“And after that,” I said, “you put in your papers.”
Jimmy nodded.
“For the ATV/horse cavalry.”
Another nod.
Angel said, “I still don’t get why.”
I leaned forward in my chair. My arms on the armrests barely trembled. “It’s because it wasn’t a fair fight.”
Lyle grunted. “It wasn’t supposed to be.”
Jimmy raised his head and looked at me. “It’s not that.”
“Then what?” I asked.
Lyle laughed. “It’s because he wants the respect of that hick sheriff. Or his daughter.”
Jimmy rose from the floor. “I didn’t think you’d understand.” He looked at me. “Though I hoped you would.”
We locked eyes for a moment. Then he turned to go. When he got to the door, I blurted out. “Oh, Jesus. It’s Wild Bob’s respect you want.”
Angel scowled. “That hemorrhoid? What’s his respect worth?”
Jimmy paused with his hand over the doorplate. “What he believed in was all wrong and twisted,” he said. “But he was willing to die for it. If what we’re fighting for is right, shouldn’t we be willing to risk something besides equipment damage and feedback bruises?”
When he had gone, there was silence in the room. Lyle and Angel and I looked at one another. Finally, Angel said, “He’s nuts. You don’t fight snakes by wriggling in the dirt and trying to bite ’em first. That doesn’t make you brave, just stupid. You stand back and blow ’em away with a sweeper. Only one way to end this fighting: Stomp hard and stomp fast.”
Lyle shook his head and said, “He’ll get over it. It’s just syndrome.”
“Well,” said Angel, “he’ll find out there’s a hell of a difference between teep fighting and fighting in person.”
“Maybe,” I said, “he already found that out.”
* * *
That was the last I saw any of them until after the big offensive. Angel and I shared a platform at a bond rally, but that was near the end, when Angel was the Hero of Boise. We’d both heard how Lyle—and half his firebase—got scragged by the Sacramento car bomb and after the ceremonies we emptied a couple of Skull Mountains for him. That’s when Angel told me that Jimmy Topeka lost an arm in a firefight in the Bitterroots. He’s married now and living in the high country.
I managed to etch a half-dozen stories out of that one day’s bull session. “The Brothers.” “Rules of Engagement.” You’ve read them. They were compiled on ©-Net at
The funny thing—and it must be just a coincidence—is that ever since then my seizures haven’t bothered me so much.
Editor’s Introduction to:
WAR AND MIGRATION
by Martin van Creveld
Martin van Creveld is arguably the world’s most pre-eminent military historian. Here he presents us with an analysis of war and migration, and reaches the inevitable conclusion: war is often indistinguishable from migration, although sometimes it takes longer. The Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, himself an assimilated child of immigrants, says that migration without the intent of assimilation is invasion; an act of war.
It is often said that the United States is a nation of immigrants. This is true enough, but it is a nation created by “the Melting Pot”, by assimilated immigrants, who entered legally and came to be Americans, or at least were not openly opposed to the idea. As Bill Buckley said, one could study to become an American in a way that one could not become Swiss, or a Swede. Assimilation was not always easy, and for freed slaves it was difficult; but it was generally the goal. The story of America and migration is as old as America.
The more recent migrants do not all accept assimilation as a goal; they seek to preserve their diversity. E Pluribus Unum is not the goal of the Caliphate; open rejection of toleration without dhimmitude is proclaimed.
The United States faces numerous decisions about migration, immigration, and assimilation. Dr. Van Creveld gives us crucial information on the history of migration, from the times before the Trojan War to the present.
WAR AND MIGRATION
by Martin van Creveld
War and migration have always been closely related. The relationship was recorded as early as 1300 BC, when we are informed the Israelites followed Moses out of Egypt to embark upon the enterprise that ultimately led them to the Promised Land of Canaan. As you will no doubt recall, they promptly conquered it. And since that time, for over 3,315 years, the link between war and the large-scale movement of people from one place to another has never been broken. Yet despite the way these mass movements of peoples have had a profound effect on human history, there has never been a systematic effort to explore the ways in which the two great phenomena, war and migration, interact. This essay is a preliminary attempt to rectify the situation.
1. From the Exodus to the Great Trek
The Old Testament tells the famous story of the Israelites, which begins sometime around 1800 BC when Canaan was visited by famine. This caused the patriarch Jacob and his extended family to travel to Egypt, where they and their offspring were initially welcomed, but later enslaved.
Four centuries later, having multiplied considerably, a leader by the name of Moses arose. Under his divinely-inspired command, they left Egypt. After crossing the Red Sea, they marched into the Sinai Desert where God, who was waiting for them, gave them the Pentateuch. From the desert they proceeded, very slowly, to what is known today as the Kingdom of Jordan. It is said that Moses must have been the first general staff officer, for who else would have required forty years to cross what is actually a very small desert? And after finally arriving on the threshold of the holy land four decades later, he died. His successor Joshua, who subsequently proved to be a formidable military commander, buried Moses, then led the Israelites across the river and into Canaan proper. These intrepid immigrants swiftly conquered the land and settled it after killing or enslaving most of the inhabitants.
