Onasander

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4663172,00.html

This would be impossible, as Turkey would likely force a political fissure throughout NATO, and could very well lead to an exit. Obama isn't exactly on good terms with Erdogan in Turkey, or Netanyahu in Israel, and if Turkey turns on us, we lose a vital resupply route into Iraq, not to mention the Peshmerga would begin to faulted. Turkey is more opposed to Assad than to ISIS. It appears, at least Biden and Kerry within the Obama administration thinks so, that they were early funders and coordinators for ISIS. They have been remarkably slow to react to them at the very least. And it would take more than one alchemist. Several hundred. Luckily, our secret service isn't just a political protection force, but also (for whatever quirky historical reasons I won't go into) a anti- counterfeiting taskforce within the treasury department. They keep every note and coin they have found since the civil war that has been faked, and has extensive bios on the best past counterfeiters out there, as well as background understandings of just how their operations work. In a sense, we have several hundred alchemists on file, and can pick and choose as we see fit and vary the techniques as ISIS moves to adapt, much like the Borg. I recommend personally highly polished, treated metallic alloys, balance the weight of the heavy inner core to a more mallible outercore. If it is shiny like gold, and weighs as much as gold, it will put a significant strain and doubt on merchant and smuggling operations. They will be forced to guarantee it with foreign currency reserves, which leads a paperwork trail, and auditors. Its never pretty, and inflation kicks in very rapidly once everyone starts to doubt the money supply. Hoarding starts, and with price controls, the items sold at below market cost are taken by everyone, if they need it or not. This produces a black market, and intelligence gathering possibilities as ISIS is no in sole control of its money supply. Its a lot easier to airdrop a box full of fake coins on a village to corrupt it, allowing for a degree of independence and intelligence gathering possibilities, not to mention building up a independent mafia, than blowing up some crappy footsoldiers sitting in a bunker trying to fool UAV sensors into thinking it is a command bunker. Snatching control of the grain supply in Iraq prior to harvest should be of high priority. Assad wanted to destroy it last fall, but was stopped. The international crossing between Raqqa and Mosul is the easiest route, though admittedly there is nothing but dirt roads between it and the Euphrates (counted them on Google earth last year). If the grain harvest is controlled, we can more or less break Raqqa without a seize or destroying the city. Due to international standards on what constitutes crimes against humanity, we can't outright deny the food, but nor do we have to let ISIS distribute it. We can offer it at camps isolated from a water supply, and airdrop leaflets over Raqqa saying where the food is at, and that if anyone is hungry, the UN mission will feed them. ISIS would be torn between forceably holding a city of over a million starving people in place, or letting a sizeable portion go, including undoubtedly some of its own forces to eat and wait. Lots of things can be done using minimal force, that are smarter in the long run. Damascus was more or less completely destroyed in several neighborhoods from fighting. Its really stupid to destroy a city if we can systematically manipulate ISIS into unraveling themselves. Any strong barrier or blockade within Raqqa to keep the people from leaving, seeking food, can be effectively targeted from the air. Our every military effort could be aimed at getting food to the Syrians, via that international border crossing, just as the UN mandate currently dictates..... to the letter. ISIS loses population. ISIS loses economic fluidity, end up with a barter and multiple currency economy, which will make paying soldiers very awkward. As ISIS currency is default war contraband, I see no moral reason not to. Any merchants burned in such transactions shouldn't of been trading with them in the first place. Its odd, we have several thousand years of recorded warfare, and the impulse is always to strike head on, clashing spears and shields first and last, results be damned, than utilizing knowledge collected about the weaknesses of various systems, and exploiting them. I don't think ISIS is nearly sophisticated enough in its financial policies to survive a simultanious collapse of its market and grain supply. Oh.... We happen to have enough chinooks to rapidly ferry several battalions of Iraqi soldiers north come fall to do the snatch operation. It would be very interesting to see where, which cities, ISIS would rush its garrison out of to attempt to stop this. Bombs away. Its not possible to supply such a population from back road smugglers alone. We will have the food, and the water.... come to us.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/Default.aspx?pageID=447&GalleryID=2558&gpid=1 She has some great artifacts, but needs to integrate them a bit more into, a more..... umm, a better designed garden. Intact I can't even see a garden, just a backyard full of artifacts lined up in a square. Get some flower pots or something if your going to insist on calling this private, open air museum a garden.

I don't even like American football, or Rugby. Never understood the appeal. More of a baseball and hockey sort of guy.

