November 2004

Response to Readership

I'm reading JFC Fuller's Alexander the Great, and your Soul of Battle. Why are the conclusions about Alexander’s life and legacy so different? Fuller paints an image of a man committed to not only unifying all of Greece, but also unifying conquered territories into a single great empire, not as conquered peoples, but as citizens in Alexander’s greater Mideast empire. You called Alexander a wine bibber, yet Fuller claims he had so much self-control that he submitted all passions to his ultimate goals.

Hanson: I don’t think I said “wine bibber” though in his later years he apparently devolved into what we would call a chronic binge drinker, whose consumption of alcohol went way beyond what was considered sort of normal for the time.

Perhaps it is the age in which we write that explains our differences and our radically divergent approaches. He is a military man of the nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries. So while he naturally is impressed with the genius shown at Alexander’s four triumphs on the battlefield, I see a more mixed picture of slaughtering tens of thousands of civilians (at Thebes and Granicus, as well as the sieges in the Middle East and the dirty wars in Bactria)—as well as killing more Greeks in a decade than did the Persians in a century and a half. All this is amply documented in Arrian, Plutarch, Diodorus, and Curtius, and ancients believed it was unusual even for the times. Few believe Alexander had much self-control at the end of his life, thus his early demise. Whatever we think of him, he drank, caroused, and drove himself beyond the limits of what most others could have tolerated. I do believe he had a vision, but it was the old one of the conqueror who says ‘bear with me until I finish, then I will be good’—the same disease of a Caesar or Napoleon who likewise draped their slaughter in intellectual or philosophical pretension. I think scholars are beginning to see that the fearful Macedonian army was a creation of Philip’s alone, and that his 20-year subjugation of the city-states was almost as remarkable a military achievement as Alexander’s decade-long romp to the Indus.

The movie Alexander the Great delves in to Alexander's bi-sexuality perhaps to generate buzz and to push a political agenda. Would you please comment on the historical record here? Would an accusation of homosexuality have been considered calumny in ancient times?

Hanson: Professor Thornton who writes on our pages has a great book, Eros, which explains ancient Greek sexuality quite candidly without theoretical pretensions. In a word, Alexander was probably not that different from either his father or most Macedonian horse lords in their approach to sex: an interest in the feminine, whether that be women or young boys and girlish adults who served as female surrogates. The key would have been insistence of the male role in all such encounters—and eventual marriage with children. The ancients, or at least the wealthier in the cities, had no problem with what we would call a “heterosexual” (the word does not exist in Greek) male penetrating on occasion feminine males, but would castigate any adult free man who allowed himself to be used in such a passive way—in a manner we see in prisons today. And those who were (dubbed kinaedoi and worse) were probably closest to our sense of what constitutes “homosexual,” though even they were under enormous pressure to marry and sire children. What does all this mean? Probably that Alexander’s sexual life was not all that unusual for the elite and royal culture of Macedon in that age, and surely not central to his military or political career—and even more surely not a reason to hinge an entire 3-hour film on it. I suppose the key difference between our present age and his, is that we heterosexual men believe physical love with a male of any sort constitutes a formal demarcation line—gay or bi—while the Macedonian lords, in the cities and in the barracks, did not think an occasional active role in sex with a feminine-looking or young male detracted from his masculinity—an admittedly strange notion for most of us today.

How well or ill do you find that the Sadr problem--a burning question literally and figuratively--has been handled up to now. What should the decision makers do at this point?

Hanson: Hard to tell. At first (spring 2003) we were naïve and lax and allowed a street thug to become a folk hero. After January 2004 our choices were between bad and worse, since he had developed a cult following of thousands. I would have preferred that after the last putdown of his uprising that he had been arrested on prior murder charges, but I am not there on the ground and concede it is easy from over here to advise, not so easy on the ground in Najef to incarcerate an extremist. As for now, their carrot and stick approach seems to have worked—but we won’t know what he will do when the elections come and, flush with Iranian money and terrorists, he tries to intimidate his opponents.

Will the Iraqis be able to support some form of democratic government? What makes you think that Muhammed's life and the Koran are consistent with democratic ideals?

