A Role Model for the War on Terror: Jarema Wisniowiecki

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Jarema Wisniowiecki: A Role Model for the War on Terror

"Kill them so that they know they are dying." This line in the motion picture version of Henryk Sienkiewicz's With Fire and Sword was spoken not by a villain but by one of the heroes, Jarema Wisniowiecki (pronounced "Yarema Vishnyovyetski"). A subsequent scene shows the leader of the Cossack envoys who brought a peace proposal from Bogdan Chmielnicki ("Khmyelnitski") dying by impalement on a bloody wooden stake. Although modern society would regard this as cruel and unusual punishment— it was no worse than the brutal forms of justice that other countries practiced in the seventeenth century— Wisniowiecki is an admirable role model for the modern war on terror. He teaches four specific lessons that civilized Humanity must learn if it is to avoid destruction:

Do not negotiate with entities that offer phony and temporary peaces. Kill them, to the last man if necessary, until they are no longer capable of offering violence.
Do not acknowledge terrorists and dictators as heads of state who have the right to negotiate with civilized countries.
Terrorism can never be forgiven or excused, and its perpetrators must be fought to the death.
Do not recognize the legitimacy of the terrorists' claims. (King Henry VI as a negative role model)

(1) Do not negotiate with entities that offer phony and temporary peaces
The person of an envoy, ambassador, or messenger was then, as it is now, almost sacred. There was no greater disgrace than killing an envoy during a truce so what possible justification did Wisniowiecki have for executing the Cossack ambassadors? Close inspection of With Fire and Sword (Binion translation, pp. 286-289, believed to be in the public domain due to age) shows that the Cossack messengers had not brought a genuine peace proposal. They were instead conveying what modern Arabs call a hudna, a temporary and phony peace whose sole purpose is to gain a respite from hostilities during unfavorable circumstances. The side that offers it intends not to resolve the disagreement and make a permanent peace but rather to resume hostilities as soon as the situation becomes more favorable.

It was clear to them [the Cossack messengers] that Khmyelnitski did not wish to risk a battle at present with such a celebrated leader [Wisniowiecki] and that instead of marching against him with his whole strength, he was trying to create delay, and pretending humility, evidently in the expectation that the forces of the prince [Wisniowiecki] would be worn out by long marches and by battles and encounters with various Cossack detachments; in a word he was evidently very much afraid of the prince.
...[Wisniowiecki concluded] "The cunning of this enemy is great! He either thinks that he will lull me to sleep with this letter in order to attack a sleeping man, or he is trying to entice me into the heart of the Commonwealth, finish up the business there, and receive pardon from the King and from the Diet [Sejm]..."
...[After consulting his officers, Wisniowiecki] ...then turned to the Colonel of the Tartar bodyguard. "Colonel Vyershul, order your Tartars to behead these Cossacks; but to cut a stake for their leader and impale him at once."
..."This must be done in return for the cruelty which they practiced on the other side of the Dnieper; and to maintain our dignity and for the welfare of the whole Commonwealth. It must be shown by such an example that there is someone who is not afraid of this bandit leader [Khmyelnitski], and who will treat him as a highwayman..."

In other words, contemporary standards of honor not only allowed a phony peace offer or hudna to be rejected out of hand— the movie shows Wisniowiecki tearing the Cossacks' document in half without even reading it— but its bearers to be put to death for treachery. In contrast, modern Israel continues to negotiate with equally treacherous Palestinians despite an ongoing litany of broken truces. Israel knew that Yasser Arafat was turning the violence on and off as necessary to suit his own needs but never carried out its duty to protect its citizens by putting a bullet through Arafat's head or a rocket through his office window. Jarema Wisniowiecki would have done whichever was more convenient with no hesitation whatsoever.

The "cruelty which they practiced on the other side of the Dnieper" included massacres of entire villages, with Jews and Polish gentry being put to the sword or worse, women raped and then drowned (presumably because rape made them "spoiled goods" that could no longer be sold to the Tartars' harems), convents and monasteries put to the torch and their occupants slain, and similar behavior. Today, Palestinian and other Arab terrorists perpetrate similar atrocities (Seders and buses blown up, a senior citizen murdered and thrown off a ship, airplanes hijacked and crashed into office buildings) but there is no Jarema Wisniowiecki in the United States or Israel who will condemn the perpetrators to the gallows, firing squad, or lethal injection chamber as they deserve.

