He led a reconnaissance team during a mission near Phú Lộc, Vietnam, in 1967. During the engagement, Capers sustained multiple wounds while directing his men and coordinating their evacuation under intense enemy fire. His actions were instrumental in saving the lives of every member of his team.
Pity it took so long to get it to him! (Almost 60 years!!) But that’s the problem with the Blue Max. In that sometimes you get it ASAP & other times it’s almost too late. I say that it’s just pure BS and a few officers need a blow torch pointed at them. Grumpy
Forced to dig his own grave in Iraq, Fabrizio Quattrocchi answered his killers with one final act of raw defiance. This is a hard look at death, faith, courage, and the Italian who refused to die quietly.
This is Fabrizio Quattrocchi. When forced to face his own death at age 35, Quattrocchi showed us all how it’s done. Instagram photo.
Death, Faith, and the Question Fabrizio Quattrocchi Forces Us to Face
Today, we are going to talk about some pretty dark stuff. Death rightfully makes people uncomfortable. It is the innately unknowable nature of the thing that leaves folks so predictably discomfited. We all have theories. However, by definition, if somebody is talking about it, they’ve not yet actually given it a whirl themselves.
Any proper discussion of death touches upon issues of faith. As anyone who has read my work for more than a week will appreciate, I have strongly-held opinions on that subject. I am an unabashedly evangelical Christian. I wear Jesus on my sleeve. My faith informs everything about how I approach both my life and my inevitable demise.
My conclusions are drawn from some fairly extensive life experience. I have come face-to-face with my own mortality a couple of times and found peace waiting for me there. I have also attended a fair number of deaths professionally. Here are two representative examples.
Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes: Death in Trauma 1
This is a hard world. People die in this space all the time. Social media photo.
Patient 1 was a gladiator. He rolled into the inner city ER where I worked, having been shot in the right chest some fifteen minutes earlier by a fellow thug armed with a .380ACP handgun. He was fit, muscular, and covered in gang tats. He was also coming absolutely unglued.
This desperate young man shouted, screamed, and flailed. It took five of us to restrain him long enough to get him situated on the bed in Trauma 1. And then the most amazing thing happened.
Over the next few minutes, his entire demeanor changed. He went from fighting us to begging us. “Please don’t let me die!” was a common refrain. And then he gradually acted like we weren’t even there.
As the blood steadily filled his chest, this horrified kid began praying with every fiber of his being. He shouted, “Please, Jesus, don’t let me die!” over and over and over. Then he arched his back, blood poured out of his mouth and nose, and he died. We did everything we could, but it all just happened too fast.
A Peace That Passes All Understanding: A Veteran’s Final Hours
My buddy at the VA cut his teeth in this forsaken place. He came back a hard, broken man. US Army photo.
I met Patient 2 in the VA. He was a Korean War veteran. In his prime, this man had been a hellraiser. He abused drugs, alcohol, and women at every opportunity. Then he found Jesus.
This gentleman was a Messianic Jew, and his Christian conversion changed absolutely everything about him. He walked away from alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs in an afternoon. Then he successfully resurrected his family. When I met him, he was dying of a squamous cell carcinoma of his sinuses that had metastasized to his lungs. The horrible treatments for his ghastly disease had stolen his sense of sight, smell, and taste, and rendered him nearly deaf. Now his lung mets were drowning him slowly, one drop at a time. Despite the horrors of this man’s sordid state, he was inexplicably happy. This guy was about to meet Jesus face to face, and he was like a kid on Christmas Eve.
I did the best I could to make him comfortable, but the poor man was both blind and dying. There were only so many options at my disposal. For a medicine man, these cases bring their own unique challenges.
This can be a pretty tough place to work sometimes. US government photo.
On our second day together, he spontaneously took my arm and pulled me close. I assumed he wanted to tell me something or other that he needed. He then inexplicably pulled his oxygen mask off and immediately began turning blue. With his dying breath, this unimaginably miserable guy actually prayed for me.