The Perception/Apperception Dichotomy.... and how it effects international relations and and how such seemingly unrelated frictions coordinate and grow from clique to group thinking, until the underlining causes of stress and war emerges, plunging civilization into war. I just did a section of visuals on Onasander's (the Roman philosopher, not me) awareness of this dichotomy. Its better to check such things out in advance. Apparently Putin thinks this is potentially a fighting issue, a potential cause of war. It depends however on many issues. If America is thrown into a world war over Soccer, it will come as a irritable and unreasonable surprise. Everyone will of formed a opinion on the issue, EXCEPT us, other than it was stupid to begin with. I talk of course from the perspective of the American public, not the government prosecution. Putin appears to care deeply about this.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphrates_Volcano The YPG this article mentions is the Kurdish group I mentioned, they also go by YPJ. The important thing is, you don't let ISIS decide where the battles take place, such as at Palmyra or defending Assad. Its stupid, as it puts ISIS and Assad in control of our operations. If you back the Kurds in equipment, and use their territory as well as Iraq and the sea as points of projection, you can fly helicopters and airborne qualified light infantry in for lightening strikes aimed to slam ISIS where it least expects it, where they are vulnerable and too awkward to respond, and work a degree of attrition to wear down their ranks. You can gain a kill rate of 2,000 to 3,000 ISIS with the combined approach, significantly disrupting its safe rear areas. You'll find ISIS will very quickly crumble, and won't be in much of a position to disrupt anything. Much of its manpower comes from hiring locals for 500 bucks a month. Once they realise there is no safe area outside of inner Raqqa, it will become very difficult to project force. Likewise, ISIS has gone on a gold and silver standard. Given they make their own coins, and most countries view the coins as war contraband, we can make counterfeits and flood the periphials of their markets with it, as well as drop caches full of fake coins. They institute price controls, and anyone with a background in economics know this is a recipe for disaster. We've already bombed their oil producing capacity down to nothing, and have been degrading their ability to project force in terms of heavy weapons and large convoys. Its time we exploit this. But we gotta recognize its going to be groups like the FSA the US is training up in Turkey, Euphrates volcano, perhaps even Assad, who gets the final moral say. Do we honestly think they are collectively in a position to intellectually digest this war, and Syria's past civil wars, and adjust their collective military and political ethics in such a way that this stuff doesn't break down into ethnic and sectarian hostilities? Or is Syria just going to become a geographical area with ethnic and sectarian enclaves, and a big hole in the ground where Raqqa once stood?

Your repeating a argument, but didn't arrive to that conclusion from personal research yourself. They people who came up with the argument didn't either. Google Euphrates Volcano. It provides a coalition of anti-assad groups. Half of them are self proclaimed jihadi groups, but it needs to be remembered that they are from a culture where such concepts are positively promoted in line with justice. I'm not too thrilled with some of the antics of the Free Syrian Army, as its command structure isn't too effective in controlling all its men, and it has at times allied with Al-Nursa Front Commanders (its Bin Laden's group, though technically the US did the same in 2007, so I would be a hipocrite here saying its unforgivable). It was also the Free Syrian Army that betrayed the Japanese volunteer in turning him over to ISIS for the bounty. I'm sure the upper echelon was opposed to it once it came out, but that is roughly the mixed quality of troops they have. Many fight for freedom, others are scoundrels looking for opportunity. Best groups obviously are the Kurdish groups, such as the Lions of Rojavs, they maintain a Facebook page. They are a old style Communist group, mixed with ideals of secular northern European socialism. They have some simmering political issues, in that obviously a democratic coalition of diverse political parties isn't going to react too well to a communist core pushing them out of power, even if there was a necessity during wartime (no political party wants to hear they aren't essential). This has lead to rifts.... Some of the Kurdish opposition parties buildings have been raided, and others have lead their groups into Iraq, entrenching the border across from Syria in a refugee standoff. None the less, it is here you'll find most of the western, including American volunteers. Reason why is, Kurds don't kill or backstab Americans. They have a well established command structure, and hold stable territory. The negative points is, Turkey views it as a terrorist group (Google Occalan). Obama has tried repeatedly to get Turkey to knock that silly crap off, but Turkey won't. Its why Kobani was defended by US airpower and not Turkish mech infantry, which would of ended the battle much quicker. To Turkey's annoyance, Kobani survived (for the time being). The Lions swear up in down they are not associated with Occalans group, but its rather hard to take this seriously as you can see his portraits hanging around in their pictures. None the less, all their negative traits taken together, they are a fairly decent group. I can't really say they are worst than some good groups the US has backed in past wars. However, they can't realistically project force around Syria. Turkey has their border completely sealed off (but allows ISIS travel along a less strictly monitored border to the west). We would only have one bridge, one questionable for transporting heavy equipment to give and train the Kurds for northern incursions into ISIS territory. The training period likewise would cause issues, getting the Kurds used to mech infantry and tank tactics, and how to call in and coordinate with airpower, or do basic scout patrols.... I think ISIS would significantly pull its weight from pressing Assad and Iraq, and throw everything against the Kurds before they become strong. The Kurds do stand in a position to substantially disrupt transport between ISIS' Syrian and Iraqi provinces, itckuding it main grain supply route, which it needs to harvest this fall, meaning it can't lose Mosul prior to then. The Iraqi Peshmerga (also Kurds) have taken the north of Mosul, and the west. They lack the manpower to completely cut that route off. The Syrian Kurds could, if properly backed. The long term repercussions of arming the Syrian Kurds are equal to the Iraqi Kurds.... they would be ably to enforce their autonomy, while acting as a buffer state for NATO lands. Turkey is currently paranoid as hell about this, as southeast Turkey is largely Kurdish, and really dislikes having two Kurdish states armed to the teeth south of the border. However, generationally, it is in Turkey and NATO's best interest to do this, as it significantly lowers the effective border with Syria and Iraq, and it has its own large Kurdish population in which to influence and bind the Syrian and Iraqi Kurds closer to them. I think eventually we will have to do this. Just right now, Obama is stressed out with teenagers flying drones into the whitehouse lawn, and pistmeb flying around, and is just too distracted to handle these other issues (equip the secret service with slingshots dummy, or rubber shotgun rounds). As to the lesser Jihadi groups.... one commander us seen in briefings always with a pink Hello Kitty notebook on the table before him. I don't know how to rake that one.

