Tag: war

On the placement of elephants

I’m always more than a little amused when people comment that I am wasting my time by posting about Game, or atheism, or [fill in subject of little interest to you]. The fact is that I probably spend more time on pressing things like playing Guitar Hero and wondering why a superlative general like Hannibal would have elected to place his elephants in the center at Zama when he had to know that his cavalry on the wings was outnumbered by the Italian and Numidian cavalries opposing them.

The Romans drew up their forces in three lines, creating an effective reserve in the rear. The maniples however stood in separate formations, not creating a continuous line. The gaps were loosely filled by the velites (skirmishers). The Roman left wing was made up of Italian allied cavalry, while the right wing consisted of the Numidian calvary of Massinissa.

Hannibal meanwhile also aligned his troops in three lines. His mercenaries took the front, the second line was formed by the Carthaginian forces and those of the Carthaginian territories (Liby-Phoenicians). Finally at the rear stood Hannibal’s most reliable troops, the veterans from the campaign in Italy. At the very front of the army Hannibal placed his elephant corps. On his left wing he had his Numidian cavalry and to the right stood the Carthaginian cavalry.

After some initial skirmishes between the cavalry units, the battle began with a charge of the Carthaginian war elephants. They were meant to cause confusion and terrify the enemy. But it was here that Scipio’s preparation in lining up his troops in separate maniples bore fruit. The velites in the gaps now engaged the elephants, drawing them up through the alleys between the main Roman units. Also Scipio had ordered for every trumpeter of the army to blow, creating a startling noise which terrified the nervous beasts. This Roman tactic was largely successful. Most of the elephants simply charged up the alleys between the units, others even turned and collided with their own cavalry. However some did indeed drive into the Roman ranks and caused considerable damage before escaping up the alleys.

Since horses tend to be more skittish than infantry, it seems to me that it would have been significantly more effective to divide the elephant corps in two and attempt to drive off at least one cavalry wing, following the elephant charge up with an immediate cavalry attack while the Roman wings were still in disarray. Sure, hindsight is 20/20, but the fact that Africanus had his troops drawn up in columns rather than lines should have been an obvious clue that he planned to permit the elephants to pass through the Roman center.

Anyhow, Ender and I have been playing Hannibal lately and it’s not just an excellent historical wargame, it’s an educational game that tends to inspire this sort of thinking. Now I’m going to have to break out a Zama game and see if I can game out what might have happened if Hannibal had used his elephants as a means of actively defending his wings instead of simply trying to smash the Roman center with them.

And the anomalies begin

May 2, 2011: “Bin Laden — given the code name “Geronimo” by US officials — was found in the compound with one of his young wives, who identified him by name. According to White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, the woman died as she shielded bin Laden. Brennan said it was unclear whether she was attempting to protect the terrorist leader of her own free will, or whether he deliberately placed her in the line of fire. However, defense officials have confirmed that women were deliberately used as human shields to protect the compound’s male inhabitants.”

May 3, 2011: “A woman killed during the raid of Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan was not his wife and was not used as a human shield by the al Qaeda leader before his death, a U.S. official said on Monday, correcting an earlier description. John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s top counter- terrorism adviser, told reporters earlier that the slain woman had been one of bin Laden’s wives and had been used — perhaps voluntarily — as a shield during the firefight. However, a different White House official said that account had turned out not to be the case. Bin Laden’s wife was injured but not killed in the assault.”

There would appear to be one piece of the ID evidence gone, along with the body. If she wasn’t his wife and she wasn’t killed while shielding him, we have to assume that she also did not identify him. This leaves DNA and photos, although the DNA evidence may be less conclusive than would be desirable.

I think the best evidence that those of us on the outside have is that the USA was willing to violate Pakistani sovereignty in order to take out the target. I have no doubt that the White House genuinely believed it was Osama in the compound or that they killed someone there, the question is whether they were correct or not. And so far, the evidence they have offered is far from convincing, especially since we know they have the entire thing on video. If the post-mortem pictures are too gruesome to be released, then why not release several stills from the video before he was shot along with a statement from his surviving wife?

