Posted on 05/14/2002 6:42:50 AM PDT by Valin
Even the plight of enterprising killers can tell us something. In the summer of 401 B.C., 10,700 Greek hoplite soldiers-infantrymen, heavily armed with spear, shield and body armor-were hired by Cyrus the Younger to help press his claim to the Persian throne. The recruits were mostly battle-hardened veterans of the 27-year Peloponnesian War, mustered from throughout the Greek-speaking world. Many were murderous renegades and exiles. Both near-adolescents and the still-hale in late middle age enlisted for pay. Large numbers were unemployed and desperate for lucrative work as killers in the exhausted aftermath of the internecine war that had nearly ruined the Greek world. Yet there were also a few privileged students of philosophy and oratory in the ranks, who would march into Asia side by side these destitute mercenaries-aristocrats like Xenophon, student of Socrates, and Proxenus, the Boeotian general, as well as physicians, professional officers, would-be colonists and wealthy friends of Prince Cyrus.
After a successful eastward march of more than 1,500 miles that scattered all opposition, the Greeks smashed the royal Persian line at Cunaxa, north of Babylon. The price for destroying an entire wing of the Persian army was a single Greek hoplite wounded by an arrow. The victory of the Ten Thousand, however, was wasted when their employer, Cyrus, rashly pursued his brother, Artaxerxes, across the battle line and was cut down by the Persian imperial guard.
Suddenly confronted by a host of enemies and hostile former allies, stranded far from home without money, guides, provisions or the would-be king, lacking ample cavalry or missile troops, the orphaned Greek infantrymen nevertheless voted not to surrender. Instead, they prepared to fight their way back to the Greek world. That brutal trek northward to the shores of the Black Sea forms the centerpiece of Xenophon's Anabasis ("The March Up-Country"), the author himself one of the leaders of the retreating Ten Thousand.
(snip)
CULTURE WAR
In the long history of European military practice, it is almost a truism that the chief military worry of a Western army was another Western army. Few Greeks were killed stopping the Persians at Marathon; thousands died at Nemea and Coronea, where Greek fought Greek. The latter Persian Wars saw relatively few Greek deaths; the Peloponnesian War was a bloodbath. Alexander himself killed more Europeans in Asia than did the hundreds of thousands of Persians under Darius III. The Roman Civil Wars nearly ruined the republic, in a way that even Hannibal had not. Waterloo, the Somme and Omaha Beach only confirm the holocaust that occurs when Westerner meets Westerner.
Indeed, the story of military dynamism in our world is ultimately an investigation into the prowess of Western arms. Some will find that assertion chauvinistic, or worse, and cite every exception from Thermopylae to Little Big Horn in refutation. The general public itself is mostly unaware of their culture's singular and continuous lethality in arms. Yet for the past 2,500 years, there has been a peculiar practice of Western warfare-a common foundation and continual way of fighting-that has made Europeans the most deadly soldiers in the history of civilization.
I am not interested here in whether European military culture is morally superior to, or far more wretched than, that of the non-West. The conquistadors, who put an end to human sacrifice and torture on the Great Pyramid in Mexico City, sailed from a society reeling from the Grand Inquisition and the ferocious Reconquista, and left a diseased and nearly ruined New World in their wake. I am also less concerned in ascertaining the righteousness of particular wars-whether a murderous Pizarro in Peru (who calmly announced, "The time of the Inca is over") was better or worse than his murdering Inca enemies, whether India suffered enormously or benefited modestly from English colonization, or whether the Japanese had good cause to bomb Pearl Harbor or the Americans to incinerate Tokyo. My curiosity in this particular discussion is not with Western man's heart of darkness, but with his ability to fight-specifically, how his military prowess reflects larger social, economic, political and cultural practices that themselves seemingly have little to do with war.