OK.... I read a lot of international news sites, and once in a while, a big scandel pops up, and it only affects one country.... drives them nuts, weeks to months of anger and obsessions, but on the US side.... absolute silence. A not too distant example, the US-Indian Diplomatic Immunity Crisis.... American News didn't even cover the court case till there was a verdict. Now, currently, for whatever reason, by whatever powers, laws, treatises and excuses given (or simply ungiven), the US arrested a big chunk of FIFA's leadership in Switzerland. Dead honest, I don't understand it, or the law or logic behind it. I really don't, but once you start having world leaders weigh in on it, like Putin accusing the US of all countries of trying to take over international soccer of all things.... We don't play that silly third world sport. Its boring and pathetic, and the rules seem rather odd. No on scores, and people brawl, or stadiums full of Hispanics collapse if everyone jumps at the same time. Its just best not to get involved in such lowly plebian things. We Americans, we rather do stuff like cure diseases and put a man on the moon, or barbeque.... not play soccer. We just have too much self esteem to do such s thing. So.... I really can't tell.... is this the first planetary wide antagonism against the US that the US population is absolutely oblivious about? Like, no one here knows anything about this stuff. I myself am suspicious, because apparently FIFA was having meetings and offices here in the US. I don't even think the US has a team anywhere. You would be very hard pressed to ask people on the street to name a US national soccer team. I'm reading there was hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes, so like, where is this money coming from? Not here. I don't think there is that kind of market here for that. Hundreds of dollars, maybe thousands in bribes, but not millions. That's a stupid waste of a backwards, pathetic sport. If a war breaks out over this, or the UN launches sanctions on the US over this, we will all be here in the US stumped and flabbergasted, and will be forced simply to ban soccer permanently. We will target empty stadium fields across the planet and crater them when no one is around. Its gotta be the oddest, most backwards conspiracy ever. We literally have zero desire to control soccer. What's next, send in a special forces strike on a international backgammon league? Cower synchronize swimming into submission? This sorta stuff is useless and stupid, and benefits us not one bit. Its absurdly useless. US should just ban FIFA, put it on a terrorist watch list as a undesirable organization, banned from our shores. No balls, no soccer fields, Nada. Nothing. If they wanna bribe and be corrupt, go do it elsewhere. We don't need such fake sports here. I really can't gauge to what extent this is actually weighing down on the minds of the average person living elsewhere, outside the US. Nothing being said here. I don't even know why we bothered with it. Just ban it and be done with it.

Several countries have been working on that Indiana. If you survive a targeted strike with air force ordinance, your eye vessels will break, internal organ will be ripped up, and there will be significant leakage of blood from your eyes and nose. You tend not to get very far. Dispite all the technology and cameras, its a remarkably crude weapon. I prefer light infantry strikes with good Intel, and a way out afterwards.

I gotta disagree with the last there, I wouldn't call incorporating barbarian armies into the roman system as evidence of senile old age, as the Romans always had auxiliaries. In modern and near modern times, Ethnic units have been used to great success, including with the British Gurkas. The Eastern Roman Empire made great use of it too. Romans more or less bungled it, but honestly, the way it happened so suddenly, it wasn't like they had much time to get all the Germans and goths under control. The ideal would of been in a "United Empire" to say "Fine, you can come in, we will help you set up, but you'll be broken up, and transfered from the northern border in Europe to Asia Minor and Africa.... And those people (who?) Would get sent to Europe ideally. This way, everyone is out of their element, they feel secure, and you fast track their nobles. There was too empires at the time, and you just can tell all the Goths and Germans to go to Africa and Spain. Kinda filled to capacity. The imperial authorities clearly didn't take consideration as to where they were settling these people, nor break down their basic autonomy. The Romans were more or less experimenting with utilizing Ethnic Armies on the fly here, and lacked the liquidity to field a sufficient army in reserve to overcome any debacles the field forces might encounter. They more or less had to keep in a menacing enough position to keep anyone from getting any ideas (roman or barbarian), as well as repel foreign forces. They obviously failed, but it was close. They could just of easily of survived, integrated the migrants and slowly rebuilt its military and economic fortunes. The arrival of the Huns is evidence of ways the Romans could of integrated the barbarians into Rome. Backfired, but Flavius Aetius came close. Likewise, the resurgence under Belisarius and Narses clearly shows they were not dying of old age. Plague more than anything killed that.

