September 2005

Response to Readership

How would you respond to a college professor who says that Israel is one of the most right-wing oppressive regimes in the world?

In many ways:

(1) Would he prefer to say that about Assad while living in Syria, or criticize Khadafy while in Libya?

(2) Go down the list of things like free speech, habeas corpus, women's rights and compare Israel to, say. its neighbors like Egypt or Palestine.

(3) Ask him would a Jew more likely survive heart surgery in Ramallah or an Arab in Tel Aviv.

Your professor does not believe that nonsense himself, but with a captive class audience that he may well have not earned either by his scholarship or erudition, he pontificates on his off-topic soapbox. The Western disease of elites trashing successful Western societies and romanticizing "the other" breaks out from the tenured pulpit or the upscale coffee house, never from those traveling in Havana, North Korea, or Teheran.

We all await the day when academia will awaken from its Rip Van Winkle sleep and discover it is no longer the golden age of the 1960s, but a new century when most students are ever more suspicious of their professors' motives and competency. Add anti-Semitism to the equation and you can see why your professor dwells on Israel and not Saudi Arabia (beheadings, gender apartheid, polygamy) or China (that swallowed Tibet.).

Are there any historical parallels with the situation that is now occurring all over the gulf coast?  Why is it that the media chooses to give Louisiana politicians a free ride?

We have had such catastrophes in the same area for centuries, and so far the death toll in New Orleans is far less, for example, than the Galveston hurricane. As far as the media goes: 

(1) a mostly liberal media gives a democratic machine in Louisiana a pass on much; we can see that when the Republican conservative governor across the border who did a far better job was mostly unmentioned;

(2) the mayor, governor, and Democratic Senator of Louisiana have said things that were outrageous and mostly blamed everyone but themselves. They all remind of what we read of Huey Long, whose political culture they were apparently nourished in;

(3) The subtext of the entire coverage was how to score politically-correct points by using the disaster to intone on race, the environment, and the war in Iraq.

President Bush's error was not being on the scene immediately to show public concern with the tragedy. But almost all the failures — from lack of law enforcement, no evacuation for thousands, and assets like buses and vans not used — were local and state slips.

The media is in flux, as the major networks and old newspapers are losing their grip and now face cable, talk radio, and the blogosphere that offers 24/7 correctives. So we are witnessing a fascinating cultural war of media presentation, as those with degrees and status in New York and Washington rage as amateurs spot their mistakes and biases that heretofore went unchallenged. It is hard to argue with a million or so collective minds and that is what the Internet is: one enormous, freewheeling audit that respects neither degree nor reputation, but instantly finds glee in embarrassing grandees. I think it is therefore a vital resource, especially as a corrective for the problem you raise!

As a former grunt (USMC) I was intrigued by the title of a book by Robert Kaplan, which I saw and perused in Barnes and Noble, called Imperial Grunts.  Have you heard of this work  (which is the first of two volumes)? Is their any sense in which the U.S. is an empire? I'm a little incredulous myself; it seems Kaplan assumes too much and is making some loose connections between the present U.S. and empires of the past.

I reviewed the book for the National Review. And for my views on empire, I have an essay on that in Andrew Bacevich's edited collection of reprinted essays on empire (The Imperial Tense). And I was supposed to debate Arianna Huffington on "Is the U.S. an empire?" which can be linked on our webpage, but she chose to talk of other far off things instead. Kaplan is a skilled writer and a very decent person who at great risk to his safety has gone to the most inhospitable places in the world. I admire him a great deal and pray for his safety.

On this issue, however, I think there is no way the United States resembles any of the empires of the past for a variety of reasons outlined in the essay and my opening statement at the debate. I think Kaplan, however, understands that, and is trying to appreciate that much of the U.S. military's footprint is not imperial as much as insidiously humanitarian. We are lucky to have Robert Kaplan.

Is there a "myth of democratic pacifism"?

Yes. Observers from Thucydides onward have remarked on the dichotomy: democracies are slow to act, indulge in self-delusion, bicker and fight in the midst of war, but when they get going draw on all the talents of their society and in a way that allows for consensus, and thus make war like no other form of government, as we saw in the 20th century with the death of Italian fascism, Nazism, Japanese militarism, and Stalinism. Islamic fundamentalism will meet the same fate.