Hanson: Remember in the 1950s and 1960s the great threat from the Middle East was not Islamic fascism, but Baathist Pan Arabism, promulgated by the likes of Syrian and Iraqi postcolonial dictators, and popularized by Nasser, with Soviet intrigue everywhere. It was mostly secular, communist in sympathies, and aimed at allowing enemies of the West into the region. So the idea that the Koran alone energizes Muslims is false. Their prior gods were Pan-Arab nationalists, who only paid lip service to the mosques. The recent Muslim fascism spread on the ashes on the failures of PanArabism, and was yet the nth magical solution for the ills of the Middle East--almost everything being tried in the past except Western-style democratic capitalism and personal freedom.

Again, our hopes are not to see a Carmel or Hamptons in the Gulf or Baghdad, but something analogous to the Muslims who voted mostly in relative peace in Turkey, India, Indonesia and often in Malaysia, on the theory that such peoples do not supply the world's Islamic mass murderers. It is a bold thing, to try to offer something other than bribe money or bombs, but after September 11 worth a try, inasmuch as billions to Egypt, fealty to Saudia Arabia, and bombs on Iraq didn't stop such despotisms from funding or sending out terrorists. The verdict is not yet out, and let us withhold judgment and hope Iraq follows the path of Afghanistan--not long ago a supposedly "failed" country "run by warlords" that suddenly is out of the news lately, as elites grow numb on news that elections were both successful and the first in 5000 years.

In The Wars of the Ancient Greeks, you write "Had Alcibiades been killed or disgraced at Delium, the Athenians would never have gone to Sicily fourteen years later" Obviously, in Thucydides' account Alcibiades' powers of persuasion are such that he plays an important role in the decision to embark on the Sicilian expedition. But surely it is simplistic to assert it would never have happened without him? Weren't there forces at work in Athens—desire for wealth, tactical considerations, the simple expansionist logic of empire, as Alcibiades suggests in his speech—that would have led to the Sicilian Expedition even if Alcibiades had died at Delium?

Hanson: Of course, there were plenty of other cadres and supporters for the expedition. But in the second debate captured by Thucydides, it is clear that only his rhetoric and audacity push the demos over the edge to actually commit to such a risky proposition, one quite different in intent from the earlier campaigns of 427-5 B.C. Remember, a few key people literally changed the entire course of the Sicilian war. Had Lamachus lived, or had Nicias died the first month, Athens might well have won—or, of course, had Alcibiades not been recalled. Take away Gylippus or Gongylus and it is uncertain whether Syracuse would not have surrendered. Both galvanized Peloponnesian support and then proved adept in mobilizing local Sicilian resistance. Take George Bush out of the equation in 2003 and we would never have gone into Iraq. Sometimes a single individual can alter the larger economic, political, and social currents that direct history.

In an article for Frontpage Magazine, David Meir-Levi discusses a region known as the Tri-Border with reference to a report prepared under an interagency agreement by the Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, July 2003. I have read other articles about that Tri-Border area in South America (La Triple Frontera) but none so detailed or alarming. Question: What is your opinion of that particular report as to it's authenticity, and can you elucidate further on the situation there?

Hanson: I do not know much other than some articles in various magazines and newspapers that I have read. But the apparent logic of al Qaeda is that the Triple Frontera is poorly policed, home to sizable groups of Middle Eastern immigrants, rife with corruption and bribery, flooded with smuggling and drug money, and surrounded by local populations that are not always adverse to seeing the United States take a hit. Add all that up and it makes a logical place for terrorists to flock to after losing Afghanistan. The key is to what degree can they leave such an isolated and distant area to mount missions against the United States. I am sure CIA operatives are watching the situation closely, but don’t know the degree to which terrorists there are a direct threat to the United States in the immediate future.

Does Churchill, both his life and ideas, continue to have relevance to the very dangerous world we live in today?

