythe and killed the commando.... She killed for hours and stole weapons from corpses."

October 14, 2014

"She had no weapons and so she picked up a scythe and killed the commando.... She killed for hours and stole weapons from corpses."

"There were bodies everywhere. They hung from the trees. No man questioned her."

From "My Terrifying Night With Afghanistan's Only Female Warlord."

32 comments:

rhhardin said...: Something's wrong with the story. A scythe is impossible as a weapon.

The balance is all wrong and the cutting edge is facing the wrong way.

A sickle maybe. You can cut your fingers off with those babies, unlike a scythe, which you can't hurt yourself with.; 10/14/14, 8:39 AM
Bob Ellison said...: The fiction alarm bell in my head is going off like a fire alarm.; 10/14/14, 9:01 AM
Fernandinande said...: Commander Pigeon is still active:

What will Microsoft do with Minecraft?
by Commander Pigeon
3 weeks ago; 10/14/14, 9:02 AM
Fernandinande said...: Bob Ellison said...
The fiction alarm bell in my head is going off like a fire alarm.

Well, yeah: newrepublic.com; 10/14/14, 9:03 AM
Bob Ellison said...: "I handed her the car battery like an offering, but she said nothing. She tossed it into a small cubby in the wall."

A Corolla car battery weighs about 38 pounds.

Is this some weird form of parody?; 10/14/14, 9:07 AM
Jaq said...: Fucking men and their bourgeois truth.

Of course every word of it is true in the Marxist sense.; 10/14/14, 9:09 AM
CStanley said...: Betamax bait!; 10/14/14, 9:10 AM
Bob Boyd said...: Why would somebody armed with an AK-47 carry ammo belts "wound like gold pythons about their necks"?
And the "hot chicks" line from her loal guide? Too much.; 10/14/14, 9:13 AM
Oso Negro said...: We need a new tag for "bullshit journalism"; 10/14/14, 9:39 AM
Oso Negro said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 10/14/14, 9:39 AM
Sam L. said...: I can see a scythe for killing, but not for attacking and fighting someone. Not sure it would work for cutting thru bones.; 10/14/14, 10:02 AM
Paco Wové said...: Sounds like somebody's been watching too much Xena: Warrior Princess.; 10/14/14, 10:06 AM
MadisonMan said...: I couldn't finish reading it. Bad writing.; 10/14/14, 10:07 AM
lgv said...: The New Republic.....

Remember the story by the soldier who swerved his tank to hit dogs? I'm sure this story is just as well vetted. It's going to make a great movie.

"A scythe is impossible as a weapon"

1. Maybe they were laying on the bed with heads hanging over the edge.
2. She cut their ankles off first and let them bleed out.
3. The commandos were very, very short.

I think you could sweep upward and kill someone. Then take his weapon, but you couldn't go marching through the enemy slicing and dicing.; 10/14/14, 10:13 AM
phantommut said...: Now I miss my mom.; 10/14/14, 10:14 AM
Bob Ellison said...: Yes, rhhardin and Igv, that makes sense.

I happen to own an old scythe that was left in a barn I bought. It looks scary, but if I had to use it as a weapon, it would be as a bludgeon, not a blade.

I think rhhardin's original suggestion is correct: the author meant to lie about a "sickle", not a "scythe".; 10/14/14, 10:17 AM
Anonymous said...: A heroine for the metrosexuals at the New Republic.; 10/14/14, 10:20 AM
cubanbob said...: tim in vermont said...

Fucking men and their bourgeois truth.

Of course every word of it is true in the Marxist sense.
10/14/14, 9:09 AM "

Well at least she hated Soviets.
Maybe the author got the details wrong and she killed the Soviet commando with a hammer and sickle.; 10/14/14, 10:25 AM
Anonymous said...: In the society of The Vagina as Fascist State the Yin-and-Yang of society is not the Vagina and the Penis, it is the Fascist Vagina and the Gun. Those men AND women who choose arms are choosing personal responsibility over the symbolic -- and impotent -- words of protection employed by the State and like-minded institutions.

In The Vagina as Fascist State the Gun is the Fear-Shape: by its very silhouette it questions Authority, and any phallic shadow it casts only increases The Vagina as Fascist State's contempt. In The Vagina as Fascist State only women are to make decisions about purposeful death -- abortion as sign of Final Authority -- and gun-free.