Historians will come to appreciate that the removal of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein was miraculous, as was the effort to prompt democracy in their place. No other society other than a democratic West could have accomplished it; none would have tried. Wait until the world has to deal with non-democratic imperial China and they will see the difference clearly.

Have you been able to see any of HBO's "Rome", and if so, what is your opinion so far?

I liked it in many ways. The sets are wonderful and the British actors, while not as distinguished as the cast of I, Claudius, are superb. Detail from the meals to the army protocol looked authentic. I cannot imagine Hollywood doing anything like that. Troy and Alexander the Great show how impoverished our talents are when it comes to the ancient world. The script is mostly accurate, and we sense that weakness and well-meaning impotence in Cato and Cicero, and the sense of lost majesty and character flaws in Pompey. Other touches — Caesar's epilepsy and Antony's recklessness and crudity — match the sources well. In short, it is an excellent production.

Wilfred Owen, a WWI soldier and poet, composed a piece in which he refers to Horace's famous line "Dulce et decorum est/ Pro patria mori" as "The great lie."  Was he correct to read Horace's line as glorifying war?

Hanson: Not entirely. No one lamented more than Horace the horrific carnage of the Roman Civil Wars.  He fought at and ran away from the battle of Philippi, tossing away his shield (relicta parmula), as he says in his second book of odes. He was, I think, arguing for the noble sacrifice for the republic against foreign enemies, and perhaps had the recent campaigns in Gaul, Parthia, and Pontus in mind and in contrast to the contemporary suicide of Roman society. Like most late-Republican poets and moralists, he is worried that the combination of the affluence and leisure of the late Republic and the wastage of the civil wars will weaken Roman resolve and lead to decline.

Owen saw horrific things that Horace could scarcely have imagined, and we should allow him that sentiment of distrust of classical values, when young Englishmen were being gassed and blown apart in a war that to those who were asked to fight it had become immobile, static, and seemingly senseless. That the U.K. and France stopped Prussian militarism meant little when their generals could not find a way to win a war without the holocaust of the trenches.

Owen's Britain went to war with a very small, unprepared army, pitted against the world's greatest and most sophisticated land forces in the Kaiser's army. How they stopped them is still not clear to me, but I persist in thinking had they not, a liberal Europe as we know it today would not exist. Of course, the revisionism of the hour believes otherwise. My grandfather, Frank Hanson, was gassed in the Argonne and disabled with ruined lungs for the rest of his life; he bore no ill will to the Germans, but felt by 1918 the Americans could have gone into Germany, occupied the country, insisted on radical change, showed the German people both mercy and the consequences of their aggression and we would have not had WWII.

In short WWI was a great tragedy, where millions saved liberal democracy for a generation, but at the pinnacle of their hard won success, we did not stay on to ensure the peace. Both Horace and Owen were great poets, and that's why we read them today, but I think neither Horace was a simple triumphalist nor Owen entirely a pacifist.

Why do we still support Israel when it is no longer weak as before?

Hanson: For a variety of both practical and idealistic reasons we protect the Israelis:

1) During the Cold War, front-line Soviet surrogates like Egypt, Syria, and Iraq sought to destroy the Jewish state in 1967 and 1973, which would have given the Russians complete control of the Middle East and enhanced their efforts to secure a grip on the world's oil reserves in the Gulf. Now, in the post-Cold War landscape, the Arab world's propensity for autocracy has re-manifested itself into either direct or insidious support for terrorism and radical Islam. Then and now, a democratic Israel stands as a bulwark of Western liberalism in a sea of depressing autocracies.

2) Ever since 1941 United States has assumed the role of guarantor of encircled states whom either bullies wished to destroy or our own allies in liberal Europe neglected and cut loose. Thus we supplied over 85% of the troops in South Korea to save Seoul, fought the Stalinst North Vietnamese, and pledge to protect Taiwan.  Only the U.S. saved the Bosnian Muslims at the 11th hour.

3) After the Holocaust-and again made clear after September 11 — there seems to be only two safe places for Jews in the world, a Jewish state and a liberal multiracial United States. We know Jews were ethnically cleansed from the Middle East, nearly a million from Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, Amman, and elsewhere to the snores of Europe. Indeed, France and Germany cannot or will not ensure their safety even today inside their borders.  So the United States provides a safe home for Jews and protects Israel — I shudder to think without those two homelands what the alternative would be.