Hanson: In a variety of ways. His career shows how one man can marshal not just a nation, but the entire world through eloquence and resoluteness. His legacy illustrates why we must seek men and women who are renaissance sorts, people of action and erudition who can rally us with words as well as strategy and toughness. And his electoral defeat at the end of the war reminds us how fickle the public is and how narrow are the margins of support on which even great men sometimes govern. Take away Churchill in 1939, and I don’t quite see how England would have survived to 1941.

Are there any historical examples of societies expending crippling amounts of resources or energy on less than realistic threats?

Hanson: The key word is “less than realistic” rather than somewhat exaggerated. Democratic Sicily, despite what Alcibiades claimed, posed no threat to democratic Athens, and even when the Athenians lost badly there, the Syracusans did not send a large fleet to join the Spartans. The British dreadnought frenzy was based on exaggerated reports of potentially numerically superior German battleships as was the so-called Kennedy-inspired worry about the “missile gap.” Still we laugh about the domino theory now and did at the time, but after Vietnam, we saw a holocaust in Cambodia, an invasion of Afghanistan, take-over of our embassy in Teheran, and communist guerilla uprisings in Central America. If your question is aimed at Iraq, the answer hinges on two criteria: will we win? If so, few in a year or two will say removing Saddam for democratic change was a bad idea; and are we really in a war against terrorism? If not, then Iraq makes no sense. If so, then any government with a prior history of subsidizing Middle East terrorists—whether al Qaeda in Kurdistan, Abu Abbas, Abu Nidal, suicide bombers in Palestine, or early efforts against the United States such as the first World Trade Center bombing—should have been fair game and thus was.

The news out of Najaf regarding our extreme reluctance to return fire from mosques and other holy sites caused me to wonder what the United States military has done in the past when it was confronted with a similar dilemma. I know that we (and the British) did not want to bomb the Benedictine monastery at Monte Casino but eventually leveled it. If my memory serves me right the monastery was bombed at the urgent request of very non-Christian Ghurkas.

Hanson: Monte Casino was not unusual—if one considers the antiquities of Dresden or the destruction of German cathedrals along the Rhine, or the bombing of the French rail system pre-June 1944, or what was left of the tombs and ancestral villages of Okinawa. When the logic of war takes hold, victory becomes more a determinant than concern for infrastructure or cultural insensitivity. Without seeking victory, war is a futile sacrifice—and thus some pretty frightening things are done by otherwise moral nations. There are no good choices when faced with a Monte Casino, though bombing that shrine only made it more difficult to eject the Germans.

What role, if any, did the French have at Lepanto? My understanding is that this Holy League alliance—among the Spanish, Venetians, Austrians—implies that the French were disinterested, or were they actually doing something underhanded?

Hanson: Take a guess. They were at best neutrals and more likely triangulating. While Venice, the Papal States, and Spain were determined to rid the Western Mediterranean of Ottoman galleys, the French found the latter useful in taking Corsica from Genoa and allowed Barbarossa to winter his fleet in French ports, manned though they were by Christian slaves.

Were there mistakes made by the world community when Israel was first created which engendered the subsequent violence or was the idea somewhat doomed from the beginning?

Hanson: Mistakes are always made and the creation of the Jewish states was fraught with ambiguity and British ineptness, but Israel has been a success, enriched the world, and will flourish. Any disagreement that the Arab world had with the Israelis could have been adjudicated without violence—had there been a single legitimate government that was consensual and not captive by its very unlawfulness to radical obstructionists and terrorists. Remember that in a two-state solution, 1 million Arabs will continue to live in peace and freedom among Jews in Israel, while so-called “settlers” would be massacred should the IDF be withdrawn and an autonomous Palestine government left in control.

Is long-term warfare—that might achieve something meaningful in Iraq, for example—compatible with modern democracy?

Hanson: Athens fought 3 out 4 years in its glorious fifth century and almost as much in the fourth, ditto Renaissance republican Venice. Tragically democracies make war frequently and terribly—but rarely fight one another, hence the logic of democraticizing the Middle East. If the public believes that democracy in Iraq is a necessary human enterprise that will enhance global security, then they will endure the sacrifice. We should remember that the worst nightmare of al Qaeda or the Iranian mullocracy is an Iraqi democracy, whose natural logic is emulation and extension elsewhere. But to maintain the effort, the President must almost constantly remind Americans that the high price in lives and treasure that we pay in Iraq is worth it, given the distance from home and the growing dissatisfaction in America with the Arab world. The best weapon that the terrorists have is their creepiness, which makes some in the West wrongly say “all those people are from the Dark Ages, let’s just bomb ‘em and leave.”