We won the cold war. Your stratifying individual wars as the mark of qualification for success. Look at the list you presented, and in a cold war context, look at the people in charge of them now. Russia: its a much weaker state fighting on the eastern fringes of Ukraine and setting up alliances with its chief competitors (most of the good alliances disregard Russia). Putin has been increasingly hostile to the Soviet heritage in Russia, and has of late been supporting the efforts of the WW1 era White Russian forces, seeing Lenin as a traitor. In a cold war context, Eisenhower would of died of excitement hearing of this. China: When from Red to Capitalist, and its no longer arming militias around the world to undermined either the Soviet Union or US. Its calmed dawn considerably since its Maoist era. Engaged in Anti-Piracy activity, as well as funny island building activity off the phillipines. Taiwan still stands. Vietnam: After we pulled out, it got stuck in a really nasty border dispute with China. Then again with the Khmer Rouge. Its been through considerable liberalization of its economy, and most definitely isn't a Russian or Chinese puppet state, and has opened up direct military relations with the US. Afghanistan was intentionally stalled for a troop surge, we were support to rebalance it after the surge in Iraq. Obama fucked up. Iraq.... success, Obama managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Right now, since you did bring it up, it does appear the US has been playing the sides off each other, its something I brought up on a philosophy forum a year ago as a alternative strategy, and its been turning increasingly valid as a prediction. So yeah, he is using "auxiliaries", and we have training and tactical support on the ground in Iraq. We have this thing known as "radios", and real time GPS tracking devises, as well as a airforce, its much wiser than being on the ground. Right now, a bit of a tussle between shia militias and federal troops. ISIS has been using construction vehicles to plow through outer defenses, and using fast strikes behind it to scare the Iraqi troops. It is a good tactic, used recently in Ramadi, and they tried it at Haditha Dam. However, its rather shitty, as the Iraqi Army will soon do what every other army has done when faced with calvary charges and blitzkriegs..... Build dragon teeth, six sided caltrops made from ibeams, and interspears lots and lots of concertina wire between. ISIS lacks engineering vehicles, and the Iraqi Army can hold up in sniper positions and take down anyone trying to untangle their bulldozers or trying to get through. Its a rather simple fix, just the Iraqi Army has focused more on concrete barriers and training of men in basic marksmanship and maneuvers. It wasn't something seen as a priority to them to teach their troops. The wire works, we stopped a entire stryker unit, its engineering unit (haha) as well with simple wire. Shoot anyone dismounting the tanks, sack at the tank gears in the track with a sledge hammer. It doesn't occur to people just how pathetic tanks are when up against entrenched infantry. Armies learn from mistakes. The Iraqi Army will learn from each one. As to the Syrian war.... Not my issue. Assad has more than enough claim on that. Lebanon, its a proxy or Iran, but is also faltering. Hezbollah has been increasingly throwing more of its weight behind Assad during his contraction (forces losing ground). Doubt the Pentagon is too worried, outside of the fear of too sharp of a contraction leading Syria to snap. ISIS isn't in a position to hold all of Syria. One of the worst things that can happen to ISIS is a successful, decisive victory over Assad. It would very fastly overstretch them. They lack the manpower to effectively hold those areas, and its not exactly prime real estate for recruiting new soldiers. ISIS is largely restricted to its prime recruiting territory. If Assad goes, effectively, Iran loses much of its use for Hezbollah. A lot of chatter on the net about alternatives for them. Grenada serves a lot of lobster dinners to US tourists, especially on its cool north coast. Had a guy in basic training from there. Place turned out fine. We can list other wars, but you get my point. There isn't a communist international ruling the world. As to Libya.... That was a monolithic, disturbing fuckup, but that was done for the French, the US wasn't leading it, even though in the end we had to do most of the heavy lifting. There is a lot of evidence it was the department of defense who tried to get Hillary Clinton to talk to Qaddafi, but for whatever stupid reason she refused. He did calm down considerably over the years. Your confusing the US department of state with the Pentagon. The Pentagon did a decent coordination of the air campaign, though I'm sure most were asking WTF are we backing the backstabbing French for. Our international defensive treaty organization have survived, while that of our comoetitors , such as the Warsaw pact, went to hell. India now officially has a billion people, and has been losing ground over the last two years to China in its Himalaya border. India now buys more US weaponry than weapons from any other nation.... During the cold war, it was neutral, even openly friendly to the US at times, but firmly in the Russian camp. Sorta still is (there is a hilarious kashmiri English language philosophy group still backing Russia on the net, I used to post excepts). US has more port of calls for our navy than any other country, and we have military training missions with most nations, and the ability to set up ad hoc international coalitions. That is some of the benefits of having the department of defense. Prior to that, it was the department of war, and the staff largely switched over. It works, because we keeps a magical pink unicorn trapped, roaming the inner courtyard. It was captured in Bosnia. And the Korean War.... If you recall, like, Mao sent a million Chinese soldiers into Korea, after the UN forces recovered from the surprise invasion. China is backing off from the DPRK. Its kinda hard to hold diplomatic relations with a dictatorship that executes its top generals using mortars and anti aircraft guns at close range. Like in the Tao The Ching, the Weak Envelops the Hard. Your hard headed in your approach. Every war should be Lepanto.... just use stupid mass force to get results. Didn't work for the Spanish against the Dutch. There is a gradual, long term approach. When America first landed in Europe, they were a bunch of savaged running about in Hugo Boss uniforms. You gotta have long term goals for civilizing populations. You don't need a empire if you can get everyone to the same evolved standard. Military ethics is a good start. Caesar lost battles too. His greatest achievements was in destroying his own republic, and the armies sworn to defend it. He was a weak souled and pathetic man. He got what was coming to him.

Two things I note, he has a sword sheath on his right leg, sword in left hand. Sword handle is straight, no guard, no curve to sword.... But the sheath is unusual, it comes out pointy on either end, which would leave the sword rather insecure, but easy to pull out if riding a horse..... but I thought they were chariot based during this period. It could just be a dagger, have seen them with the odd pointy sides, but can't recall which society or era they belong to. I can't decide if that is a rope, horn, or sword handle coming out of the sheath, looks like it connects to the belt. I was first drawn to this possibly being a very clever handle, I've seen some calvary sabres similarly designed to be held in such a way to reduce the shock of impact, but I increasingly have me doubts about this initial assumption. Secondly the pendent on his head, its the upper body of a man.... a torso, arms, face. First time seeing a Scythian. Not exactly the best position to be in for delivering a finishing blow, especially to the head. The attacker exposed his middle, all the "bastard" has to do is push foreword and he can trip him up and toss him to the ground. Holding a sword and hair put the attacker in a false sense of superiority, he can easily lose in this stance, as his hands are occupied. No shield.