(snip)
Outwardly, whether Iraqis fight Iranians or Somalians battle Ethiopians, the world's regular armies are now almost identical in their Western khaki, camouflage and boots. Companies, brigades and divisions-the successors to Roman military practice-are the global standards of military organization. Chinese tanks look European; African machine guns have not evolved beyond American models; and Asian jets have not incorporated new propulsion systems with a radically novel Korean or Cambodian way of producing thrust. If a Third World autocrat buys weapons from China, India, or Brazil, he does so only because these countries can copy and provide Western-designed weapons more cheaply than the West itself. Indigenous armies in Vietnam and Central America have had success against Europeans-but largely to the degree that they were supplied with automatic weapons, high explosives and ammunition produced to Western specifications.
Some critics of the idea of Western military predominance point to the easy transference of technology. American natives, they point out, became better shots than European settlers. Moroccans quickly mastered Portuguese artillery. But such arguments have the paradoxical effect of proving the opposite of what is intended: Englishmen were in the New World and selling guns to natives, not vice versa. Moroccans were not in Lisbon teaching Portuguese the arts of Islamic heavy gunnery.
The very question of Westernization has a reductionist and sometimes absurd quality about it: there is no concept of "Easternization" within the armed forces of the West, at least in which entire Western cultures adopt wholesale the military practices and technology of the non-West. Meditation, religion and philosophy are not the same as industrial production, scientific research and technological innovation. It matters little where a weapon was first discovered, but a great deal how it was mass-produced, constantly improved and employed by soldiers.
(snip)
POLITICS BY BLOODIER MEANS
The Western way of war is so lethal precisely because it is so amoral-rarely shackled by concerns of ritual, tradition, religion or ethics, by anything other than military necessity. Western technology and science has not always been superior-Themistocles' triremes at Salamis were no better than Xerxes', and Admiral Nagumo's carriers at Midway had better planes than the Americans did. The status of freedom, individualism and civic militarism at those battles, however, was vastly different. And on nearly every occasion, it was not merely the superior weapons of European soldiers, but a host of other factors-organization, discipline, morale, initiative, flexibility and command-that led to Western advantages.
Western armies often fight with and for a sense of legal freedom. They are frequently products of civic militarism or constitutional governments, and thus are overseen by those outside religion and the military itself. Heavy infantry is also a particularly Western strength-not surprising when Western societies put a high premium on property, and land is often held by a wide stratum of society. Europeans have been quick to alter tactics, steal foreign breakthroughs and borrow inventions when in the marketplace of ideas their own traditional tactics and arms have been found wanting. Western capitalists and scientists alike have been singularly pragmatic and utilitarian, with little to fear from religious fundamentalists, state censors or stern cultural conservatives.
(snip)
Gifted intellectuals of vision and character, products of this new Westernized intellectual culture, could only sigh when, during the spring of 1982 in the harsh seas of the South Atlantic, British seamen blew up Argentines and vice versa. The European-educated, Argentine Nobel Prize winner Jorge Luis Borges likened the Falklands War to "two bald men fighting over a comb." But fight they did. Thucydides, who wrote history as "a possession for all time," reminds us that states fight for "fear, self-interest and honor"-not always out of reason, economic need or survival. Honor, even in this age of decadence, still exists and will still get people killed for some time to come.
True, some key ingredients of traditional Western warfare appear to be all but gone. Mercenary armies in America and Europe are the norm. They are not necessarily entirely professional, but outlets for the disaffected, who seek economic opportunity, with the realization that those of a far different social class will determine where, when and how they will fight and die. Fewer Americans-soldier and civilian alike-are voting than ever before. Most have not a clue about the nature of their own military or its historic relationship with its government and citizenry. The rise of a huge federal government and global corporations has reduced the number of Americans who work as autonomous individuals-as family farmers, small businesspeople or owners of local shops. Freedom for many means an absence of responsibility, while the culture of the mall, video and Internet seem to breed uniformity and complacence, rather than rationalism, individualism and initiative.