UPDATE: The Official Story continues to evolve: “The White House backed away Monday evening from key details in its narrative about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, including claims by senior U.S. officials that the Al Qaeda leader had a weapon and may have fired it during a gun battle with U.S. forces. Officials also retreated from claims that one of bin Laden’s wives was killed in the raid and that bin Laden was using her as a human shield before she was shot by U.S. forces.”

So no body, no photos, no witnesses, and the story is changing despite the report that the White House officials watched the entire raid on video. Conclusion: the tale of bin Laden’s demise is possibly – though not necessarily – a fiction. That someone was killed at the compound by the Navy Seals is not in doubt, only the question of whom. And if it was someone other than bin Laden, one can only hope that the graphic artists at the White House now busily engaged in photoshopping the corpse images are more competent than those who produced the forged birth certificate.

UPDATE II: Good news! The first White House photoshopper appears to be finished with his image of Obama’s demise. Warning, it is very disturbing.

A belated TIA correction

In the chapter entitled “Sam Tzu and the Art of War”, I commented that the major military strategists were, with the sole exception of the incompetent Machiavelli, silent on the subject of religion in war. As it happens, that is not entirely true. Over the last two weeks I have been reading a history written by one of the foremost theoreticians of naval warfare, and in doing so came across the following passage in A.T. Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783.

During the century before the Peace of Westphalia, the extension of family power, and the extension of the religion professed, were the two strongest motives of political action. This was the period of the great religious wars which arrayed nation against nation, principality against principality, and often, in the same nation, faction against faction. Religious persecution caused the revolt of the Protestant Dutch Provinces against Spain, which issued, after eighty years of more or less constant war, in the recognition of their independence. Religious discord, amounting to civil war at times, distracted France during the greater part of the same period, profoundly affecting not only her internal but her external policy. These were the days of St. Bartholomew, of the religious murder of Henry IV., of the siege of La Rochelle, of constant intriguing between Roman Catholic Spain and Roman Catholic Frenchmen. As the religious motive, acting in a sphere to which it did not naturally belong, and in which it had no rightful place, died away, the political necessities and interests of States began to have juster weight; not that they had been wholly lost sight of in the mean time, but the religious animosities had either blinded the eyes, or fettered the action, of statesmen. It was natural that in France, one of the greatest sufferers from religious passions, owing to the number and character of the Protestant minority, this reaction should first and most markedly be seen.

It is hardly news that religion was one of the causes of the Thirty Years War, as it is one of the very small minority of religious wars registered in the historical record, and indeed, is generally the second piece of evidence provided in support of the atheist claim that religion causes war. But while Mahan doesn’t contradict my argument that religion is of no significant strategic or tactical utility in warfare, he does make an interesting point about how religion neither naturally belongs nor has a rightful place in the area of foreign policy.

Now, I would argue that events have shown that Mahan is mistaken about religion not having any place in foreign policy considering the obvious inability to draw a bright line between Islamic religion and Islamic politics; the two are one and the same and as the West is once more learning, one ignores the theology of a religion of the sword at one’s distinct peril. Even so, it is worth noting that on one of the very rare occasions when a military strategist has been moved to comment upon religion, he has done so in a manner that indicates religion is very seldom connected with warfare in any capacity, causal, strategic, or tactical.

Ironically, one of the two men he credits with bringing an end to this unusual period of religious warfare was not only a Christian, but a prince of the Church as well. Mahan credits King Henry IV and Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu with creating a tradition of French statesmanship that reduced religious strife in the name of state unity. Whether this was ultimately to the advantage of the French people or the continent of Europe that eventually lay prostrate under Napoleon’s legions is, of course, entirely debatable.

