AtDDtA(16): An Unavoidable Military Element

[Dave Monroe]

   "'Among historians you'll find a theory that crusades began as holy
pilgrimages [...].
   "'But introduce to your sacred project the element of weaponry and
everything changes. [...]'
   "'We must therefore not exclude from this search for Shambhala an
unavoidable military element.  All the Powers have a lively interest.
The stakes are too high.'" (AtD, Pt. III, pp. 436-7)


"Among historians ..."

http://crusades.org/
http://crusades.boisestate.edu/
http://www.medievalcrusades.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook1k.html
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04543c.htm
http://www.bartleby.com/65/cr/Crusades.html
http://www.the-orb.net/encyclop/religion/crusades/crusade.html
http://www.the-orb.net/encyclop/religion/crusades/crusade_intro.html


"a series of stations"

http://www.usccb.org/nab/stations.htm
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15569a.htm
http://www.catholic.org/clife/prayers/station.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stations_of_the_Cross


"diagrams of which"

http://crusades.boisestate.edu/pics/maps/
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbookmap.html
http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/worldreach/assets/docs/crusades/Maps.html


"the first known maps"

The science and art of map-making is cartography; see that page for
further discussion of the history of maps and map-making. Map-making
dates back to the Stone Age and appears to predate written language by
several millennia. One of the oldest surviving maps is painted on a
wall of the Catal Huyuk settlement in south-central Anatolia (now
Turkey); it dates from about 6200 BC....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map

The oldest known maps are preserved on Babylonian clay tablets from
about 2300 B.C. Cartography was considerably advanced in ancient
Greece. The concept of a spherical Earth was well known among Greek
philosophers by the time of Aristotle (ca. 350 B.C.) and has been
accepted by all geographers since. Greek and Roman cartography reached
a culmination with Claudius Ptolemaeus (Ptolemy, about A.D. 85-165).
His "world map" depicted the Old World from about 60°N to 30°S
latitudes. He wrote a monumental work, Guide to Geography (Geographike
hyphygesis), which remained an authorative reference on world
geography until the Renaissance.

http://academic.emporia.edu/aberjame/map/h_map/h_map.htm

None of Ptolemy's maps has survived the classical period. They were,
however, reconstructed in manuscript and engraved on copper or carved
in wood for editions of the Ptolemy atlas. In 1482, the first woodcut
edition, containing the first map of the world to include contemporary
discoveries, was published in Ulm, Germany. It contains a brightly
handcolored map of the Holy Land....

Allusion to the Map/Territory relation—the relationship between symbol
and object. Coined by Alfred Korzybski, "The map is not the territory"
is a related expression meaning that an abstraction derived from
something, or a reaction to it, is not the thing itself, e.g., the
pain from a stone falling on your foot is not the stone; one's opinion
of a politician, favorable or unfavorable, is not that person; a
metaphorical representation of a concept is not the concept itself;
and so on. [Here, the (abstract) map itself could be a guide to a
spritual quest or to conquest.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_429-459#Page_436


"All the Powers have a lively interest.  The stakes are too high"

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/war-list.htm
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstatx.htm
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook4.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20th_century#Wars_and_politics

Cf. ...

http://www.mnf-iraq.com/
http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Iraq
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq