General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption

in Authors, Historical Guns, Will Dabbs
General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
The Liberian Civil War that took place in the latter parts of the 20th century was a veritable orgy of unconstrained violence.

To the civilized mind, there is a great deal about which to be bewildered as regards the Liberian Civil War. The first installment ran from 1989 until 1997 and killed perhaps a quarter-million people. The details are labyrinthine and convoluted.

General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
Every time I read about the Liberian warlord Charles Taylor I think of the sneakers. I’m sure there’s no connection.

The players included eclectic names like Prince Johnson, Chuck Norris, General Mosquito, and his counterpart General Mosquito Spray, Samuel Doe, Roosevelt Johnson, and Charles Taylor. I have it on reliable information that this Charles Taylor was no relation to the Chuck Taylor of Converse All-Stars sneakers fame.

General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
Charles Taylor was ultimately responsible for countless deaths and incalculable suffering. He’s rocking an interesting AK here. Note the milled stock struts, the early slab-sided magazine, and the unusual M203 grenade launcher mounting. Mind that trigger finger, Mr. President.

There resulted a tenuous peace that lasted some two years and ultimately saw Mr. Taylor installed as President of Liberia. In 1999 the Second Liberian Civil War conflagrated, claiming another roughly quarter-million dead. Charles Taylor was arrested in 2006 and tried in the Hague for crimes against humanity. This included wanton murder, rape, weapons proliferation, and the widespread use of child soldiers.

General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
Charles Taylor was the driving force behind some of history’s greatest atrocities.

Taylor was sentenced to fifty years behind bars. At his sentencing, the Presiding Judge said: “The accused has been found responsible for aiding and abetting as well as planning some of the most heinous and brutal crimes in recorded human history.”

General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
Charles Taylor remains incarcerated in the UK for war crimes today. The shot on the right is Mr. Taylor during his warlord days.

As he was 58 at the time of his sentencing Taylor should be released sometime around his 108th birthday.

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
Joshua Blahyi was quite literally a stark raving maniac during the Liberian Civil War. His criminal psychopathic antics shock the civilized mind.

Joshua Milton Blahyi was born on September 30, 1971. During the First Liberian Civil War, he served as a military commander in the employ of the Liberian warlord Roosevelt Johnson. The world knows Blahyi by his eclectic nom de guerre. To the public, Joshua Blahyi went by General Butt Naked.

General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
Liberia in the 1990s was likely a decent approximation of hell. Well-armed militias sowed unfettered terror.

Imagine if all the cops, National Guard troops, and authority figures in the greater Chicago area suddenly retired en mass. Now visualize a pile of some 150,000 or so AK47 rifles left outside Wrigley Field alongside a sign reading, “Free, Take One. No More than three Magazines per Customer. ” Voila, you have Liberia circa 1989.

General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
Joshua Blahyi’s nihilistic worldview was built upon a foundation of West African pagan animism. Blahyi performed his first ritual human sacrifice at age 11. 

Joshua Blahyi was born into the Liberian Sarpo tribe and appointed a Krahn high priest. This animist belief system orbited around a variety of “bush spirits” that must be appeased before good things can happen. Blahyi’s principal deity was one Nyanbe-a-weh–“a high-ranking god in the West African Black-witch coastal line division.” It turned out that Nyanbe-a-weh had some peculiar tastes.

General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
At the hands of men like Joshua Blahyi the blood flowed in torrents across Liberia.

In the service of Nyanbe-a-weh and Roosevelt Johnson, Blahyi ultimately killed some 20,000 people. He also engaged in regular human sacrifice as well as cannibalism, particularly of children. Blahyi ultimately came to believe, rightly so I suspect, that Nyanbe-a-weh was actually the Devil. 

Unconventional Combat Gear

General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
This is Mr. Blahyi in his younger years decked out in his full combat regalia.

That brings us back to Joshua Blahyi’s catchy stage name, General Butt Naked. Blahyi frequently led his troops into battle wearing nothing more than his shoes and an assault rifle. He believed that only in nudity could he be rendered immune to bullets.