New wars, old strategies

Admiral Mahan on the best use of “the fleet in being”:

For the reasons that have been given, the safest, though not the most effective, disposition of an inferior “fleet in being” is to lock it up in an impregnable port or ports, imposing upon the enemy the intense and continuous strain of watchfulness against escape. This it was that Torrington, the author of the phrase, proposed for the time to do. Thus it was that Napoleon, to some extent before Trafalgar, but afterward with set and exclusive purpose, used the French Navy, which he was continually augmenting, and yet never, to the end of his reign, permitted again to undertake any serious expedition. The mere maintenance of several formidable detachments, in apparent readiness, from the Scheldt round to Toulon, presented to the British so many possibilities of mischief that they were compelled to keep constantly before each of the French ports a force superior to that within, entailing an expense and an anxiety by which the Emperor hoped to exhaust their endurance.
– Mahan, Lessons of the War with Spain

This strategy of “the fleet in being” is very similar to the strategy that has been utilized by the global jihad for the last decade. Since the danger posed by its “army in being” is most threatening so long as it remains largely hypothetical, there is little advantage for the jihad in directly engaging Western forces. It’s far more effective to stretch out the Western militaries then bleed them in as many different locations as possible. The Western divisions are like battleships, capable of crushing the mobile torpedo boats of the enemy any time they can bring them to bear, but seldom presented with the opportunity of doing so. It is the most sophisticated expression yet of what VDH describes as the Eastern way of war.

Due to the geographical extent of the conflict and the extremely limited amount of information involved, the ongoing war between the Islamic jihad and the nations of the West is strategically more akin to naval war taking place in the Age of Sail or the Age of Steam than any ground war from any period in history.

Mahan notes “it is evident that the active use of a “fleet in being,” however perplexing to the enemy, must be both anxious and precarious to its own commander. The contest is one of strategic wits”. Therefore, to defeat the jihad, contain its expansion, and return the Dar al-Islam to its previously quiescent state, it will be necessary to force it to reveal its forces and put them in the field. How this can best be done is a matter for strategic and tactical consideration, but it seems obvious that it cannot happen so long as an official policy of secular tolerance is in place throughout the West. And, of course, one is hesitant to have much confidence in a contest of strategic wits with the likes of CINC Obama and General Petraeus providing what passes for the wits.

In other words, this means that widespread ethnic and religious violence is almost certainly inevitable in the intermediate future. The recent ban of the burqah in France and the law against future minaret construction in Switzerland may be the first indications of an eventual European Reconquesta. Unfortunately, at this point, the two most probable outcomes would appear to be either a) secular submission to Islam or b) ethnic cleansing on a scale dwarfing that of any previously known to history. Both appear unthinkable now, and yet it is not difficult to see that the demographics dictate that one or the other will eventually come about. Either way, the multiculturalists and immigrationists are almost certain to be burdened with a historical legacy so terrible as to make the likes of Viktor Quisling and Neville Chamberlain appear national heroes by comparison.

Eager to reach the wrong conclusion

Newsflash: men trained, equipped, and paid to break things and kill people not infrequently do bad things. However, it is educational to see the way the documentary evidence is used in an attempt to support the precise opposite of what it suggests:

The material that historian Sönke Neitzel uncovered in British and American archives is nothing short of sensational. While researching the submarine war in the Atlantic in 2001, he discovered the transcripts of covertly recorded conversations between German officers in which they talked about their wartime experiences with an unprecedented degree of openness. The deeper Neitzel dug into the archives, the more material he found. In the end, he and social psychologist Harald Welzer analyzed a total of 150,000 pages of source material….

The Holocaust is generally mentioned peripherally in the conversations between German soldiers that have now been viewed in their entirety for the first time. It is only mentioned on about 300 pages of the transcripts, which, given the monstrosity of the events, seems to be a very small number. One explanation could be that not many soldiers knew about what was happening behind the front. Another, much more likely interpretation would be that the systematic extermination of the Jews did not play a significant role in the conversations between cellmates because it had little news value.