We conquered France too, twice in fact. WW1 Ww2 Caesar's legions would of gotten their butts wiped out in either war. The thought of a legion trying to move around in trench warfare, or facing off against a blitzkrieg, makes me giggle. I started my work on the military writings of Onasander (not me, the Greco-Roman) today. Hope to have it out soon, haven't ever critically tackled it before ironically.

He failed, horribly. Was stabbed to death by the very republic he claimed to of saved. And he took it in the butt in his younger days. I don't wanna emulate all that.

Only suggestion so far is, make it easier to access the forum. I doubt most people visiting would even be aware there is a forum unless they started randomly clicking on the menu bar. I think you gotta click "more" to see it listed on a secondary menu list on android.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32872350 I really doubt ISIS cares one bit about this stupid bird. They may even declare it protected, they are trying to set up a state and would view it as part of Allah's creation. What annoys me is the sick emphasis on this bird, and no mention whatsoever of everyone dying or having their life turned upside down. I kinda hope someone shoots it and rotissery it on YouTube now. They can use green energy and earth friendly, bio degradable bullets to give it a liberal, green friendly death to give consolation to the Europeans. I think you can just fly a UAV dressed up as one of these birds someday, I see battery life issues, but think it can lead a flock south for the winter. Just gotta impress on the birds the UAV is its mother.

I don't understand, the British army isn't Royal, because it for a time existed directly under the authority of Cromwell and Parliment, but the Navy that would transport units to Ireland, and evict the "rebels" to the Caribbean, and show up in the Caribbean and North American colonies, harassing the hell out of us because authority descended from Parliment was seen as illegitimate, ironically got to remain a "Royal Navy". What of all these units known as "The Princes' Own". I'm sure the Duke of Cornhole has a unit attributed to him even today, given to him outside the rank and officer position given to him as a helicopter pilot. Surely at least a Royal laundry unit, or his own medical sanitary command. And what happened to those medieval beef eaters in the Tower of London? They predate Cromwell, wear the archaic royal uniform and go about clipping raven feathers. Did they become republican during the civil war, or remain dressed up like fools during it, and continue under their original mandate?

The winning their hearts and minds part comes from President Kennedy, he addressed it to a Marine Corps Journal back in the sixties, that delved into analysis of international conflicts. It's where I first learned of the British operations using Mayalian militias to fight off Chinese communists operations around mines in the Malay jungle just prior to independence. I think he learned a lesson from the Bay of Pigs and the near nuclear war that erupted from the Cuban missile crisis. Taking poorly thought out, reactionary stances on what warfare ought to be.... a reflective form of punishment, puts our military in a role where it lacks initiative and intelligence, and merely follows the actions of the enemy. We would blunder into countless traps and wretched quagmire, with little comprehension of the cost and attrition inflicted upon ourselves, and the societal and biological collapse of our opposition. As all societies are inevitably drawn into wars- sooner or later, we would in essence be breeding humanity for stupidity, ignorance, hatred, and backwardness.... not to mention backwardness, as these would be the traits that would come to succeed in a world of such ignorant, devastating wars. I prefer our little green and blue breeding grounds, for our species, earth, take its future a little more seriously. It started occurring to President Kennedythat endless conventional wars were not just unprofitable, but also societally undesirable for it's accidental occurrences. It made people stupid and weak, prone to ignorance. We did a lot more in intellectual competition with the Soviet Union..... openly debating our economics and morals, landing a man on the moon, then fighting proxy wars via their proxy's proxy. It was an era where cognitive voids of entire different ways of thinking was a open wound on humanity. We got to be smarter, exploit the synergy between different styles of thinking and approaches. The Hearts and Minds approach is only one component of this.

I thought of a few more before nodding off to sleep: They guys all out in a field during berry season, foraging, and hear the horn to assemble for an emergency mission, and when the commander comes out to lead the troops at the gates, discovers they all have berry stains on their faces and hands, just before setting off to battle. A microburst, or outright tornado rips up or Knicks down several tents, and many guys left fighting all night long soaking wet in half collapsed tents, trying to prod them up with their spears, having the wet tent flaps fall on their faces while sleeping, waking up in puddles. A naked gymnosophist guru becomes popular in camp, and many decide to become naked vegetarians when off duty, and become too weak to do their duty, and the gymnosophist gets repeatedly banned from camp, but keeps popping up in the north eastern quarter, and whenever is sighted and chased after, manages to always disappear in the tent aisles. A soldier takes a interest in falconry, and wants to take his falcon into battle. Troops enslave a Roman, kept in camp, and a pissed off local magistrate shows up to get him back. One of the lower ranking troops is a nerd, and has a bunch of military treatises, but they all get stolen by the officers little by little overtime after a tent inspection, and the soldier knows who stole them cause his leadership keeps quoting them rather out of context, and can't do anything but try to steal them back, but they get restolen and he finds them back in their tents again. Meanwhile, the officers go beserk over theft amongst the men becomes rife. Discovers camp is on a flood plain too late, everyone spends a week on the walls looking down into camp, the Christian guy tells everyone about the story of Noah to pass the time. Lightening striking in the camp. One of the heaviest sleepers in camp is heard snorting still in his tent after everyone is rushed to the walls in the middle of the night to fend off a potential attack, only thing everyone can hear is the snorting. Fat guy signs up for the legion to lose weight, buys his armor too small thinking he will lose weight, and doesn't ever lose weight, and is too cheap to get properly sized armor. Everyone gets worms in their poop. Everyone catches a STD. Local merchant tries to get commander to switch from sword and shield to spiked mace and chain, commander makes everyone to buy it, but realizes afterwards it was a stupid idea, but its too late, so now everyone carries around, despite being ordered not to. Troops told to cobblestone road to camp, takes years, and just as it completes, told they gotta move camp. Auxiliary unit gets paid more, and gets easier placement in battle. All the calvary horses get sick, so they have to scout on pack mules, and a team encounters a pissed off Celt on a very fast chariot. Told you have to crucify or kill members of the religion your a member of. Ship used to transport you to your duty station leaks all the time and starts falling apart in a storm, only thing keeping it together is torn up uniforms knotted together and soldiers taking turns dumping water. Being informed the ship is being borded by pirates, capturing pirate ship, and told to be a sailor till port is reached, despite no one knowing the first thing about running a boat, and the sailors on your original ship not speaking Latin, and communicate via bad sign language from ship to ship as to what you need to do to not sink the new ship. Commander wounded in the nuts during a skirmish. Etc.....