He prayed for my family and me and my ministry in the hospital. He prayed that I might find the same peace and joy in Christ that he had found. This amazing dude prayed until he literally could no longer speak. As you might imagine, this experience moved me. I replaced his oxygen mask, thanked him sincerely, and left for home with quite a lot to think about.
The following morning, with my arm around his wife’s shoulders, I watched this extraordinary man die. I had known him all of three days. He met his end with dignity, peace, and hope. Attending his death was one of the most powerful experiences of my life. Draw your own conclusions.
The Incredibly Intrepid Italian: Who Was Fabrizio Quattrocchi?
Fabrizio Quattrocchi was born on 9 MAY 1968 in Catania, Italy. He trained as a baker before eventually finding work as a security contractor in Iraq. In 2004, Iraq was an absolute hellhole. However, in chaos, there is profit. There was money to be made in this space. Quattrocchi was an old-school mercenary.
Iraq, back when Fabrizio Quattrocchi worked there, was a pretty horrible place. US government photo.
Iraq, Captivity, and a Hole in the Earth
Operating in a war zone is the most dangerous of human pursuits. That’s why the money is so good. With so many heavily armed folks running about with deeply held political and theological agendas, people invariably get hurt. Quattrocchi, along with three fellow Italian soldiers-for-hire named Umberto Cupertino, Maurizio Agliana, and Salvatore Stefio were captured by a lunatic mob called the Green Brigade of the Prophet.
Quattrocchi and his buddies were working for DTS Security LLC. DTS was incorporated in Nevada and run by a former Italian Marine/French Foreign Legionnaire named Paolo Simeone and Italian lawyer Valeria Castellini. They tried to get their guys back, but DTS was a company, not a nation-state. It takes some serious resources to recruit, train, equip, and employ SEAL Team 6. For a time, at least, these four poor guys were on their own.
The Green Brigade of the Prophet felt they needed to make an example to ensure they were being taken seriously. As a result, they forced Fabrizio Quattrocchi to dig his own grave. These homicidal losers then placed a hood over his head and made him kneel in the soft earth next to his hole. Like all professional nut job psychopaths, they had also set up video recording equipment to preserve the moment in all its gory glory. It really is tough for me to visualize raw, unfettered hate on this scale.
There was ample death to be found in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. Medal of Honor recipient Special Warfare Officer Second Class (SEAL) Michael A. Monsoor is shown here on the far left. US government photo.
I’ll Show You How an Italian Dies: Quattrocchi’s Final Defiance
Quattrocchi knew exactly what was about to happen. He had, after all, just dug the hole. He was in a place that would rightly terrify all sensible people everywhere. Quattrocchi was about to face his own mortality, and there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop it.
Tragically, lots of folks have been there before. Some beg for their lives, imploring their captors for mercy. Others spit venom from the precipice of the abyss. Quattrocchi, for his part, clawed at his hood so he could see the men who were about to take his life and shouted, “Vi faccio vedere come muore un Italiano!” This translates to, “I’ll show you how an Italian dies!” One of the terrorists then stepped forward and shot him through the back of the neck. At least it was quick. Quattrocchi was 35 years old at the time of his death.
The Rest of the Story: Rescue, Honor, and Controversy
American forces eventually liberated the three remaining Italian security contractors. US Army photo by SPC Kieran Cuddihy.
American forces later raided the safehouse where they were being held and rescued the three remaining Italian security contractors along with a Pole named Jerzy Kos. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi personally approved the mission in advance.
Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi awarded Fabrizio Quattrocchi a posthumous Gold Medal for Civil Valour. This award demands a specific documented act of bravery to be eligible. Quattrocchi’s defiance towards the men who murdered him seemed more than adequate.
Curiously, not everyone in Italy felt this way. Almost all Italians rightfully reviled Saddam Hussein and Muslim fundamentalist terrorists in general. However, most Italians also disapproved of their country’s involvement in the Iraq War. Then, as now, much of the civilized world would sooner ignore such problems in hopes that they would just go away.
Quite a few Italians had lost their lives amidst the tumultuous fighting in the Middle East. Folks from across the Italian political spectrum griped that their particular people had not been afforded comparable accolades. Whatever. Fabrizio Quattrocchi was a freaking animal, no matter the metric.
