Prince and Pauper

[Monte Davis]

David Casseres wrote:
 
>Stone quoted Kipling:

> When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains/ And the women come
out
> to cut up what remains,/ Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains/

> An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
 
> It left an impression on me.
 
I know what you mean, but this connects to what's been a hobbyhorse of mine
since reading John Keegan's A History of Warfare about the same time I saw
"Gladiator," with its opening sequence of the Roman legion vs. the Teutons.
Remember who won that one?
 
As Keegan notes, the Greek phalanx -- more specifically, the social/cultural
"invention" of drill and discipline and combined arms behind it -- created
an unprecedented killing machine. And ever since then, the poor regimented
shlubs in the gray faceless ranks have looked out at the howling barbarian
tribesmen and thought "Gosh, those are REAL warriors"... and then, by and
large, proceeded to hand the barbarians their asses. Yes, there's the
occasional Teutoberger Wald or Isandlwana or Little Big Horn -- but we
remember them precisely as exceptions to the rule. Oh, dem fierce implacable
Pashtun fighters in dem mountain fastnesses! But hey, there's a *reason*
they're in the mountain fastnesses: namely, that they got pushed out of the
kinder, more productive lowlands by other, less thrillingly tribal -- but
victorious -- cultures.
 
I think the "fierce Afghani [Lakota, whatever] women" meme is an extension
of this (in Kipling's case, with an extra frisson because the ladies at home
were defined as so "delicate."). We first-world post-industrialites seem to
like to forget just how badass we are, and project ferocity onto peoples
who'd need a millennium to rack up the body count of a Verdun or a
Stalingrad. I suspect it makes little difference to the victim whether
dismemberment is accomplished at long range by a shell fragment or up close
and personal by a picturesque dagger.
 

Monte Davis 
monte.davis at verizon.net 
http://montedavis.livejournal.com/ 

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