From shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States until his last appearance on Monday, the Taliban envoy, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, has conducted a wide-ranging session almost every weekday to set out the Taliban's positions on the terrorist attacks, the American demands for the surrender of Osama bin Laden and the American bombing.
Politically, the Casablanca Conference owes its importance to the fact that, at its end, Roosevelt publicly announced a demand for the unconditional surrender of Germany, Italy, and Japan.
For the war's supporters, the rhetorical air has from the beginning rung with echoes of the Second World War: the Munich analogy, the demand for "unconditional surrender," the notion of the postwar occupation of Germany and Japan as a model.
Without the demand for unconditional surrender, the war in all probability would have ended much earlier.
Pemberton also claimed that he had gotten in substance his initial demand for surrender: "The discussion of the question of terms to a commission, although that commission was now necessarily an impromptu one".
De Rippe presented the French commander, Lieutenant François Ponée, with a demand for surrender, the demand falsely stating that "Renommée and Clorinde have struck after a brave defence".
St. Leger took advantage of his victory to deliver another demand for the fort's surrender, which Gansevoort also rejected.
His demand for the fort's surrender was refused, and for the next four days Brown's men and the fort exchanged cannon fire, to little effect.
The demand for unconditional surrender also deprives us of the benefits of learning from valuable insights residing in our adversary's counter-narrative.