Ruminations: What Fabrizio Quattrocchi Left Behind
There was a great deal of hard fighting to be found during the German invasion of France in the early parts of World War 2. It was simply that the Krauts had much more effective tactics and leadership.
There are some cruel jokes levied at our brothers in France and Italy.
What is the world’s shortest list? A compilation of contemporary Italian war heroes. Such stuff stems from a deplorable tendency by much of modern Europe to eschew the manly arts.
Nowadays, good old-fashioned patriotism is denigrated as nationalism, something to be avoided no matter the cost. Europe looks at the monsters in the gates (I’m talking to you, Vladimir Putin and the Iranian theocrats) and fails to take action because they have convinced themselves over decades that what they have is no longer worth defending.
The Union Jack is arguably the most compelling national standard on Planet Earth, yet many modern Britons hate it because they have been conditioned to view their own flag as a symbol of oppression. Such national self-flagellation will not take them to a good place in a world so liberally populated with hate-fueled psychos like the Green Brigade of the Prophet.
Fabrizio Quattrocchi was a proper man to the end. He faced his death and those who were killing him with poise, power, and defiance. The scumbags who murdered him are rightfully gone and forgotten. The world is objectively way better off without them. As we corn-fed Americans wax introspective regarding how to comport ourselves when faced with uncertainty and violence both at home and abroad, might I recommend we actually take hints from a certain brass-balled Italian baker? Fabrizio Quattrocchi showed us all how to die well.
Hezbollah grabbed Soviet diplomats in Lebanon in 1986 and expected leverage. The KGB answered with ruthless pressure that forced a fast release and sent a message the region still remembers.
The Hook: Why This 1986 Hezbollah Kidnapping Still Matters
We don’t negotiate with terrorists…that’s a well-intentioned sentiment, to be sure. However, what if they were holding somebody for whom you actually cared deeply? Kidnapping is one of the most horrific of all modern crimes. It is a powerful tool in the dark, twisted toolbox of the modern criminal terrorist.
There is nothing new about any of this. People have been running off with other people’s people ever since we discovered we had opposable thumbs. Human beings form emotional attachments that are unimaginably profound. It really doesn’t matter how powerful you are. If your adversaries take a member of your tribe, chances are you’ll be ready to play ball. That is, unless you are the Soviet-era KGB.
Beirut, Lebanon, has such potential. However, to exploit that potential requires political stability, something Lebanon has not seen in generations. Wikipedia image by Richardsaad75.
The Setting: Lebanon’s Long Wars and a Powder-Keg 1986
I’ve spent a little time in the Middle East myself. It was arguably the most fascinating place I have ever visited. Old stuff in my neighborhood dates back a couple of hundred years. Old stuff over there might be a couple of thousand. It is enlightening to view Middle East politics through that profoundly antiquated lens.
I’m an American who lives in Mississippi. I take pride in my heritage and am imbued with a natural urge to defend it both literally and metaphorically. Human beings are tribal. You simply cannot fight that. No amount of aggressive social engineering will ever excise that fundamental attribute from our souls.
Folks have been killing each other over that curious scrap of Middle Eastern dirt ever since the very dawn of time. Sundry hatreds and assorted blood feuds date back hundreds of generations. Offenses and insults initially launched millennia ago still reliably foment bloodshed even today. It’s a cycle of violence that will not soon end. However, it can be mitigated. The Soviets showed us how to do that back in 1986.
This is a Civil War-era cannonball that my Dad found while out squirrel hunting in the Mississippi Delta. It is 162 years old. That seems pretty ancient to me. However, that is nothing by Middle East standards.
The Players: Hezbollah Builds a Terror Machine, the KGB Takes Notice
Hezbollah has been a thorn in the flesh of the entire freaking world ever since its initial formation in Lebanon back in 1985. A terrorist organization dedicated to the tenets of radical Shia Islam and funded by the bloodthirsty nihilists in Iran, Hezbollah has been fomenting chaos on scales both large and small for some four decades now. Until recently, when they were systematically deconstructed by Israel, Hezbollah fielded a formidable regional army. Nowadays, several of their senior leadership positions remain unfilled, and their weapons caches are deep, smoking holes. I think the message there is don’t screw with the Israelis, but that’s a topic for another day.