What should be done about the 18 who refused orders?

Hanson: Again, we need details. Probably the old formula: Stern talk of “mutiny” even as the needed reforms quietly are made to ensure better protected trucks and convoys and the soldiers are quietly disciplined short of the full measure possible. What is worrisome is that the substitute convoy made it through alright apparently, and there is a long history of US soldiers in far worse conditions fighting without armor and escort. So I have mixed feelings; I do know that had that behavior been standard at Normandy, Iwo, Choisun, or Hue, we would have lost all those battles.

You argue that Westerners have been so adept at killing: What about the Khans and the various hordes that roll off the Steppe or events like the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) in China?

Hanson: The point was not just being “so adept at killing,” but rather the West’s preeminence in creating a military infrastructure that allowed relatively small numbers of Westerners to exercise military, political, and economic power for an equally relatively small Europe and North America. The Khans, the hordes—and others like Xerxes, Hannibal, Attila, the Moors, Suleiman the Magnificent—all for a time battered down European gates, but for the most part stayed on the periphery, in sharp contrast to the Western drive into the Orient (from Alexander the Great to the British imperialists) and the Americas. For good or evil, Western military expeditions were more than soldiers of a day or transitory phenomena, but left behind colonies, outposts, and cultures in the non-West that explain much of Western influence beyond Europe’s borders in a way unmatched by rival civilizations. Most of the great military breakthroughs were discovered or stolen by Westerners to their own advantage; cf. the situation with gunpowder, which after adoption from the Chinese is used in ways unthinkable by its inventors, as all subsequent evolutions—corned powder, flints, rifle-barrels, smokeless powder, cartridges, repeating rifles, and explosive shells—were Western. And remember, contrary to popular opinion, Europe’s natural landscape gave it no more advantage that a North Africa, India, Asia Minor, Americas, India, or China. This is not a moral issue, but simply one of military practicality and efficacy. Philosophers and moralists can sort out the ethics of how such advantage was used.

Why should anyone suggest or worry over a draft when NO ONE has yet asked for volunteers??

Hanson: It is insane, this present hysteria. Democrats are the only ones asking for a draft, primarily to snag the upper-middle class so as to stop US military adventurism. We had tens of thousands more volunteer soldiers before the Clinton cuts with a smaller base population. So we could easily raise 3-4 more divisions and do it on a volunteer basis. The problem is that we must sit down, take a deep breadth, and say, “OK—Social Security, Domestic outlay, defense: where do we cut, where do we increase and why?” It really is a sort of zero-sum game, despite ever increasing revenues. Right now I’d prefer 50,000 more under arms, in specially trained light divisions, Green Berets, and a peacekeeper/reconstruction division to follow immediately on our successes than to raise domestic spending higher than the rate of inflation. After 20 years in state education, I think I’ve come to believe that a year on an aircraft carrier probably does a better job in creating maturity for a young male than a subsidized sojourn in college.

What makes you think that the majority of Americans accept Bush's tragic view that we really are in a war for our very survival?

Hanson: I don’t recall that I wrote that the majority of Americans necessarily does accept that view—especially given the media, celebrity, and Democratic barrage. I am sure if they do not, and thus we cease in Iraq, repeal the Patriot Act, and declare the “hysteria” over—and then get hit, Barbara Streisand, Bill Maher, and Senator Harkin will be on television screaming that “someone” allowed this to happened. There is a certain mindset that is utopian and demands perfection, and so thinks this war is like flipping TV channels or talking on the cell phone: “It has to work right now as I want it to.” Democracies in general are slow to wrath and suffer from complacency. I do think should Bush be reelected despite all the invective and slurs, it speaks pretty well that the American citizen, so unlike his European counterpart, understands the nature of the threat. But let us wait until the dust clears after the election. I grant your point though, and often out here on a farm in central California I think that more and more I don’t quite understand the current mindset of an increasing number of increasingly distant Americans.