General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
Consuming the heart of an innocent child was believed to render one immune from harm in battle. That’s what this gentleman is doing here.

Before engaging in combat, Blahyi and his men would usually sacrifice a small child to satisfy the blood lust of Nyanbe-a-weh. Blahyi stated that he needed, “Someone whose fresh blood would satisfy the Devil. We would kill an innocent child and take out the heart, which was divided into pieces for us to eat.” Blahyi also claimed that he, “Met Satan regularly and talked to him.”

General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
This is General Naked in the midst of one of his many combat operations.

Blahyi said during an interview with the South African Star, “So, before leading my troops into battle, we would get drunk and drugged up, sacrifice a local teenager, drink the blood, then strip down to our shoes and go into battle wearing colorful wigs and carrying imaginary purses we’d looted from civilians. We’d slaughter anyone we saw, chop their heads off and use them as soccer balls. We were nude, fearless, and drunk yet strategic. We killed hundreds of people—so many I lost count.”

General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
Many of Butt Naked’s fighters inexplicably dressed as women before going into battle. Seems pretty freaking intimidating to me.
General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption

Whilst in combat Blahyi claimed he had special powers that rendered him invisible. Blahyi’s soldiers, many as young as nine, would fight naked or while wearing women’s clothing. The mercenary unit he commanded became widely known as the Naked Base Commandos. They were full-bore psychopaths.

The Guns

General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
While there certainly seems to be no shortage of heavy weapons like this 14.5 mm Combloc ZPU-4 on display in places like Liberia and Rwanda, most of the carnage was rendered by small arms and machetes.

The countless internecine squabbles that blanketed Africa during the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s served as proxy fights for the Cold War superpowers wishing to expand their influence and ideologies remotely. While that occasionally meant military advisors, aircraft, and armor, for the most part, it was simply small arms, lots and lots of small arms. By the time the First Liberian Civil War kicked off in 1989 the entire continent was covered in a thin patina of Kalashnikov rifles.

General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
The price of a full auto AK is a reliable international measure of an area’s state of civility. If you can trade into a decent AK for a pair of chickens and a low-mileage Hustler magazine you should move someplace else. Note the lack of a top cover on this example.
General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
The Combloc PKM is a ubiquitous finding in most modern warzones.
General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
I found pictures of quite a few Combloc PPS-43 submachine guns like these in use during the Liberian Civil War.

I couldn’t find many specifics about the weapons used to prosecute this tidy little genocide, but I did study a lot of pictures. AKs seemed to predominate in both fixed and folding versions. There were also quite a few FN FAL rifles and Combloc PKM belt-fed machineguns. Additionally, there seemed to be a smattering of HK G3 rifles as well as PPS-43 and Uzi submachine guns.

Specifics

General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
Mikhail Kalashnikov changed the world with his uber-reliable assault rifle. He died in 2013 at the age of 94. Watch that trigger finger, Comrade.

The Avtomat Kalashnikova was, so the story goes, the brainchild of a WW2-era Soviet tank driver named Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov. Comrade Kalashnikov was the 17th of 19 children born to Russian peasants. In 1930 most of the Kalashnikov family was deported to Siberia as part of Stalin’s purges.

General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
The definitive AK47 featured a milled steel receiver with characteristic lightening cuts. This is a Chicom Type 56 version.

The earliest AK47’s were formed around a stamped steel receiver, but this was found to be inadequately robust for hard field use. The definitive AK47 was therefore built upon an expensive milled steel receiver. This rugged tire tool of a rifle weighed some 7.7 pounds empty, fed from a 30-round detachable steel magazine, and cycled at 600 rounds per minute.

General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
What most of the planet calls an AK47 is actually an AKM. This version of the venerable Kalashnikov orbits around a stamped receiver and is the most produced variant of the series. It can be distinguished at a glance by its ribbed top cover, angled muzzle brake, and the distinctive dimples in the receiver just above the magazine.