As such, the Gun protects not just against Tyranny but also protects Procreation. It is The Vagina as Fascist State that promotes the kind of response that involves rough anal sex, choking fellatio and false reports of rape driven by the inevitable shame that follows; it is the Gun that promotes Intimacy.; 10/14/14, 10:28 AM
Jaq said...: There is a scene in "For Whom the Bell Tolls" where the communists march out the local businessmen for the crime of commerce, and instruct the locals to kill them with farm implements. The communists wanted the locals to own the uprising by being complicit in it, I guess.

No mention of scythes, and the men were mostly beaten with flails, and marched off of a cliff.

The communists are always such darlings.; 10/14/14, 10:34 AM
Jaq said...: I am betting that the only true thing about the story is that the writer was terrified.; 10/14/14, 10:48 AM
Bob Ellison said...: tim in vermont, my favorite movie, The Seven Samurai, depicts flailing in detail.

I wonder what other farm implements have been adapted as weapons. Knives, of course.; 10/14/14, 10:49 AM
Bob Ellison said...: Tires, one could argue.

Fertilizer is obvious.

I don't think silo explosions, chainsaw massacres, or combine harvesters could really fit into the farm-implements-to-weapons category.

It's difficult to beat a chainsaw into a plow, though.; 10/14/14, 10:59 AM
YoungHegelian said...: The New Republic has always had a problem with fabulists in its ranks. This story strikes me as clearly made up.

Remember, Stephen Glass wrote most of his "creative fiction" for TNR.; 10/14/14, 11:48 AM
Christy said...: Percy has spent too much time re-watching River Tam's battle against the Reavers. So have I.; 10/14/14, 12:23 PM
Bob Loblaw said...: Yeah... let me add my voice to the crowd - this is not the slightest bit believable.; 10/14/14, 2:36 PM
bleh said...: Smells like bullshit.

Why no feminism tag? Isn't there a feminism aspect to this story that might interest you, Althouse?

Also, a bullshit tag.; 10/14/14, 4:49 PM
Bobby said...: Just wondering, but what are we supposed to be finding so hard to believe:

(1) that everything or most everything in Jen Percy's story is factually accurate (i.e., that Bibi Ayesha really did kill the Russians with a scythe and the ghost did appear to her, etc. etc.);

(2) that the story is an accurate report of what was told to Jen Percy (i.e., that Bibi Ayesha CLAIMED she killed the Russians with a scythe and that a ghost appeared to her, regardless of the factual accuracy of the actual substance of the stories, etc. etc.)

(3) that Bibi Ayesha, Afghanistan's female warlord reported in Jen Percy's article as "Commander Pigeon," doesn't exist or might exist but Percy is fabricating their encounter or the events therein?

Or some other (4)?

--Bobby; 10/14/14, 5:24 PM
David said...: Yhat's a strange article, but Afghanistan is a strange place. My bullshit indicator was buzzing a bit too, but having never been in a place like Afganistan after over three decades of war I'm not confident my instincts are very good.

My instincts are better on the writing, and her lapses into vivid but not quite apt metaphors were jarring. It's as if Hemingway went to a writers workshop and got over served. Indeed the helpless metaphors may have been what set off the bullshit indicator. That and the fact that she is clearly a hot young writer on the make. Handle with care.

I hope she makes that reputation quickly. If she keeps this up too long she is going to be dead.

I have heard a sickle referred to as a hand scythe more than once. But even if you assume that a hand scythe was her weapon of choice, you would have to classify Pigeon's slaughter of the commandos as a ghostly dream. One woman with a blade against armed (and quickly forewarned) men? Legendary, to be sure.; 10/14/14, 6:51 PM
Jupiter said...: I used to subscribe to the New Republic, back in the 80's. When did DC Comics purchase the franchise?; 10/14/14, 11:21 PM
Bad Lieutenant said...: In James Michener's Poland, which I read a very long time ago, Polish peasants are depicted as taking a regular full size scythe, which of course is unsuitable as a weapon unless you were attacking at ankle height, and refixing the blade to make it more useful - I guess turning it straight ahead instead of 90 degrees to the shaft. Whether this applies here obviously I don't know. TNR is probably BS but I just wanted to point that out.; 10/15/14, 5:10 AM
AFChiling said...: Here's a link to Cronos castrating Uranus with a scythe. It could be.

http://tinyurl.com/mg5ns6m; 10/15/14, 9:41 AM