(2) Do not acknowledge terrorists and dictators as heads of state
Note also that Wisniowiecki refuses to acknowledge Chmielnicki's self-proclaimed status of Hetman (field marshal). When Chmielnicki's envoy, a Cossack ataman, says he bears "a letter from the hetman," Wisniowiecki answers, "From a scoundrel, vagabond, and a bandit, not from a hetman." Israel, in contract, acknowledged Yasser Arafat as a head of state and negotiating partner instead of a common terrorist who deserved a Mossad bullet through his head ever since he helped plan the Munich Massacre. The United States makes a similar error in acknowledging thugs like Bashar Assad, Moammar Khadafy (who is currently threatening to execute several Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor), Kim Il Jong, and even the king of Saudi Arabia as anything but scoundrels, vagabonds, and bandits.

(3) Terrorism can never be forgiven or excused
It is shameful, pusillanimous, and dishonorable to even talk to terrorists and dictators, except from the end of a gun. Per With Fire and Sword (Binion translation, pp. 349-350),

The lord of Bratslav told the prince [Wisniowiecki] that the negotiations had begun... he hoped to soothe and pacify Khmyelnitski. In conclusion, he begged the prince not to deal too severely with the Cossacks, and to give up as much as possible all warlike undertakings until the close of the negotiations.
Had one announced to the prince that his whole Dnieper country was devastated; that all the cities had been razed to the ground, it would not have wounded him so deeply as did this letter.
..."I would not live in this Commonwealth, for I should be ashamed. The Cossack 'blacks,' the peasantry, have flooded the country with blood; united with the Heathen [Crimean Tartars] against their own mother. The hetmans are beaten, the armies destroyed, the glory of the nation trampled underfoot. Authority is overcome, the churches burned down, the priests, the nobles slain, the women ravished; and upon these ruins, this dishonor, at the sight of which our ancestors would have died— what does the Commonwealth answer? With the traitor, with her despoilers, with the allies of the Heathen she enters into negotiations and promises them satisfaction. O God, let me die, I repeat, for we can no longer live in the world who feel the dishonor of the mother country and bring our lives to her as a sacrifice."

Wisniowiecki says this after the Polish Commonwealth has suffered disastrous defeats at Zolty Woda ("Yellow Waters") and Korsun. Israel, in contrast, is prepared to negotiate with terrorists who have no hope whatsoever of winning a battle with the Israeli Defense Forces. The Iraqi insurgents cannot possibly hope to defeat the United States' armed forces in open battle either but the Left is nonetheless calling stridently for withdrawal of those forces. The result would be to abandon Iraq to terroristic chaos and Islamofascist domination and to encourage every terrorist on earth to attack American interests around the globe.

Sienkiewicz uses the word hanba, the root of pohanbienie, to refer to the "dishonor" of Polish women at the hands of the Cossacks. Jerzy R. Krzyzanowski's The Trilogy Companion: A Reader's Guide to the Trilogy of Henryk Sienkiewicz explains, "It isn't merely shame, disgrace, or even dishonor. It denotes such utter degradation and such total and complete humiliation that no self-respecting human being could ever accept it. Indeed, pohanbienie has a ring of such abysmal finality about it, and it suggests such brutality in its application, that death itself would be preferable to it. A man or woman who is shanbiony or shanbiona is hardly able to live with his or her own image, far less among others." If Jarema Wisniowiecki preferred death to negotiating with rebels who had actually beaten Polish armies, Israelis who want to negotiate with Palestinian terrorists must be truly shanbiony or shanbiona. The same goes for Americans who want to answer Al Qaida and other terrorist organizations that have murdered American civilians with anything but violent death from our country's tanks, bombers, airborne gunships, and even nuclear weapons.

Further research shows that shanbiony may not be the correct word, but rather a misspelling of haniebny, which means disgraceful or dishonorable. For example, per http://ebib.oss.wroc.pl/sbp/usa_11_wrzesnia_2001.html, "Haniebny czyn terrorystów traktujemy jako zamach na wolność i demokrację, które stanowią podwaliny pomyślności i rozwoju współczesnych społeczeństw." = "We regard the shameful act of terrorists as an attempt against liberty and democracy that are the foundation of the welfare and development of modern society."

