tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6232762280990514471.post5665521454747717199..comments2024-01-28T11:57:48.954-06:00Comments on the rocky headland: Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power by Victor Davis Hansonrockyrookhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04244111671544689660noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6232762280990514471.post-18434703959160893512016-08-06T18:00:47.408-05:002016-08-06T18:00:47.408-05:00Coonass, I respectfully disagree with your example...Coonass, I respectfully disagree with your example of the Athenian Expedition to Sicily and why that example does not illustrate Hanson's primary thesis that the West has a unique "way of war" that devastates and dominates armies influenced in any other way. Hanson demonstrates the unique lethality of western armies clashing with eastern. In the debacle that was Sicily, we have two WESTERN societies clashing in a particularly brutal way. Sicily demonstrates Hanson's other premise which is what you have in Sicily: When two western powers clash, the result is devastatingly and uniquely bloody and conclusive. While Gylippus and Hermocrates clashed with Nicias, et al. we must remember that BOTH sides employed the western way of war. The Athenian Expedition, while historically compelling, does not illustrate Hanson's primary thesis.Wyrmtonguehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01173316760796277249noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6232762280990514471.post-59281208734735904222016-02-25T14:29:10.115-06:002016-02-25T14:29:10.115-06:00While I didn't agree entirely with some of Han...While I didn't agree entirely with some of Hanson's analyses (he didn't devote a badly-needed chapter to Athens' disastrous military adventure in Sicily, and the Spartan general Gylippus' turning that campaign around by imposing Spartan organization, tactics and discipline on the men of Syracuse), it's still a valuable book I wish that the current Presidential candidates and their military policy advisors would read. None of them seems to have done that; the Republicans who even have an explicit military policy seem to want to dust the Bush defense program off, while Trump, Clinton and Sanders either have no defense policy worth describing or are afraid to share it. We need to look at the advantages we have as the world leaders of engineering and advanced physics, with a military full of men and women who have studied tactics, defense technology and strategy in an open, mostly collegial environment lacking among our main adversaries. We need to fight to the strengths Hanson illustrates in Carnage and Culture. coonasshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10273351431957858900noreply@blogger.com