A much more likely? interpretation? That is a completely absurd and illogical conclusion. The fact that the Holocaust is only mentioned on 300 of the 150,000 pages is actually conclusive evidence that relatively few Wehrmacht soldiers knew much about the Final Solution, unless the author, Jan Fleischhauer, seriously wants to try to claim that the exhaustive references to the sexual availability of women in the interview documents were of substantive news value.

But of course, “one-fifth of one percent of the Wehrmacht knew” is a just slightly less dramatic and excitingly revisionist than “the Wehrmacht knew”.

Now this is amusing

It will be interesting to see how the rabid neocons, who have never heard of a military intervention they didn’t see as an urgent matter of U.S. national security, react to this call for a no-fly zone:

Arab League chief Amr Mussa said on Sunday the organisation will ask the UN Security Council to impose a no-fly zone over Gaza, which Israel has pounded with air strikes in response to rocket fire. Mussa told an emergency meeting of Arab League ambassadors that “the Arab bloc in the United Nations has been directed to ask for the convention of the Security Council to stop the Israeli aggression on Gaza and impose a no-fly zone.”

I somehow suspect that those who have so vehemently demanded no-fly zones over Serbia, Iraq, and Libya will be a little less enthusiastic about shooting down Israeli planes. But given the way they used the United Nations to justify the military interventions they supported in the past, they’ll have little grounds for arguing against this one now that the UN has declared that the Palestinian institutions are ready for statehood.

Losing to Libya

Perhaps the sordid conclusion of this military adventure will finally begin to convince conservative supporters of the neocon’s democracy crusade that half-hearted attacks, invasions, and occupations are a way to weaken the military and increase the risk to American national security, not strengthen either:

Libyan rebels said on Friday they had repulsed a government assault on the besieged western city of Misrata but prospects faded that Muammar Gaddafi would be ousted by the armed revolt.

NATO leaders acknowledged the limits of their air power, which has caused rather than broken a military stalemate, and analysts predicted a long-drawn out conflict that could end in the partition of the North African oil producer.

Alliance officials expressed frustration that Gaddafi’s tactics of sheltering his armor in civilian areas had reduced the impact of air supremacy and apologized for a “friendly fire” incident on Thursday that rebels said killed five fighters.

Ah yes, if only the enemy would fight the way we would like them to fight, then we would win easily, just like the clowns in uniform drew it up. The USA lost in Somalia. It’s losing in Libya… and Libya lost to Chad! It’s probably time to hang up the “only world superpower” and “global policeman” titles and consider seeing if the military is still even capable of stopping the ongoing invasion of the southern border.

Sooner or later

It doesn’t matter when the “transition” takes place. As happened with the Soviet withdrawal, once American combat forces are withdrawn, whenever they are withdrawn, the puppet regime forcibly installed by it will fall:

On Wednesday, Pres. Barack Obama held a video conference with Afghan president Hamid Karzai and welcomed the Afghan leader’s announcement of the first seven areas to transition to Afghan forces this July. The White House hopes that a smooth transition will help them to begin drawing down American forces this summer and end the foreign combat mission in the country by 2014.

Alas, this is wishful thinking. The troop withdrawal begins at a time when security in Afghanistan is worse than it has been in nine years. The Taliban are resurgent and have stepped up attacks as part of their spring offensive. On March 29, insurgents captured a district in eastern Nuristan Province, an area U.S. troops are turning over to the Afghan authorities. “The white flag of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is flying over the Want district center, while some policemen of the puppet administration flee toward the provincial capital after slight resistance,” boasted Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid.

Even more worrying, al-Qaeda is making a comeback in areas recently vacated by the coalition forces.

It’s not only those who don’t know history, but those who refuse to acknowledge its lessons, who are doomed to repeat it.