(4) Do not recognize the legitimacy of the terrorists' claims (King Henry VI as a negative role model)
Most of Israel's troubles stem from the very fact that it entered into a "peace process" with terrorists, a cease-fire in which Israel ceases and the Palestinians fire. Acknowledgement of the enemy's claims simply opens the door to war and violence, as amply shown by King Henry VI's negotiations with the Yorkists in the fifteenth century.
Richard, Duke of York, claims that he is the rightful King because King Henry's grandfather (Henry Bolingbroke) was a usurper. Henry IV makes the fatal error of trying to compromise by disinheriting his own son and naming Duke Richard his successor, with the stipulation that he be allowed to reign for his own lifetime. This has the double effect of encouraging the Yorkists by showing Henry's unwillingness to fight while alienating Henry's own supporters, who were moments ago willing to fight to the death on his behalf:

WESTMORELAND: "Farewell, faint-hearted and degenerate king/ In whose cold blood no spark of honour bides."

NORTHUMBERLAND: "Be thou a prey unto the house of York/ And die in bands for this unmanly deed!"

CLIFFORD: "In dreadful war mayst thou be overcome/ Or live in peace abandon'd and despised!"

When the pathetic monarch tells his wife, the formidable Margaret of Anjou, to excuse him for disinheriting their son because the Earl of Warwick and the Duke of York "forced him" to do so, her reply is even more scathing. I have emphasized specific lines that underscore Henry's complete failure as a head of state and the danger to which his "compromise" has exposed himself and his followers.

Enforced thee! art thou king, and wilt be forced?
I shame to hear thee speak. Ah, timorous wretch!
Thou hast undone thyself, thy son and me;
And given unto the house of York such head [force or power]
As thou shalt reign but by their sufferance.
To entail him and his heirs unto the crown,
What is it, but to make thy sepulcher
And creep into it far before thy time? [i.e. Henry has dug his own grave]
Warwick is chancellor and the lord of Calais;
Stern Falconbridge commands the narrow seas; [as the Palestinians now control Gaza]
The duke is made protector of the realm;
And yet shalt thou be safe? Such safety finds
The trembling lamb environed with wolves.
Had I been there, which am a silly woman,
The soldiers should have toss'd me on their pikes
Before I would have granted to that act.
But thou preferr'st thy life before thine honour:
And seeing thou dost, I here divorce myself
Both from thy table, Henry, and thy bed,
Until that act of parliament be repeal'd
Whereby my son is disinherited.

In the meantime, the Duke of York's sons Edward and Richard (later Duke of Gloucester and then Richard III) are persuading him that he need not keep his agreement with King Henry so the Yorkists muster their own army to seize the throne immediately. This leads to the cataclysm known as the Wars of the Roses.
Queen Margaret outlines the danger to which King Henry has exposed himself by making the Duke of York protector of the realm, and Israel has similarly given the Palestinians territory— the Gaza Strip— from which to fire rockets and artillery into Israel. Furthermore, just as Henry's nobles abandoned him in disgust, Israel's strongest supporters around the world may question whether their pro-Israel activities are more trouble than they are worth.
When Lord Clifford falls at Towton Field, his dying words are an epitaph not only for himself but also for the House of Lancaster, as well as a rebuke to the weak-willed monarch whose pusillanimous behavior caused the Wars of the Roses and thousands of casualties on both sides:

Here burns my candle out— ay, here it dies,
Which, whiles it lasted, gave King Henry light.
Oh Lancaster! I fear thy overthrow
More than my body's parting with my soul.
…And Henry, hadst thou swayed as kings should do,
Or as thy father and his father did,
Giving no ground unto the House of York,
They never then had sprung like summer flies…

Most of Israel's problems stem from the fact that it gave any ground at all to the Arabs' claims on the West Bank and Gaza, which should have been annexed on the grounds that their previous owners had shown themselves totally unable to honor truces or make a lasting peace.

Figure of Jarema Wisniowiecki as portrayed in With Fire and Sword
Jarema Wisniowiecki as portrayed in With Fire and Sword

1st picture: Michel Wolodyjowski, Colonel Vyershul (?), priest, and Wisniowiecki
2nd picture: "Kill them so that they know they are dying."

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