Nope. And I doubt they did it right. I think we in the modern era overemphasize the glory and honor, and discipline aspects of the Roman army. We look at it in the same way young guys see the modern military, via the future idea of going through basic training. THAT IS the military too them, marching around and singing cadences, climbing a termite infested towers in the woods and putting plants on their heads, thinking they are snipers. I'm guessing all that Noob stuff went right out of the window among veteran units. The impulse to uniformity being one of them. Yes, you gotta have the type of weapon and uniform required for your unit.... but if you could cram more in your pack, no one is going to stop you, and half the guys likely didn't bother with certain items. Likewise the high discipline.... as long as you show up for watch and perform any extra duties, doubts people much cared for the individual soldier, as long as his tent was set up where it is support to be, and his junk not lying all over the walkways. If you walked into a camp, especially one established for a while, little odd personality traits would start standing out. Someone with a pagan idol outside of their tent, to the offended chargrin of their irrated neighbors who had enough of the chanting and singing. A few guts hoarding random stuff like food in their tents, or nails for cobbling, even though they aren't cobblers. Stuff always getting stolen.... always. Whores having free reign inside of camps, merchants setting up not just outside, but inside camp, at times without commanders even knowing. Misplaced latrine pits, despite guys knowing better. The guy who refuses to wear clithes. Packs of wild dogs running through camp at night scaring the crap out of everyone, butting the crap out of the supply guy. The camp standards randomly dissapearing for no reason, causing everyone to panic and searching the camp and countryside nonstop for days. Legionnaires being forced to walk a line and jump in bushes and stick their heads in stagnant ponds and rivers looking for said standards (say, a missing eagle), only for it to pop up 3 weeks later in the center of the camp facing off the earlier mentioned offending idol in a stareoff contest. Yould encounter men who were more like slaves, and slaves more like legionairres. Auxiliary units getting into brawls at the gates. Guys going AWOL, returning, AWOL again, and returning without much punishment, while others get punished severely for less. Some soldiers who never really seem to work, or put on their proper uniforms. A few physically lame soldiers stuck doing specialized duties. A occasional soldier living the double life as a civilian with a family, convincing the commander he can be in camp in ten minutes and can hear the bugles, and sits at "home" and plows his little field, spending half his time in camp, the rest with his long term fiance. Let's not disregard any clever local investment schemes some clique of soldiers could get involved in.... buying a gladiator collectively, or a fish farm, or goat herd for resale, perhaps to the army irself. Pissing matches off the walls while on guard shift, in sight of the local inhabitants. Alit of penis flapping from the walls every time a young local girl goes walking by. Soldiers discovering the local happy mushroom and running naked painted in green through camp swinging torches as the go screaming all over the place. Soldiers getting called to the walls at night because a donkey was mistaken for a enemy movement. Washing bird shit off the tents. All the camp cats during from a mysterious flash disease, then shortly after that obsurdly large rats overwhelm the camp, assaulting refuse pits and Marines. Guts screaming at the sight of said rats, or large spiders, like little girls. Commander ordering kill teams to patrol at night to kill the rats and wild dogs, and to burn all the refuse, and so dogs and rats are burned on the garbage pits, and foul smelling smoke overwhelms the camp, and a thousand birds start flying overhead, eating bugs and shitting all over the freshly washed tents, a few falling down dead from asphyxiation, and at that moment a rat scurries out from behind the barrel, grabs the dead bird, and flees off from pursuing soldiers into the command tent during a meeting with a local tribal dignitary, who ran outside in shock, viewing the sight of this Apocalypse, and seeing in the background, a naked legionnaire jogging around hooting and high giving people, leaping over a hurdle in some ad hoc contest. No.... I doubt they guys got the true legionnaire experience in this TV show. I'm willing to bet no one on the show built their tent over a ant colony, and woke up with a hundred ants biting their sweaty, dirty bodies, did they? Guessing they didn't drink water from a stagnant pond while digging a well, did they? Did anyone lose a finger, or was refused a tetnus shot when they cut themselves, or step on something? That's the real roman army. Someone having a pet pig, and someone else eating it, and a chunk of the camp brawling over the incident. Or not collecting enough wood to properly cremate someone, or making the mistake of crucifying people beneath the walls, and hearing the guards stay up at night, chatting with them about random stuff over days as they die. That's the Roman way. The emphasis on discipline and all that stuff was due to just that, a theoretical emphasis hoping to overcome the warped, backwards nature of camp life and a army in the field. It gets very silky, very quick. Absurd, even deadly. All that emphasis we have comes from the periodic crackdiwns of commanders having enough. But a veteran camp, its gonna have some of these elements, and a occasional meltdown. All without necessarily having contact with an enemy. Fresh milk in the morning, why not keep a bleeting goat next to you tent? Loansharks, addicts, etc.