Solipsism as national security

Kathleen Parker offers further evidence in support of the dire need to end women’s suffrage:

Women, and by extension children, suffer what too many have come to accept as “collateral damage” in theaters of war. We hate it, of course, but what can one do? It isn’t in our strategic interest to save the women and children of the world. Or, as an anonymous senior White House official recently told The Post:

“Gender issues are going to have to take a back seat to other priorities. There’s no way we can be successful if we maintain every special interest and pet project. All those pet rocks in our rucksack were taking us down.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, no stranger to the importance of advancing women’s rights, promptly repudiated the comment. Even so, the anonymous spokesman’s opinion, though inartfully expressed, is hardly isolated.

But what if this is a false premise? What if saving women from cultures that treat them as chattel was in our strategic and not just moral interest? What if helping women become equal members of a society was the most reliable route to our own security?

The problem, of course, is that it is not. Parker might as reasonably have asked what if buying women rainbow-striped unicorns was in our strategic interest or if buying vibrators for Libyan women was the most reliable route to American national security. I would very much like to know who actually pays this woman for her opinion, as I’m quite confident that one could find a Labrador puppy whose columns would be a) more intelligent, b) more interesting, and c) less expensive than the gynocentric drivel Parker has on offer.

Granted, every column would concern how it is a vital national interest to feed Labradors more raw meat, or alternatively, how it is a national disgrace that Labradors are only fed 60 percent of the amount of raw meat given to Rottweilers, but how is that substantially different from what most female op/ed writers produce anyhow?

Does this moronic female seriously wish to argue that women and children suffer more than men do in times of war? They may suffer more of the collateral damage, but only because the whole purpose of the intentional damage is to kill the enemy men. How many women and children died at Salamanca or Gettysburg? The last time I read something this stupidly myopic, it was an old joke about the New York Times: “Asteroid to end all life on Earth, women, blacks to suffer most.”

But even worse than the total ignorance of military history is the idea that equality, at home or abroad, is in the American national interest. America has been lethally weakened by the equalitarian dogma; there would be no need for the 30 million immigrants that are presently dismantling the social fabric if 30 million American children murdered by their mothers had lived. “Saving” women by enforcing Western equalitarian dogma is not only not in our strategic interest, it quite clearly isn’t in our moral interest either.

Women may not be pet rocks, but Kathleen Parker is clearly less intelligent than a box of them.

Two birds, one stone

Frankly, I don’t see much downside to the equation that many in the media are suggesting. If each religious book burned results in 20 dead United Nations bureaucrats, where exactly is the net loss to American interests? And I’m not sure which is more amusing, the Democrats who are attempting to claim that it is a totally legal book burning that has a direct causal relationship to lethal Islamic riots a world away while the bombing of a Muslim country cannot possibly be to blame, or the Republicans who are loathe to actually come out directly against a man’s right to burn his own book while trying to make sure that everyone understands they think the book-burning is “ill-judged” and “unhelpful”.

Unhelpful to what? Maintaining a pair of long, expensive, unconstitutional, and strategically stupid military occupations? Continuing mass migration from third world hellholes? And as for General Petraeus, his comments make it clear that he is a politically correct coward and a certain war loser.

Following Sunday’s meeting with Gen. Petraeus and the ambassadors, Mr. Karzai requested in a new statement that “the U.S. government, Senate and Congress clearly condemn [Rev. Jones’] dire action and avoid such incidents in the future.” Mr. Karzai issued this demand even though President Barack Obama has already described the Quran burning as “an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry”—adding that “to attack and kill innocent people in response is outrageous, and an affront to human decency and dignity.”

I’d have more confidence in the U.S. military effort if Rev. Jones was leading it. Any statement that falls short of the following by any American leader is an indication that the speaker is completely unfit for office.

“Rev. Jones, like any American, is free to dispose of his own property in any manner that happens to please him. This is not a matter of any concern whatsoever to the United States government.”