In 1959 the AK47 got an extreme makeover. The stamped steel receiver was finally perfected, and the gun assumed the new designation AKM (Avtomat Kalashnikova Modernizirovannyj). This version weighed 7.28 pounds empty and was much easier and cheaper to build. The AKM used the same magazines and had the same cyclic rate of fire as the AK47. All totaled around 100 million AK-variant rifles have been produced, and they are still churned out around the globe today.

General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
The FN FAL armed most of the free world throughout the Cold War. This is the Austrian StG58 version.

The FNFAL has been rightfully referred to as the “Right Arm of the Free World.” Designed by Dieudonne Saive in 1947 and initially chambered for the German 7.92×33 kurz round, the FAL ultimately fired the 7.62x51mm NATO cartridge. The gun weighed between 8.3 and 9.8 pounds depending upon particulars. The FAL’s designer, Dieudonne Saive, was also the guy who polished up John Moses Browning’s last semiautomatic pistol design into the P35 Browning Hi-Power.

General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
Guns are currency in many parts of Africa today.

There are around 30 million military weapons currently in circulation in Africa. The disintegration of the Libyan state and subsequent looting of government arsenals provided literally countless more. The ready availability of weapons combined with an entrenched tribal system results in a near-constant state of war someplace on the continent. Sprinkle a little radical Islam across the top for flavor and you have the chemical formula for pure unfettered chaos.

The Rest of the Story

General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
This is Joshua Blahyi today. A transformational spiritual conversion turned his sordid life around.

In 1996 Joshua Blahyi met Jesus. He claims he had a vision from God who told him, “Repent and live, refuse and die.”

General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
Joshua Blahyi’s former soldiers and commanders threatened to kill him after his conversion to Christianity, so he fled to Ghana. He has since returned to Monrovia where he serves as a full-time pastor and evangelist.

Blahyi began sleeping on a pew in a nearby church. Afterward, he said he met Jesus in a blinding light who addressed him as a son. Blahyi handed over his weapons and amulets to his immediate commander and declared, “My new Commander is Jesus Christ.”

General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
An acquaintance used a .38 revolver like this one to shoot a particular stranger in a crowd because a demon in his head instructed him to do so.

I once met a guy on a psychiatry rotation who claimed to be indwelled with three spirits named Dagon, Demidagon, and Begored. He shot a complete stranger in the belly five times with a .38 because the voices in his head told him to do so. When we met he was thirty days out from a five-year penitentiary stay for this unsettling infraction.

General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
The guy I met on the psych ward had put his time in prison to good use. He was legendarily fit.

As near as I could tell, this guy did nothing but lift weights for five years straight. He was, as a result, an incredibly imposing figure. After he presented to the Emergency Department he also intentionally ingested a drywall screw along with the needle off of a hypodermic syringe.

General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
The overwhelming majority of schizophrenics I have encountered professionally are completely harmless. It is a lamentably burdensome disease. However, this one guy was undeniably terrifying. The screw and needle passed in a few days of their own accord.

My buddy’s formal diagnosis was schizophrenia. He was also remarkably articulate and intelligent. He explained to me that as a teenager he had prayed to Satan to send these three guys to keep him company. Yes, it was freaky weird and super creepy. Thanks for asking.

General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
Joshua Blahyi today is a force for forgiveness in war-torn Liberia.

Regardless of where you fall on the subject of demonic possession, in the case of Joshua Blahyi, it is hard to argue with success. Blahyi’s life turned completely around in that single instant. Today he is 49 years old and runs a residential facility that teaches his former child soldiers life skills. He seeks out the families of those he killed requesting forgiveness. He proclaims Jesus and salvation at every opportunity. I found a YouTube video of him preaching. He seemed quite sincere.

General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
The power of the Gospel saved Joshua Blahyi from a life of unimaginable darkness.

Joshua Blahyi was once described as, “the most evil man in the world.” Since he found Jesus, however, his life has been characterized by service, repentance, and forgiveness. In General Butt Naked’s stark transformation from bloodthirsty psychopath into pastor, evangelist, and mentor we see manifest the simply breathtaking power of forgiveness.