4) Israel has offered the world an amazing return on the initial support for the Jewish state. More Israelis are cited in scientific journals than is true of the entire Arab world combined. In science, engineering, and medicine, Israel's contributions rank with far larger European countries — all in contrast to what is found in its immediate midst.

5) We are also supporting the creation of a Palestinian state with a democracy in line with our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Remember, we have given Egypt $50 billion so far, and each year billions in the aggregate to Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinians — one would not know that given their state-sponsored, hate-filled rhetoric. Unlike the Europeans, we have never had colonies in the Middle East, and our old realpolitik of keeping communists out and oil pumping has now morphed into spread democracy and keep the world's oil supplies open for export, especially now with China and India as major customers.

What effect do professional armies have on the concept of civic militarism?  Are they the necessity of imperialism?  Should we be concerned about their predominance in our society, or are they the only solution to the socio-military climate of the times?

Hanson: A good question. Civic militarism does not depend entirely on the notion of a conscript army. Take for instance, the North Korean or the Iranian army, both reliant on draftees. But a U.S. professional and volunteer soldier has far more rights and responsibilities than a draftee in either of those two militaries. So the nature of the state matters a great deal as well.

Imperialism seems to be a different matter altogether — Napoleon created an empire on the basis on mass levies, while Britain did it with a small professional army. Athens needed conscripts, Alexander had mercenaries.  As a general rule, draftees provide greater manpower, but are less able to serve long tenure. The idea that draftees unite the nation and keep the military under constant scrutiny is valid, as is the notion of service being a common bond and a seminal experience for a nation's youth. That being said, Europe is mostly ending conscription, given the need for smaller, highly-trained militaries, and the irony that alternative service tends to put anti-military types in civilian sectors (often the more affluent), and the more pro-military people in the army proper (often the middling and lower classes), thus nullifying any effect of national cohesion.

How we would deal with a cohort of youth about 30 million I don't know; and how we would channel them into alternate service is equally unexamined.  In theory, draftees are the core of civic militarism, but in the modern world the mechanics seem daunting for a country of a size and nature of the U.S.

In wars like the Opium Wars the English decimated the Chinese navy. But the differences in old technology seemed to be less drastic than today's technologies. So how exactly were the English muskets and cannons so much better than those of the Chinese that the Chinese seemed as disadvantaged as the Mexicans were to the Spanish?

Hanson: In a lot of ways. First, their artillery was far more numerous — the English created the arts of mass fabrication of iron cannon that were as reliable as bronze but far cheaper and easier to make. Second, they developed grained and corned powder that was far more reliable in its explosive characteristics. In fact, whether rifled barrels, artillery platforms and recoil mechanisms, the English, Germans, or Americans usually developed the first prototypes. It is a fair generalization that the Chinese, the inventors of gunpowder, once it was passed on to the West, never again were responsible for a single breakthrough — whether flints, percussion caps, minie balls, rifled barrels, cartridges, explosive fragmentation shells, optics, etc. — not surprising given the Western combination of greater personal freedom, an open economy, a literature that was far more widely disseminated, and the greater opportunity for profit. The same is true of the printing press, likewise developed in China, but then vastly improved in the West.

How can armies in the past allow a general to stand in front and fight? Wouldn't he be killed instantly?

Hanson: In classical times, they often were, at least in the 5th century. I don't know of a single classical general who survived the defeat of his army — from Leonidas to Cleon. The most notable generals of the past — Brasidas, Epaminondas, Lysander, Pyrrhus,  Crassus — all died in combat. Senior statesmen like Nicias were not immune when they took command, executed as he was on Sicily. Ancient generalship put a high premium on personal courage since, at least before Alexander's times, tactical options were somewhat limited or at least the survivability of the general felt not to be key to the survival of the army. We rarely get a general on a horse to the rear until the Hellenistic period. And even in Roman times Caesar swam the harbor at Alexandria and was in the fray all through Gaul — and at middle age no less.