This is supposedly the iconography of Hezbollah. I have no idea what it actually says. I don’t read terrorist. Fair use.
Back in the mid-1980s, Hezbollah was still building its reputation in international terrorism. Pro-Syrian militiamen were shelling rival Muslim Hezbollah positions in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli. Hezbollah grew weary of this. The Soviets were supporting these pro-Syrian militias. Hezbollah fully appreciated that implacable human tendency toward tribalism. Some Hezbollah rocket surgeon had the bright idea that they could kidnap a few Soviet diplomats and then use them as leverage to get the communists to call off the heat. What could possibly go wrong?
The Political Milieu: Cold War Muscle Meets a Lebanese Civil War
The Soviet Union formally collapsed the day after Christmas 1991. My abiding antipathy towards the Russians today likely stems from the fact that I spent my formative years expecting to be nuked by them at any minute. Today’s generation has the radical Islamists to fret about. For me and mine, it was the Russians. That’s probably the reason I would really love to see them get spanked in Ukraine.
Prior to 1991, the Soviets were unimaginably intimidating. They fielded tens of thousands of tanks and hundreds of thousands of troops just waiting to roar across the Fulda Gap and forcibly impose their communist ideals upon the rest of the species. They also spread unrest and rank terrorism anyplace they could touch. Back in 1986, one of those places was Lebanon.
When I joined the US Army, these were the Bad Guys. I’ve never really gotten much past that. Public domain.
I’ve not personally set foot inside Lebanon. However, I have peered across the Bekaa Valley and visualized what life there back in the 1980s must have been like. I’m told that Lebanon was once a lovely place. Beirut was known as the Rio of the Mediterranean. Upscale hotels, fine dining, and rarefied shopping opportunities made Lebanon a desirable vacation destination for well-heeled folks from around the globe. And then radical Islam happened. The resulting violent civil war tore the country apart. Even half a century later, there seems to be little sign of that getting substantively better.
The Lebanese Civil War ran from 1975 to 1990 and was a masterclass in how to destroy an otherwise nice country. Faction threw itself against faction. A dear friend who grew up in that ghastly place at that ghastly time once told me what it was like. Scampering across the Green Zone with his little backpack, he had to dodge sniper fire just to attend grade school. It was amidst this hellish world that Hezbollah was about to get sideways with the USSR.
The Kidnapping: Four Soviets Taken, One Killed, Stakes Skyrocket
The brouhaha began when Hezbollah fighters kidnapped four Soviet government officials on duty in Lebanon. Their demands were simply that the Soviets use their influence to stop the shelling of their positions. The attacks didn’t stop, so Hezbollah killed one of the hostages, a diplomat named Arkady Katkov.
This is a broadside from the American battleship New Jersey while she was doing the Lord’s work off the coast of Lebanon back in the 1980s. This is one way to project power. Public domain.
At this point, the Soviet leadership had a decision to make. There were three of their officials still in captivity. Hezbollah claimed they were healthy but would not remain that way for long if the communists didn’t play ball. As a result, the Soviet diplomatic service turned the problem over to the KGB.
KGB is an acronym for Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti which translates to the Soviet Committee for State Security. Founded in 1954, the KGB was a sort of arithmetic mean between the American CIA and the FBI, only operated by the military and enjoying essentially unlimited power. Vladimir Putin naturally got his start in the KGB.
The KGB technically went away in 1991 with the fall of the Soviet Union. It was replaced in short order by the FSB along with several other sneaky-Pete alphabet agencies. Putin personally took the helm in 1989.
Options: Comply, Negotiate, or Unleash the KGB
The KGB could have complied with their demands or used some of their regional connections to open up a dialogue with the kidnappers. However, that’s not really the way they rolled. Instead, they dispatched a hit team to the region to take care of business.
