A close friend of mine graduated from The Citadel before becoming an officer in the U.S. Army.
A while back, my friend added me to the e-mail list of one of his Citadel buddies who is now a U.S. Foreign Services officer in the US Embassy in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
This guy is a gifted writer, and has some great stories to tell.
I was reading through an old e-mail from him from back in July of 2004, about a jihad suicide bomber that attacked the embassy, blowing himself and two police officers to bits about 75′ from his office.
At the same time, another suicide bomber with a similar package tried to enter the Israeli Embassy. Again, two security guards approached him and he blew himself up. In the center of town, a suicide bomber got into the entrance of the prosecutor’s office before detonating his bomb, and the casualties there were significant.
This is what he wrote then:
The US Mission to Uzbekistan continues. I am scared, but unbowed. We are more than one bomb, and better than a group of misguided lunatics on the wrong side of history. The Jihadists just don’t understand that the fault in their societies is not because of the US or the Jews. The fault is their antiquated world view and slavish devotion to a religious faith that poisons the minds of the young with intolerance and hate. This is a fight to the death, and I have no doubt of our ultimate victory.