I wrote about this in the Western Way of War, in a chapter called "A Soldier's General."  It is hard to find any general who survived to old age, even Alexander's old wounds may have weakened him. In WWII we had, I think, only two high-ranking generals killed in action, Leslie McNair in Normandy, and Simon Bolivar Buckner on Okinawa, both due to unusual circumstances. The German army and the Confederate are somewhat exceptions to this rule and lost scores of officers at the rank equivalent to one-star general and above.

I have a great interest in Roman military history.  Could you recommend to me some works to further my knowledge?

There are so many. In the Journal of Military History I wrote a 10,000 word essay on all the major research done on both ancient Greek and Roman warfare, which was revised and published as the initial chapter on the new upcoming Cambridge History of Ancient War edited by Hans Van Wees.

I like the work of Goldsworthy on the Roman army. Lazenby has comprhensive work on the Punic Wars. The old standbys of Webster, Campbell, Keppie, Bohac, etc. are very good.

There is a vast bibliography on Roman frontiers. The field is much more difficult and thorny than classical Greek military history, inasmuch as Rome unlike Athens lasted more than a thousand years, and covered much of the known world. So archaeological reports may appear from Hungary to Tunisia, and scholarship is far more often found in German, Italian,and French. There are many more artifacts, more inscriptions and more classical literature to master. When we say "Roman army" do we mean 300 BC in Italy-or AD 400 on the Danube, and are we to look to Livy or Vegetius centuries later?

I have the greatest respect for Roman military historians, who by needs much specialize in such a large field, perhaps explaining why there are so many more generic introductions to classical Greek warfare than to Roman. The field requires a lifetime of work-knowledge of several ancient and modern languages, travel to the most out of the way places, and familiarity with coins, legal documents, inscriptions, and papyri.

Reading The Soul of Battle, I found similarities between Epaminondas' campaign in Sparta and the late U.S. Marine effort in encircling Fallujah.  What do you see are the critical differences between now and then?

Hanson: Technology, of course, such as instant communications and enormous firepower. Epaminondas is valuable for what he teaches us about what Liddell Hart called the "indirect approach," or by creating Peloponnesian fortified democracies in Mantineia and Megapolis, along with freeing the helots of Messenia, he did not quite need to destroy the Spartan state or occupy the Spartan acropolis — although he nearly succeeded at ruining their army at Leuktra and almost made it in into the city during his ill-fated attempt to cross the Eurotas.

I suppose Epaminondas would think our pressuring Syria to get out of Iraq, promoting elections in the Gulf and Egypt, and trying to discredit the Iranian theocracy were all ways of deflating the air of the jihadist balloon inside the Sunni Triangle, in the way Sherman's trek through Georgia and the Carolinas weakened the Army of Northern Virginia.

A great similarity is that we, like Epaminondas, trust that the previously unfree can be liberated to govern themselves. So like the helots, the Shiites and Kurds are to be given a chance at self-rule, good in itself, but also a way of curbing Sunni/Wahhabi theocratic and autocratic power.

A tragedy of the ancient world is that Plutarch's life of Epaminondas is lost as are the histories of Ephorus and Callisthenes, so we have no detailed account of what his motivations were exactly, or indeed much information about his life.

In the foreword to the French edition of your book about the Greek wars, there is a warning from the translators which states that your views on the subject, particularly on Alexander the Great, are uncommon. Why do you think these people (who didn't sign the warning) thought it necessary to "warn" the reader, and, actually, what is the nature of the disagreement (if you know)?

Hanson: I had a great deal of trouble with the French translation of The Wars of the Ancient Greeks. Some French classicists were angry that an American work was to be used for John Keegan's series in their country rather than one of their own, and attempted to block the publication. The first draft of the French translation was an utter disaster, full of egregious errors of translation and mistakes in English expression.

All correspondence and critiques were sent to me only in French, and resentment and envy characterized the entire unhappy exchange. I spent an entire week and sent in 27 pages of corrections in the French translation where they had either deviated from the text without authorization or simply did not understand the English language. So from the very start there was a great deal of problems with that edition.  Finally the acrimony reached absurd levels with the outside readers slurring Americans, Californians, and objecting to my status as a former farmer rather than a French savant. Apparently they bristled as well at my identification of both a Western way of warfare, and indeed "the West" itself, which to them ("them" being two outside scholars and the translator) was itself a "construct" to oppress the “other.”