This is Imad Mughniyah, chief kidnapper for Hezbollah. He met a fiery end in 2008 at age 48 when the Mossad blew him up with a car bomb. Fair Use.
Kidnapping in Lebanon during this time was an absolute scourge. In the decade between 1982 and 1992, 104 foreign hostages were seized. Once the dust settled, it was discovered that all of these people were taken by as few as a dozen individual terrorists, all operating under the umbrella of Hezbollah. Their leader was a proper villain by the name of Imad Mughniyah. However, it turned out that the terrorists themselves also had families. That was to be their undoing.
The Op: The KGB’s Message Lands and Hostages Walk Free
The Soviet hitters tracked down a close relative of Imad Mughniyah and kidnapped him. Without a great deal of fanfare, they cut off this unfortunate man’s penis and testicles and sent them in a box to Mughniyah along with a letter of explanation. The note elaborated that more of this man’s relatives would suffer a similar fate if the three remaining Soviet diplomats were not released quite sharpish. The other three (Oleg Spirin, Valery Mirikov, and Nikolai Svirsky) were set free unharmed in short order.
This is a picture of some vintage Soviet assassination stuff. The KGB took that part of their mandate quite seriously. Social media photo.
Those 104 foreign captives came from 21 different nations. There were 25 Americans, 16 Frenchmen, 12 Brits, 7 Swiss nationals, 7 West Germans, and 1 Irishman. At least eight perished in captivity. A few, like Arkady Katkov, were murdered to make some point or other. Still more succumbed to a lack of medical care in the austere conditions of their imprisonment. During the course of the protracted Civil War, some 17,000 Lebanese were also abducted. While some of these hostages were obviously eventually released, none were released as expeditiously as were those from the Soviet Union.
Practicalities: What Terrorists Understand About Power
This furry turd is Hassan Nasrallah. He headed up Hezbollah until 27 September 24, when the Israelis blew him into tiny little pieces. That is something that terrorists can understand. Wikipedia picture by Khamenei.ir.
And therein lies the rub. We cannot negotiate with the Russians or the sundry terrorist factions in the Middle East the way we might with more sensible folks. The Russians will always have their national best interest at heart and will gladly lie, cheat, slander, bribe, blackmail, or steal to get what they want. By contrast, the terrorists are just flat-out crazy. Neither group can be trusted…like, at all.
What all of these many-splendored psychopaths do understand is raw, unfettered power. They are not impressed with our altruism or our facility with words. They care not for our nation-building efforts or the Peace Corps. They understand and respect the capacity to forcibly impose one’s will upon others.
The very worst thing we could do when confronted by such darkness is exactly what we have done. When terrorists blew up the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, we just took our toys and went home. When we grew weary of feeding money, meat, and weapons into Afghanistan, Joe Biden just snatched everybody up and left the Afghan government to collapse under its own weight.
Our opponents study such stuff. We have inadvertently trained them to believe that if only you can keep nipping at the heels of the American monster long enough, eventually he will give up and leave. Tragically, they’re not wrong.
Ruminations: Hard Truths From a Ruthless Case Study
We can negotiate with people like Hezbollah, Hamas, and the mullahs in Iran until the sun burns out. We can pick them up and pack them off to Gitmo, offering them free healthcare and legal representation in the process. Or we could pull out the embedded reporters, give SOCOM a tasker with a broad, scary mandate, and then just get out of the way. I’m honestly not as torn up about stuff like due process and individual rights when it comes to international terrorists as I might be with normal people.
Take the gloves off, and I guarantee these guys will do what needs doing.
We can fool ourselves into thinking that modern unconventional war is honorable and tidy. Or we could make an example out of some psychotic unwashed cavemen and perhaps, in so doing, secure a lasting peace. That decision is ours to make…
Key Facts: 1986 Hezbollah Kidnapping vs KGB
Year
1986
Location
Lebanon, primarily Beirut and Tripoli
Group
Hezbollah
Victims
Four Soviet diplomats, one killed (Arkady Katkov)
Response
KGB retaliation targeting relatives of Imad Mughniyah
Outcome
Three hostages released quickly, message sent across the region