“Bush will finish and win this war.” Most commentators talk about the war going on for decades. Can you lay out the scenario that gives rise to this sentence?

Hanson: Marines take Fallujah. Iraqis are given all the credit. Next Allawi announces a general offensive against other recalcitrant cities and Iraqis are seen on Arab television doing the same—Coalition troops doing most of the real fighting. In January the Arab world is confronted with the first really open and free election in its history. Iraq assumes the status of Afghanistan—not perfect, but far better than anything in its past. At that point, we take stock of things, and very carefully consider the ongoing digestion, our pace calibrated by the nature of our enemy’s threat: but ultimately we are going to have to issue diplomatic “requests” for Syria to allow free elections in Lebanon and to withdraw from that country, as we build a coalition to demand a full accountability from Iran on its weapons. I use euphemisms about Iran, Syria and Lebanon, since no one knows what will ripple out if there are relatively stable governments in Afghanistan and Iraq. What we are witnessing in Afghanistan is seen as lethal in the fundamentalist world, absolutely lethal to their worldview, and we would like to repeat that scene of voting, women walking freely, and independent courts throughout the region, the idea being that you free one or two countries and the democratic virus spreads more on its own, ending the landscape that celebrates a bin Laden. But remember our first goal is our own security, a preventive effort to ensure that 19 from the Middle East never attempt a 9-11again to the cheap applause of millions.

Such an idiot bin Laden is, damning the West while he uses Western videos and the Internet—absolutely dependent on a jihadist who went to the Great Satan to learn such skills and came back. What has bin Laden’s world ever created? His trade is death, facilitated by being a parasite on the West he so hates.

The Democrats would like us to believe that in the end the independent vote will go to John Kerry, and that he will win the election.

Hanson: No one knows. 5-10% will decide apparently in the last minutes, glued to the 24-hour news cycle. They’ve been hit with quite a lot lately—Rathergate, Kitty Kelly, Richard Clark, Ted Koppel, Abu Ghraib, and now the weapons dump stories. I don’t quite understand how Bush has withstood it so far, but he has and I think is surprisingly resilient.

Do you think that a Bush/Cheney victory that is anything less than a landslide will result in some sort of civil unrest or riots?

Hanson: No, although everyone from Ms. Edwards to activists in Florida keep saying that. As a student I watched a little unrest on the California campuses as our classes were sometimes charged and disrupted.  I was always struck how, like the Seattle vandalism, most of the violence was committed by white, middle-class, affluent kids—whose names I often now find years later in alumni newsletters doing pretty well in computers, Hollywood, and suing people in big law firms. If farm workers in my hometown or the 101^st Airborne were talking of riots, well, I would pause, but what a millionaire trial lawyer’s spouse, a lawyer herself, says doesn’t mean much. Don’t confuse a few storming the RNC headquarters in Miami or Columbus with a real riot. What we want to avoid is a popular vote/electoral college/Supreme Court fiasco, and I think the odds are that it won’t happen again. The Left has staked its all on this election, in a manner that I have never before witnessed, so its disappointment could be monumental, but I don’t think expressed in real insurrection or riots.

Opponents of President Bush and the war in Iraq frequently point to Iran and Korea as the real threats. What is your response to the voices that say our resources and attentions would have been better spent combating nuclear proliferation?

Hanson: Kerry talks about such things, but in fact we are doing precisely that. The entire region is involved in Korea. We are giving no more fuel and food to prop up a dictatorship. Two points: (1) Iran’s nuclear program, as well as North Korea’s, started under Clinton; (2) Those on the Left, for political purposes, are criticizing Bush from the Right. But should we really do something—blockade North Korea or hit Iran’s nuclear facilities—then those same critics would blast him again from the Left. Iran and North Korea are real problems, but mostly in this election they are used as ways of saying Iraq was a mistake. When Iraq calms down, no one other than Bush will really wish to deal with Iran and North Korea. Just watch.