Serendipitously, a link to
this news article by Steven Pressfield arrived in my mailbox this afternoon. He has a new Alexander book coming out,
The Afghan Campaign: A novel. Hmm, not sure why the title needs to be qualified in such a manner. Either Pressfield or his publishers must think the book could be mistaken for a historical tome if they didnGÇÖt clearly indicate that it was a novel. Perhaps they anticipated crowds of enraged classicists demonstrating in the bookstores and demanding refunds? Curiouser and curiouser . . .
Anyway, if youGÇÖre wondering why IGÇÖm mentioning the book on this thread (and IGÇÖm sure you are) itGÇÖs because PressfieldGÇÖs article is entitled
Tribalism is the real enemy in Iraq and includes his take on lessons we could learn from Alexander. Here, without commentary, are the relevant excerpts:
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.
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 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¥
The rest of the article is, as you can imagine, highly political - which is why I didnGÇÖt copy the whole thing here. And I realize that most of the last paragraph quoted isnGÇÖt relevant to Alexander, but I couldn't resist including it.
Best regards,
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