Will the West always, then, possess persons of the type who fought at Midway, or who rowed for their freedom at Salamis, or who rushed to reform their battered legions in the aftermath of Cannae? Pessimists see seeds of decay in the lethargic teenagers of affluent American suburbs. But I am not so sure we are yet at the point of collapse. As long as Europe and America retain constitutional government, capitalism, freedom of religious and political association, free speech and intellectual tolerance, then history teaches us that Westerners in their hour of need can still field brave, disciplined and well-equipped soldiers, who kill like none other on the planet. Our institutions, if they do not erode entirely, can survive periods of decadence brought on by our material success, eras when the whole notion of civic militarism seems bothersome, and in which free speech is used to focus on our own imperfections without concern for the ghastly nature of our enemies. The fumes of Roman republicanism kept the empire going long after the ideal of a citizen soldier sometimes gave way to a mercenary army.
I wonder why.
--Boris
H.G. Wells explains in The Outline Of History that any society that survives for an extended period of time must rest on the five pillars, military, religion, politics, education and economics. If any one pillar fails, that society will fall. When societies are engaged in war, it is not just a military struggle but a dynamic cultural struggle.
The Mongols were vastly superior in mobility and weapons compared to the European armored footman. The only thing that defeated the Mongols were other Mongols.
Victor is too smart by half. We are a nation of witless tax slaves.
I think our present leader is the telltale in this experiment. If we conservatives are upset with him now over the liberal bills he's signing and his unwillingness to spend political capital championing the conservative cause ... just wait.
W is on his way to a landslide in '04 by purchasing the vast middle of America wholesale. He won't even need the conservative base, which is a tiny minority in all reality. Most Americans have no real political convictions. This is just a plain .... straight fact. (Yes Alice that person in the pew next to you will secretly vote to keep the freebies coming or not even vote at all if the conservative candidate does not make them positively swoon. OR ... 'Perot' you in the back even though it insures another clintoon era.) Bush and his handlers are master politicians. Unfortunately they are going to sell us all down the river. In fact we're halfway to the cataracts already.
I guess it was the Farm Bill that was the key stone. When it dropped into the slot, the arch of my thought processes was complete and the knowing consumate. The Left has won. Hands down. The West's societies, given our debauchery and ignorance, and that these foolish masses have figured out how to vote themselves free money, will continue the looting untill we are bankrupted. Then they will savegly and voraciously continue the rape and pilliage untill we reach utter chaos.
Right thinking religious people who truly believe in what were once the core values of the West are actually a tiny minority who CANNOT prevail on this earth. We may stand at the waypoint and announce that this way lies death, but few will heed our warnings.
The masses' hunger for a free lunch and never ending happiness has taken over. So .... let us at least take back a portion of our purloined substance. The barbarians are robbing us blind. I have decided to get back at least a portion of what has been wronglfully filched. Since the whole nation is on wellfare and I've been paying in, everything, all these decades, and taking nothing out .... I have decided enough is enough.
As the Old busilly go about taking out five times more than they ever paid in, and the American farmer is content to take my money for sitting on their dead rusty combines, and the millions of illegal immigrants get better health care free, than I can pay for, and on and on and on ..... IT'S TIME FOR ME TO GET SOME OF IT BACK.
I'm going to enter the black market labor pool, hide all my money, and spend the rest of my days digging up and pocketing any and all forms of government subsidies I can get my hands on. I'm going to do my part to hasten the end. The collapse must come. Death to socialism. Once and for all. After the bankruptcy and the chaos perhaps we can take up the Constitution once again and start over. The sooner the better.
Where did the Mongols come from? And who founded Moscow?
Mike
The problem is that conventional militaries (armies, tanks, planes, bombs) has not shown themselves very well against guerilla actions in the past. Vietnam. Afghanistan (the Russian run at it). Philipines. Middle east.
Until we find a way to combat guerilla warfare that works better than the old-fashioned way, asymmetrical warfare is the big lump under the carpet.
--Boris
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Note: this topic is from 2002. |
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