General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
This guy’s t-shirt and its obvious context perfectly demonstrate the inexplicable contrast that was the grueling Liberian Civil War.
General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
This dude seems incongruously happy.
General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption
Wow.
General Butt Naked and the Incomparable Power of Redemption

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About the author: Will Dabbs A native of the Mississippi Delta, Will is a mechanical engineer who flew UH1H, OH58A/C, CH47D, and AH1S aircraft as an Army Aviator. He has parachuted out of perfectly good airplanes at 3 o’clock in the morning and summited Mount McKinley, Alaska, six times…always at the controls of an Army helicopter, which is the only way sensible folk climb mountains. Major Dabbs eventually resigned his commission in favor of medical school where he delivered 60 babies and occasionally wrung human blood out of his socks. Will works in his own urgent care clinic, shares a business building precision rifles and sound suppressors, and has written for the gun press since 1989. He is married to his high school sweetheart, has three awesome adult children, and teaches Sunday School. Turn-ons include vintage German machineguns, flying his sexy-cool RV6A airplane, Count Chocula cereal, and the movie “Aliens.”

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  • C. Thomas Boone June 27, 2023, 11:05 am

    Horrific and not just limited to LIberia. I find the fact that General Butt Naked was granted prosecutorial immunity when he testified before the RCC proof that justice in LIberia is far a farce. Pray the devil back to hell proved to be a dream as Charles Taylor’s wife remains the VIce President of LIberia to this day. The ICC only tried Taylor in Sierra Leone -all of this because greedy thugs who masquerade as the elite war for control of Africa’s blood diamonds,trafficking in gold, oil, arms, human beings, sex slaver, drugs. If Sudan looks very similar, just remember that Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army also escaped justice. South Sudan gave asylum to both Kony and Osama bin Laden-in the 1990s. What goes around, comes around but always too late.

  • Russ May 25, 2021, 11:35 am

    Yes General Butt Naked needs to face justice for what he did. Why is he not being sought for his crimes against humanity?? He has admitted to ritual killings of innocent people as well as what he did while in charge. Once again the system has broken down and the guilty are the ones profiting from it.
    Oh and yes these scenes look like the inner cities of many blue cities and states here in America.

  • Lance May 25, 2021, 12:45 am

    It’s great that General Butt naked found Jesus. But, he needs to pay for his crimes. He should be tried, convicted and hung. And even that’s too good good for that stinking pig!

  • Rex May 24, 2021, 8:09 pm

    The photos could be from the south side of Chicago, Baltimore or Detroit.
    It’s touching that General Butt Naked found the Lord but why in God’s name hasn’t he been executed for his heinous crimes? Or at least jailed for life!

  • John Boscogolvitch May 24, 2021, 5:50 pm

    Makes sense to me. Kill children. Eat their hearts. Then get forgiven by Jesus. What a load of crap!

    • Frank May 25, 2021, 10:27 am

      God’s forgiveness is available to any and all who truly repent and believe in the atoning sacrifice of His Son, Jesus Christ. Each of us often places our own “conditions” on whom/what we will forgive. Thank God our Heavenly Father that He does not!

  • Grumpy Old Biker May 24, 2021, 12:47 pm

    This article surprised the hell out of me.

    Several years ago, I saw an in-depth, unbiased documentary on the new and improved, former “General Butt Naked”. It clearly showed that he was anything but the angelic, God-worshipping hero portrayed in this ridiculous article. That act is merely a charade. Even after his alleged “conversion” he was an obviously self-absorbed narcissist who cared only about staying out of prison. At one point he is shown begging his small group of followers (and former soldiers) to support him in his bid to avoid prosecution for crimes against humanity. But when it suited him he turned his back on them and fled without a word like the cowardly dog that he is. Not once did he ever show any interest in the welfare of any of these poor men who worshipped this clown and who actually believed in him.

