On the banks of a frozen river, the Imperials prepare to do battle with the Rogaviki whose territories they have invaded and attempted to conquer:
"[Cannon] would grow hot today, hurling stones into live bodies." (p. 174)
Those five words, "...hurling stones into live bodies...," summarize everything that I oppose in military imperialism. I would not hurl stones into the live body of my worst enemy, let alone into the bodies of a host of strangers doing nothing more offensive than defending their homeland. I know that this has been going on from time immemorial and that there are economic and geopolitical reasons why it still goes on. However, we, individually and collectively, are capable of choosing our way forward and many people do actively oppose the continued use of military force in international affairs especially since no war ever does end wars. We have customs and institutions within which it is simply unthinkable to settle our differences by hurling stones into each other so it must be possible to extend that ethos until everyone asks why violence was ever used in the first place. Surely the Rahihidians could offer peaceful trade and cultural exchange to the Rogaviki? Just try to do things differently for once in history especially if there is some evidence that the Ice was caused by a previous global conflict.
17 comments:
But you're OK with the -defenders- hurling stones into live bodies? 8-).
Well, no, I'm not. Can there be defence systems that merely repel invaders without blowing them up?
Kaor, Paul!
No, there cannot be. Wars, by definition, are destructive.
Ad astra! Sean
Paul: not unless the invaders are from the Paleolithic!
War is essentially a battle of wills; victory depends on breaking their will before they break yours.
Breaking the other side's will, unless they're -extremely- faint-hearted, requires wholesale killing and destruction. Nothing else works, which is why easy victories tend not to 'stick'.
Example: Hannibal beat the Roman army at Cannae, and killed 50,000 Roman soldiers in a single day -- out of a citizen population of about 4 million; the equivalent in contemporary UK terms of killing 750,000 or so men in a single day.
The Romans didn't even -consider- giving up, even though they could probably have gotten terms that left them independent.
Note that that was the latest in a -series- of Hannibalic/Carthaginian victories, so the total Roman losses in the 18 months preceeding that were twice as large.
And the Carthaginians, on the other side, eventually fought literally to the death -- the Romans had to tear down their city around their ears and kill nearly all of them. Certainly most of the adult males, and a lot of the women killed their children and then themselves.
Or as the poet put it:
"What though the day be lost?
All is not lost:
Deathless hate, and study of revenge,
Courage never to submit or yield..."
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Absolutely! Victory in war goes to not only the strongest combatant but also to the one who is the most determined to win.
No matter how fanatically ferocious the Rogaviki were, they were being ground down by the superior tactics, organization, and discipline of Sidir's army. Only intervention by Killimaraich saved them.
I think the Rogaviki are doomed, long term. Genetically hard wired as they were to living only a certain way within a fairly narrow territory makes them less and less able to adapt to a world recovering from the Ice Age. They face pressure and competition not only from the southwest, the Rahidian Empire, but also, eventually, from the east, as the lands between the east coast of Andalin and the Rogaviki held territories east of the Jugular are resettled.
One idea I had is that Sidir could have focused on founding Rahidian settlements on the east coast, with the expectation of them eventually expanding westward. Land hunger will drive settlers onward, to eventually clash with the Rogaviki.
Ad astra! Sean
My problem is that I see the Imperial soldiers as victims. They have been conned into thinking that soldiering is an honourable profession. They are not the real enemy but that point has to be made over time and cannot be made in the heat of battle.
"Deathless hate" turns me off big time.
Kaor, Paul!
Illogical, it's not a con if Sidir's soldiers also believe in the rightness of their cause as the Captain General.
Unfortunately, "deathless hate" is a real phenomenon, as the explosion of antisemitism seen since 10/7 makes glaringly plain!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
The opposition to Israeli's actions is not primarily anti-semitic.
The rightness of conquest?
Paul.
Paul: well, one of my brothers volunteered for Vietnam, my father fought in WW2, my grandfather fought in WW1, his father fought under Kitchener in the Sudan and Boer Wars, -his- father in the Second Afghan and/or Zulu Wars (we're not sure which), and I know that at least one Stirling was in the RN during the French wars of 1793-1814.
Their motivations generally speaking could be summed up as: "My tribe good, because it's mine. Your tribe stinks, because it isn't. Sod you and all your relations. Oh, and plunder is good, too."
Honestly, I can't think of any better reasons to fight. My ancestors were sometimes attacking, sometimes defending, sometimes both, but the above always applied.
An interesting record. Not sure if I should call it "impressive"!
Of my Irish relatives, one joined the IRA after the Easter Rising and another fought for Franco in the Spanish Civil War. During WWII, my father was a mining engineer, therefore exempt from conscription. He was in the Home Guard and laughed his head off at a 1960s BBC TV comedy, "Dad's Army," about the Home Guard. He said that, allowing for comedic exaggeration, it was fully authentic to the period, including the spiv who could get anyone anything on the black market. The Home Guard and the ARP (Air Raid Precautions) crew bothered the vicar and the verger by clashing over which of them had booked the church hall on any given evening.
Two downed German pilots, conversing with subtitles, commented that they had not been captured yet because of British incompetence.
At the end of an episode, the "Dad's Army" cast, still in costume/uniform, stopped their comedy performance and drank a toast "to the Home Guard!"
kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: I disagree, those sickening anti-Israel "demonstrations" stinks of Jew hating. Israel has every right to destroy Hamas.
Yes, the British were so incompetent they somehow managed to help win WW II !
Mr. Stirling: I agree, the reasons why "tribes" fight so willingly so often are as good as anything else I've seen.
And as late as the sack of the Summer Palace at Peking in 1861, the allied French and British were unabashed about plundering that complex of palaces!
Looting was one thing, because furnishings and works of art could be replaced. What really bothered me was Lord Elgin ordering the destruction of the Yuan-Ming-Yuan, an architectural complex of rare beauty which had taken 150 years to construct. Destroyed, it was gone forever.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I disagree. I have been on many of those demonstrations and will be on one today. They are not sickening and do not stink of anything. You are simply denying the basic fact that many people who are not anti-semitic do oppose the death and destruction perpetrated by Israel against an entire population. Israel has no right even to exist as a colonial settler state that drove Palestinians from their land. It clearly cannot destroy Hamas and is attacking Palestinians as such in Gaza and the West Bank. Mass graves, containing bodies with signs of torture, have been found in Gazan hospitals that were attacked by the IDF.
pAUL.
Kaor, Paul!
Then we cannot agree about Israel and the Hamas criminals, who were the ones starting the war.
Disagree, thugs like Hamas can be wiped out if bunglers like "Josip" don't force Israel to let them slink away to rebuild and plot more atrocities.
And many so-called "anti-Zionists" are Jew haters.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Many anti-Zionists (not "so-called," no sneer quotes needed) are Jews, including some rabbis!
Hamas did not start this war. Yes, they broke out of Gaza and killed and kidnapped a lot of people because the Israelis were isolating and besieging Gaza in the first place.
This "bungler Josip" refrain is nonsense. Hamas cannot be wiped out because they represent Palestinian resistance which will continue as long as Palestinians are dispossessed and oppressed as in Gaza and the West Bank right now. I do not support Hamas murdering or kidnapping anyone although I suspect that I will have to continue saying that repeatedly.
War crimes are being committed so the term "criminals" is more widely applicable than just to Hamas.
Paul.
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