Whether or not the tale of the Conquest of Canaan is historical has been debated for generations. In particular, scholars have questioned whether the Israelites could realistically have fielded a 600,000-man army, not counting the women and children. Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, fancied himself a Biblical scholar and considered 6,000 to be a more acceptable figure. His view brought him into immediate conflict with Israel’s orthodox rabbis, who consider literally every word in the Old Testament to be Gospel truth.
But for our purposes, it does not really matter whether the story is historical or symbolic. Still less do the details concern us. What is important is that after all these years, this story of geographic relocation and conquest is still commemorated by all Jews around the world.
In other words, migration was war. In fact, insofar as ancient war frequently involved not only soldiers and armies, but entire nations who left their homeland “mit man und Ross und wagen” (with man and horse and wagon), as the Germans say, war was migration. The Exodus was far from the only episode of its kind. For example, the Dorians are believed to have entered Greece from the north in the years around 1100 BC. As with the Conquest of Canaan, the question of whether the Dorian migration really took place or not has been much disputed. Thucydides has the following to say about the topic in the introduction to his book on the Peloponnesian War:
The country now called Hellas had no settled population in ancient times; instead there was a series of migrations, as the various tribes, being under the constant pressure of invaders who were stronger than they were, were always prepared to abandon their own territory… In the belief that the day-to-day necessities of life could be secured just as well in one place as in another, they showed no reluctance in moving from their homes, and therefore built no cities of any size or strength, nor acquired any important resources. Where the soil was most fertile there were the most frequent changes of population, as in what is now called Thessaly, in Boeotia, in most of the Peloponnese (except Arcadia), and in others of t
he richest parts of Hellas. For in these fertile districts it was easier for individuals to secure greater powers than their neighbors: this led to disunity, which often caused the collapse of these states, which in any case were more likely than others to attract the attention of foreign invaders. It is interesting to observe that Attica, which, because of the poverty of her soil, was remarkably free from political disunity, has always been inhabited by the same race of people. Indeed, this is an important example of my theory that it was because of migrations that there was uneven development elsewhere; for when people were driven out from other parts of Greece by war or by disturbances, the most powerful of them took refuge in Athens, as being a stable society; they then became citizens, and soon made the city even more populous than it had been before, with the result that later Attica became too small for her inhabitants and colonies were sent forth to Ionia.
There are other examples besides the Israelites and the Dorians. The Etruscans migrated from Armenia to central Italy, around 850 BC according to a recent study. The Gaels launched numerous attacks on the Hellenistic kingdoms in the Balkans and Asia Minor in the third and second centuries BC, although they were ultimately repulsed. And in 58 BC, as Caesar tells us, the Helvetii wished to migrate from their homeland in southern Germany to southeastern Gaul and asked him, the newly-established pro-consul of Gaul, for permission to cross Roman-occupied territory on the way. After he refused to grant it, they fought him, were badly beaten, and were forced to turn back. That failed migration triggered a whole series of wars which ended in the Roman conquest of the entirety of Gaul within six years.
The nomadic Arabs who occupied much of the territory of the Byzantine Empire in the seventh and eighth centuries provide another informative example. So do the Magyars, whose original home was in the southern Ukraine and who reached what is Hungary today in the tenth century AD. Their westward migration was halted in 955, when they were defeated at the Battle of Lechfeld, near present-day Augsburg. The Mongol and Manchurian conquests of China (1205-79 and 1618-44 respectively) also led to large-scale migrations as various peoples retreated to the west, displacing other nations in turn.
The largest and most famous migratory episode, if that is the correct label for a process that stretched out over several centuries, was the so-called Völkerwanderung, “the migration of peoples.” It entirely transformed Europe from about the middle of the second century AD to the middle of the sixth century, destroying countless old polities and creating an equally large number of new ones. Driven out of the east by their more formidable neighbors, wave after wave of barbarian tribes crashed into Central and Western Europe. Some bypassed the Roman Empire to the north, whereas others crossed its frontiers and entered its territory to wage war on the inhabitants. The Saxons reached England, the Visigoths southwestern France, Spain and Portugal. The Vandals invaded North Africa, the Burgundians (whose original home was in Poland) traveled to the land that is now named after them, Burgundy. The Huns, whose original habitat was the Caucasus and Central Asia, traveled west, slaying and conquering everyone and everything on their way until a coalition of Romans and Visigoths finally stopped them at Chalon in 451. But the defeat of Attila did not by any means put an end to the series of migrations. The Huns were followed by the Lombards, the Lombards by the Bulgars, and between them they changed the maps, and the very placenames, of Europe.