    The film makers followed this guy around and didn’t even have to slant the story in any direction. Ol’ Butt Naked did that himself. By listening to his words and watching his actions, only an idiot would fail to see what a joke his religious conversion is.

    • Tony June 7, 2021, 12:19 pm

      I believe you are referring to the Count Dankula video on YouTube about General Butt Naked which gained much popularity. Understand that Dankula is a comedian and you should not take his assessment of this religious conversion. Is it sincere or not? I cant say for sure. But simply pretending to find Christ is pretty hard to do consistently, so this makes me more likely to believe that it is not a huge act.

  • Scott May 24, 2021, 11:57 am

    Definitely part of the origins of BLM

  • The Bearded Pretender May 24, 2021, 11:56 am

    I just looked at the pictures at first and thought it was a story about America’s Inner-cities and the People we are being forced to “Respect” because we’re all White Racist and our White Privilege is forcing them to act this way. Now I see the True Roots of the American Inner-city.

  • Mike May 24, 2021, 11:20 am

    Will – thanks so much for sharing this story!! Wow, from darkness into the light of Christ!

    • Grumpy Old Biker May 28, 2021, 5:27 am

      Yeah, except that General Butt Naked didn’t really turn his life over to Jesus. He just wanted everyone to believe he had so he wouldn’t face charges of crimes against humanity. A thin veneer of Jesusy salvation is better than any lawyer.

  • Mike May 24, 2021, 11:18 am

    Will – thanks so much for sharing this story!! Although I wasn’t a mass murderer, Jesus changed my life and I’m so grateful for His forgiveness and work in my life!!

  • H.J. Shorb May 24, 2021, 11:00 am

    Coming next to Chicago, St. Louis, NYC, Atlanta, and Boston.

  • Daniel Stallbaum May 24, 2021, 9:03 am

    Rough reading but super inspiring to see the power of the gospel change a life!

    • Erik May 25, 2021, 1:53 pm

      You are kidding!

      • Grumpy Old Biker May 28, 2021, 5:30 am

        No, he and his kind are serious. And delusional. The only thing more intense than the devoutness of a public Bible thumper is the gullibility that left-wingers hope the average citizen will have.

  • Mike in a Truck May 24, 2021, 8:33 am

    To think that all those years I had been doing it wrong….prone, rice paddy squat, two man fighting position sand bag supported with left and right limit aiming stakes. When all I had to do was assume the horse stance , non cheek weld super trooper presentation that the lad in the picture displayed. Surley it strikes fear into the enemy.

  • Pud May 24, 2021, 8:08 am

    The k0mmie-lib3rals will definitely censor this:

    And people in the US still THINK they’re human

  • James May 24, 2021, 7:02 am

    I have the honor of knowing and having been friends with two great American fighters who, along with another colleague, faced off over the course of several weeks during that civil war in Monrovia in 1998. Diplomatic Security special agents Lester “Scot” Folensbee and Roy “Tony” Deibler, along with special agent Steve Fakan, at that time regional security officer (RSO) of the American embassy there, organized the rescue of an ABC news crew that was trapped due to local fighting in their hotel in Monrovia. Among the slew of other missions that Scot and Tony undertook retrieving American citizens they pulled off that rescue. Just two men. RSO Fakan and the Marine Security Guards (MSGs) provided overwatch for them until they were out of sight and out of range but over the course of weeks Scot, Tony and Steve made their way around the city to locate and retrieve Americans who were trapped by the Buck Naked militia. Tony retells the story of how the militia set up check points using the guts of people they murdered to string up across the road to get vehicles to stop. Needless to say, those men pulled off something remarkable that has never gotten proper recognition by either their Department or the country. Both men- Scot a highly decorated Army special operations veteran of Vietnam and Tony, a Marine Reconnaissance vet- were friends. Tony passed in 2013, Scot in 2014. They embodied the qualities of patriotic Americans, martial skill at arms, diplomacy and bravery. They are sorely missed.

    • Shanz May 24, 2021, 5:08 pm

      Those dudes sound like bad asses. Glad they were on our team.

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