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And the BBC is about to do a piece on the destruction of Babylon - the heli-pad build on the top of ruins and it being used as a military base.DON'T LOOK AWAY. And don't believe all that our leaders tell us about democracy. Three years after the toppling of Saddam, this is the bloody mess Iraq has become
? It was fantastic - just a shame that the ideals promoted haven't really been lived up to by everyone out there!karen wrote:Anyone got a link for this speech by Col Tim Collins? I had never heard of it and want to read it.
GÇ£For two years I've been researching a book about Alexander the Great's counterguerrilla campaign in Afghanistan, 330-327 B.C. What has struck me most powerfully is that that war is a dead ringer for the ones we're fighting today -- even though Alexander was pre-Christian and his enemies were pre-Islamic. The tribe needs a boss. Alexander understood this. Unlike the United States, the Macedonians knew how to conquer a country. When Alexander took Babylon in 333 B.C., he let the people know he was the man. They accepted this. They welcomed it. Life could go on. What the warrior craves before all else is respect. Respect from his own people, and, even more, from his enemies. When we of the West understand this, as Alexander did, we'll have taken the first step toward solving the unsolvable. It took Alexander three years, but he finally got a handle on the tribal mind. (Perhaps because so many of his own Macedonians were basically tribal.) Alexander produced peace by marrying the daughter of his most powerful enemy, the princess Roxane. The tribe understands such an act. This is respect. This is honor. Alexander made the tribesmen his equals. He acknowledged their warrior honor. When he and his army marched out to their next conquest, Alexander took the bravest of his former enemies with him as his companions. They rode at his side in stations of honor; they dined at his shoulder in the royal pavilion. (Of course he also beat the living hell out of the Afghans for three years prior, and when he took off, he left a fifth of his army to garrison the place.) Perhaps in the end, our leaders, like Alexander, will figure some way to bring the tribal foe around. More likely in my opinion, they'll arrive at the same conclusion as did Lord Roberts, the legendary British general. Lord Roberts fought (and defeated militarily) tribesmen in two bloody wars in Afghanistan in the 19th century. His conclusion: Get out. Roberts' axiom was that the farther away British forces remained from the tribesmen, the more likely the tribesmen were to feel warmly toward them; the closer he got, the more they hated him and the more stubbornly and implacably they fought against him.GÇ¥
No, it isn't a general assumption, although there are some who still romanticize Alexander and his campaigns - something which has been happening for over two thousand years! You'll find though that there are many here who feel the same way as yourself, as previous threads can demonstrate.Aspasia wrote:Approximately how many individuals were killed during the campaigns of Alexander?? I get a general feeling that there is an assumption that Alexander achieved his conquests and control through minimal loss of life. Its a very romanticised view of war!!!
What grandiose horse huckey. People are people. The clash of East and West is about the same thing it was in Alexander's time, the same thing as clashes that aren't between East and West are about, the same thing war is always about, at its core -- grabbing the other guy's stuff/keeping the other guy from grabbing yours.In other words, the clash of East and West is at bottom not about religion. It's about two different ways of being in the world. Those ways haven't changed in 2,300 years. They are polar antagonists, incompatible and irreconcilable. The West is modern and rational; its constituent unit is the nation. The East is ancient and visceral; its constituent unit is the tribe.
Absolutely. Pressfield ought to stick to writing novels, not writing political statements based on the ancient history he only superficially understands.karen wrote: What grandiose horse huckey. People are people. The clash of East and West is about the same thing it was in Alexander's time, the same thing as clashes that aren't between East and West are about, the same thing war is always about, at its core -- grabbing the other guy's stuff/keeping the other guy from grabbing yours.
I won't use this as an opportunity to have a pop at Manfredi. I will say, however, and as I have said just about every time I've mentioned him (in the interests of fairness), that it could be the translator's fault as much as Manfredi's own. Suffice it to say that I haven't wasted my time with any other of Manfredi's books.dean wrote: Same with Manfredi- who has taken about as much flack as Oliver Stone(who should have stuck to Vietnam) Manfredi in my opinion is not the greatest writer in the world- but "Alexandros" was to me not a terrible attempt(I can hear many of you saying "oh my God" what is he on.. ) at penning a story about Alexander. It takes you through the events of Alexander's life and mentions most of the stuff that happened- it is OK. But Manfredi is another writer who seems to have hit lucky once and now is spitting out boring and uninspiring "historical" novels every other month about Roman legions getting lost in the desert, all with questionable academic criteria
I will though. What a load of arrant nonsense. One would have thought an "academic" would have known better. I struggled to find a coherent, historically accurate theme behind his "novels".marcus wrote:I won't use this as an opportunity to have a pop at Manfredi.