Romulas wasn't recognized by anyone as emperor save the barbarians. The Roman Emperor in Constantinople didn't acknowledge him. I can see where this guy is coming from, and SOME of those mechanisms effecting birth rates, such as food supply, can count towards his theory, but depends of correlating statistical assumptions with our "apperception" of "Roman Apperception", which is tricky at best when looking for mechanisms that can claimed as cause and effect. An example being.... founding Roman Towns. The deposition itself along a plan, with stock ethical/cultural romans, especially if of a military background, into landholding positions at the very foundation all across the empire really hurts this theory, as a considerable portion of the population that owned property, and thus have need to resorts to courts, the law, and an education necessary to understand the law, and thus become political players on a microscale in their own right, had a very early monopoly, and the linguistic evidence is, at least in the west..... this was outrageously successful. The concept of founding Roman towns in the west even survived the empire for a time, its legal language survived (morphed into the romance languages) and the catholic church continued to expand on a modification of these principles. Likewise, there are strong similarities between the household political theories of the Greeks and Romans (plus Jewish concepts) and feudalism. If anything, the Roman respect for authority didn't die off, it survived them and had a lasting impact in the cultures that rose in their wake. Likewise, Romans actively imported whole communities of kinds of warriors, and placed them around the empire as permanent recruit able pools of residents who would join their native unit and carry on their praised military skill set.... this system was still (to a degree) intact at the collapse of the western empire. We gave a thread on this somewhere on this site, where we found the oddity of parts of the Roman Empire.... surviving the Empire, in the west. The collapse of political authority and the assertion of alien authority didn't immediately lead to a outright dismantling of all aspects of the Roman State, but the new powers didn't have the need, priorities, imperatives to maintain the various arms of the empire in their area intact. Imagine every state in the US became its own country. NASA's Space Control is in Houston, but it doesn't launch from there.... how much money do you think Texas would continue to invest into it? But does it automatically lose such empertise and insight if it neglects it? Not immediately. Secondly, the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west was a military collapse, one of a Empire based on rebellion prone legions affiliating under several competing authorities. This isn't evidence of a lack of authority, but too many authorities. Its border was insecure, highly fluid, and experienced far too rapid of a rate of immigration, entire communities and nations came in. The Romans had been transitioning in this period to defensive Limes and internal field armies, and fortified cities. Its military was scaling down, and not from a lack of available manpower. It was available money, ability to upkeep infrastructure such as roads and auxillaries organized and paid directly from a central treasury, owing allegiance directly to the state, that was diminishing. A lack of posterity from Emperor Thrax on. This produced the feudal system, which was built on the manorial economy, which emulated to a degree Roman countryside living. Very much, the Roman sense of authority survived. Its basics of community did too. We in fact see genetically it was the militant romans who had a early monopoly on the communities, and access to female war slaves to get the early population boom. To what extent did these communities overcome the necessity of producing a net surplus of children to carry this advantage is up for debate in any region, I lack such data.... but the Romans appeared to of left their genetic markers all over the place, and shuffled populations considerably. So I'm left rejecting my surface understanding of this theory. The western empire suffered a relatively sudden military collapse via invading migrant populations at a time when it was remodeling its military away from the system used in Caesar and Augustus' time, which was admittedly prone to civil war. It was a highly fluid situation, and state doctrine was way too slow to adapt in the west. Minor things, such as putting down a mild revolt from aristocratic pagan discontent in a few provinces caused the legions to be off balanced at a crucial time. Much of the west was lost (not all of it). If we accept this theory, we have to deal with the paradox of the eastern roman empire lasting till the 15th century. We also have that oddity of Belisarius and romans lasting in southern Italy and Sicily for hundreds of years. Likewise, it doesn't quite explain Islam, or the Iconoclastic-Orthodox schisms that lead the the eastern empire halving. Furthermore, respect for authority is a nebulas as fuck term. We "know what that means", but what does it mean biologically? Romans had a cultural shift away from authority in rejecting the pecking order? So what, serotonin went up, or down? In who, and how did this effect the ability of Romans to recruit, fund, and maintain sound armies? Likewise, the very shape of the empire really hurt its continued expansion. It was round, hollow in the middle. It faced several times two front wars, sometimes more. If you expand a round/oval empire, the expansion from the center outwards would require not merely twice the forces of holding the original territory, but more, as the expanded oval is LARGER, and needs between a third to half the times of force extra over mere doubling. If I have a circle of TWO territories, and claim every territory along my territory the same width as my starter territories, if each territory is the same size, I end up with more than 4 territories. This puts a Hugh logistical, financial, and recruiting burden on Roman expansion. Had the Romans held the Carpathian Mountains and the Baltic's, they could of broken this Round State Expansion Friction, but they couldn't pull it off, so couldn't reach parity with the immigrants pouring in. The immigrants pouring in were substantial in numbers. It would be a false corallary to assume Rome was suffering a demographics collapse at this time, if anything, it was surging. It couldn't adapt quickly enough. Its very hard to say what intellectual efforts would of been needed from a historical point. Your talking theoretical statecraft here, pure philosophy and not fact driven history. If Romans disregarded authority, how did the bishops survive? How did the emphasis on religious conservatism and bone fide authority become the staple of modern christian orthodoxy, which in the Greek church's case, is a living fossil of Roman State Religion, more so than even the Catholic church. It doesn't begin to lend evidence to what we know of this theory.