As far as the Alexander the Great matter, here they switched from Marxist Left to Napoleonic Right and thus objected to my suggestion that the great man did things like kill more Greeks than Persians ever did, and butchered tens of thousands in the dirty wars of Afghanistan and the East — not to mention his murdering of associates from Philotas and Cleitus to Parmenio, the philosopher Callisthenes, Macedonian pages, and random soldiers in the ranks. Mine was an honest portrayal but came at a time when Alexander's hagiography has reached absurd heights. I was happy with what I wrote in English, but frankly have never had as unpleasant an experience as dealing with these particular translators and scholars. Both before and since I have had no problem with other French editions of my books — so it was a complete mystery to me why that particular work evoked such French hysteria.

When diplomacy has failed are there any other effective military options for dealing with terrorist states besides the nation building that has been done in Afghanistan and Iraq?

I don't see any, and, by the way, the Democrats don't either — thus their strange stance that Bush is doing everything wrong, but they will never tell you exactly what they would do better in his place. For all the courting of Michael Moore or Cindy Sheehan, no legitimate Democrat wants to get close to either of these unhinged figures, who spout the worst sort of hatred in their critique of Bush: take your pick, either the beheaders or suicide bombers are Moore's "Minutemen" or we fought the war for Sheehan's slur of "Israel" and the President is "the world's biggest terrorist."

Killing terrorists in not enough nor is just giving money and aid; we've tried both. But offering consensual government seems to enrage the jihadists since it undermines their propaganda that we are propping up dictatorships to steal oil. The jihadists must stop democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq, since if they don't, they lose both their bogeymen of corrupt Arab dictatorship and their proposed solutions for it in theocracy. So we slog on, easily caricatured and ridiculed by both the lunatic left and the ossified right, but this terrible ordeal, if we persevere, will lead to a lasting solution of something like governments resembling Turkey — anti-American in many respects to be sure, but resigned to live within their borders and to avoid becoming fonts of terror.

If we were to read what the Arab Middle East says about George Bush, we would become encouraged, since the new slurs are that he is either naïve or duplicitous in pushing democracy onto the Arab people. That's a pretty good slur to earn.

As a proxy for the Cold War, what long-term and short-term effects did the Vietnam war have on the Soviet Union?

Hanson: Michael Lind, Vietnam the Necessary War, chronicles the positive effect of stopping communist expansion for many years in his argument that Vietnam was not merely an American political defeat. But short-term?  It emboldened the Soviets in the mid and late 1970s, and it was no accident that the invasion of Afghanistan shortly followed. Others such as the Iranians and Central Americans got the impression that the U.S. either would not or could not react. And the holocaust in Cambodia followed and would not have transpired had we created a viable South Vietnam. There were lots of negative repercussions for the United States, and many positive ones for the Russians, even if they took the wrong lessons from our defeat and so went into Afghanistan and suffered an ever worse defeat.

Are you familiar with the work of independent journalist/photographer, Michael Yon, currently in Iraq? If so, I'm interested in your opinion about his dispatches from among our American warriors. http://michaelyon.blogspot.com/

Hanson: Yes, I am and noted the story of Lt. Col. Kurilla in both a Tribune and Washington Post op-ed which was first reported by him. I am trying to read systematically his archives. He seems to be becoming, I think, our Ernie Pyle, who is at the front with the men — no romantic, but deeply impressed with the soldiers he reports on and the mission they have undertaken. I think we are in the midst of some sort of media revolution that we don't quite understand is transpiring.

Obviously the quality and reality of Yon's reporting is comparable or superior to anything in the New York Times; it reminds me of their excellent John Burns. Yet his grim views and failure to adhere to politically correct standards have probably precluded him from writing for a major daily, which he clearly deserves to be doing. He is also a very good prose stylist. The type of reporting he is doing, as we know from the current internet sensation of his website, would be of immediate interest to the American public who want to learn more about this war other than daily explosions and IEDs. We are not the only ones taking casualties, yet the print media seems to suggest that is the extent of Iraq: misery and American losses.

I don't know anything about Michael Yon personally or his background, but from what I have read I am very impressed and think his dispatched are already classics. I hope he keeps safe and continues to inform us all. He is courageous and doing his profession and the country a great service.