All these migrating peoples, as well as many others that could be mentioned, were relatively simple tribal societies. In terms of organization, technology, material civilization, literature, the arts, and the like, they could not match the settled, more civilized, societies they encountered and often conquered. The book of Joshua describes Canaan as a land bristling with fortified cities, and yet they were quickly defeated by the nomadic Israelites. At a time when Roman power, encompassing practically all the lands around the Mediterranean, was approaching its zenith, Rome’s enemies in Germany and Gaul consisted of endlessly shifting tribes who lived in wooden huts. Four centuries later, the Germanic Visigoths sacked Rome.
The Huns, Ammianus Marcellinus says, were “a race savage beyond all parallel.” He describes them in distinctly unfavorable terms:
They are certainly in the shape of men, however uncouth, and are so hardy that they require neither fire nor well-flavored food, but live on the roots of such herbs as they get in the fields, or on the half-raw flesh of any animal, which they merely warm rapidly by placing it between their own thighs and the backs of their horses. They never shelter themselves under roofed houses… Nor is there even to be found among them a cabin thatched with reeds; but they wander about, roaming over the mountains and the woods, and accustom themselves to bear frost and hunger and thirst from their very cradles….
The anonymous Roman author of de rebus bellicis, writing early in the fifth century AD, speaks of other migratory tribes as “baying barbarians.” Baying may have been all these barbarians were capable of, but they did so with sword in hand. Although the process might take time, such as the 514 years that separated the Cimbrian War from the Sack of Rome, very often the barbarians eventually managed to defeat their more developed opponents and take over their lands. There are two cardinal factors that explain the frequent victory of the simple and less civilized migrants over their more sophisticated stationary opponents. First, while the settled societies enjoyed technological superiority in terms of joules of energy available per capita, the primary sources of mechanical energy were stationary devices such as windmills and water-mills. When it came to war and battle, which are intrinsically mobile, both the civilized soldiers and their barbarian enemies depended entirely upon the muscles of men and beasts. As a result, most of the technological advantage enjoyed by the civilized societies was irrelevant because it could not be brought to bear on the battlefield.
Second, the migrations were usually long, drawn-out processes. Though armed invasions and battles were frequent, there were also long periods of peace. Therefore, there was plenty of time for both sides to take each other’s measure and to learn from each other. Renegades and captives taken in war often played a large role. This exchange of information almost invariably worked to the benefit of the less civilized parties. For example, the Mongol armies which conquered China and came close to overrunning Europe in the mid-thirteenth century included many specialists who utilized technologies learned from the Chinese, including various types of siege engines. Two hundred years later, the Ottoman Turks did the same in their westward drive towards Constantinople and beyond.
The migratory phenomenon was not solely a Eurasian one. Africa also abounds with stories of armed migrations, some historical, others mythological. 3,000 years are said to have passed since the Bantu tribes began expanding out of their original homelands in what are today Cameroon and Nigeria, and now they can be found all over the central and southern parts of the continent. The Zulu established KwaZulu-Natal, in South Africa, after migrating southward along Africa’s east coast. Many of these migrations bear strong resemblances to the Exodus described in the Pentateuch. In every case, the movement was said to have been initiated by one or more gods. On their way, the migrants witnessed many different miracles which confirmed that they were, in fact, doing the right thing. One of the best-known African migration tales is that of the Ashanti, a martial tribe that migrated westward from Ghana into the Ivory Coast, who on their way received Sika ’dwa, the Golden Stool, a royal and divine throne believed to house the spirit of the Ashanti people.
One of the last, and most peculiar, African migrations was the Great Trek of the Boers. The Boers were European settlers, of Dutch and Huguenot descent, who left Cape Province in order to remain independent in the face of a growing British presence there. The Trek lasted from 1835 to 1846 and was unusual in the sense that the Boers set out to settle in lands inhabited by less civilized and less technologically advanced “kaffirs,” mostly Bantu and Hottentot tribes, thus reversing the usual pattern of migratory conflict. But like their less-civilized anteced
ents, the Boers never hesitated to use their superior arms against anyone who stood in their way. The Trek also resembled other previous migrations in the sense that the migrants were strict Calvinists who believed they acted under divine guidance. Visiting the region around Pretoria back in late 1994, I saw the famous monument to the Voortrekkers. It must be said, to the credit of the African National Congress who took over South Africa after apartheid, the region’s new rulers have not demolished it. Yet.
So migration was war and war was migration. Aside from relatively equal situations in Africa and North America when tribal societies fought each other, militarized migrations were chiefly a matter of less developed mobile societies attacking more developed, settled civilizations. That likely explains why, in the more technologically advanced parts of the world, migration-wars came to an end in the fifteenth century. As the history of the American West illustrates, once tribal warriors were able to lay their hands on modern weapons—particularly firearms—they quickly learned to use them just as well as their opponents. But what they could not do was produce the weapons and required ammunition for themselves. The development of firearms was a decisive shift in the balance of power towards more technologically advanced societies, particularly those of the West. How long this advantage will last is an open question, but there are indications that it is already on the wane.
2. Ethnic Cleansing
There Will Be War Volume X Page 13