They fundamental difference between humans and bacteria is a view billion years of shared selective breeding and ancestors (on the human side). Plus, human to human relations rank much higher on the categorical imperative scale than bacteria when your human, almost all the time. I might save a bacterium over say, Hitler if the bacterium is rare and can cure something, it's the closest exception hypothetically I can think of, and it's a isolated extreme with little middle ground. Obviously humans over bacteria. Your mindset is barbaric. You confuse the civilized man with the artifacts of his environment. Civilization is a realization, a state of passing becoming, when we can look back at our former confusion and know in our awareness we've moved passed the former state. Most men who live in so called "civilizations" are rarely civilized, merely domesticated. They only know one mindset, it were indoctrinated in it at birth. Our youth associations with their rites of progression, or our universities with fraternities and diplomas rarely achieve any success here, it's a charade in the inverse of Plato banning actors who can play any part, or Swedenborg's higher angels unable and unwilling to play the parts of characters from a lower walk of life. We find it unconscionable to be the other, we take the safe path. Many aren't even aware there are alternatives to being than what they have been taught and valued as commonsense and sure. Many of the barbarians in ISIS are in fact foreign fighters, a great many from the most "liberal" of nations and educations in Europe. They literally come from all over, and they react negatively to us. They understand us enough to of made the choice to leave us after growing up among us. It means they are everything that we are, potentially.... as they can choose to continue to play along.... but are also more. US + Extra Insight we lack. We become the barbarians when our society doesn't grasp this feedback loop that produces contradictions and otherness, especially militant otherness, in our own relations. We are unlikely to win this without self analysis, to see what mutual feedback loops are shared in our two groups that lead consistently to violence, and to examine our side of it in earnest, and mutually come to a cultural, quite conscious awareness of what we're doing, how we are feeding into the animosity, and once realized, if we care to modify it,eliminate,or carry on. Anger can be a useful mechanism in war, but it should be justified and rationally directed on a strategic level with expectations it can benefit the greater good, and that it isn't being used haphazardly. It needs to be highly efficient, painful, highly versatile, and compatible with long term needs, including sustainability. Anger in warfare rarely leads to sustainable war. It makes stupid war, with shitheaded standards for what constitute for results. I desire something more advanced, pure, effective, and easy to maintain in the long term. I'm not interested in spending a million dollars on a missile for every member for the opposition killed, or large firebases to support the operations of brigade and divisions to field force with skyrocketing financial costs and no end in sight. I instead urge a very measured and balanced approach, one designed to keep casualties on at least our side to a minimum, and the opposite to the minimal algorithmic necessity to asymmetrical break up and ground to a halt the opposition's willingness to fight. We also need to understand their propaganda, and philosophy, so we can move in and undercut the motivational message, their memes and emotional cause to war. We can only do this if we're rational enough to grasp they are every bit as human and intelligent as we are, if not more, and that the bulk of the underlining effort on our side is intellectual and emotive, acquired from right information and clear, culture wide understood objectives and possible negative repercussions, and a willingness to carry through. Sad truth is, ISIS is doing just that to us. We are barbarians as we never munched care to learn the enemy, or learn about ourselves like they have. They are systematically undermining our feedback loops faster.... our alliances and coalitions are increasingly fragile and fracture prone, our diverse cultures unwilling to look within and examine how we differ, how we are similar, and what underlines our differences, and if on a psychological level our opponents at times make valid points. Instead, we stereotype them as worthless and insane, mock their racial characteristics or desert environments (sand niggers), and encourage to bomb away. We don't even question the tactical response, we more or less expect bombing, and a couple of commando raids, cause that is what is done in past wars with very different kinds of enemies. We never stop to fucking think. It's always a rush to judgement. Smarter, not dumber. Dumb got us into this situation, and the situation was very much a group think affair, with a lot of input from self righteous neutral nations. We're on one planet, if a war is going on, your more or less involved. Ignorance is the only plea we have to the crimes that occur these days. I'm looking for stuff that works. Calling them barbarians and bombing them isn't likely to work in the effort to further stymie them. It just pisses them off more, and makes them more eager to repeat once they saw they struck a nerve.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32820857 Because of the absurd international focus on the historical sITE, and not the civilian plight of non-combatants, we can be fairly certain that ISIS will focus extra hard over the next month to destroy the very little that is left. Argument about protecting the site is thus over. Call for tourist pictures for future reconstructions at the site once its liberated (be it Assad, The Euphrates Volcano Coalition, or The Free Syrian Army.... or even perhaps another country) is appropriate now. I can't see much we can do via aerial bombardment to "save" the site, but we can certainly demoralize ISIS with the futility of destroying the site and others like it if they see the international community is dead set on recreating every destroyed ruin, every destroyed site.

I agree, this particular manifestation of a concept, that of a caliphate could of ended back in 2004-2005 when Bush got the NATO-European defensive border zones.... Spain, Ukraine, Georgia, Romania/Bulgaria, and Italy (and Poland, they felt/feel like a border to Russia) in Iraq. Spain and Italy hid inside their barracks, and their left made every excuse to wound themselves. The coalition experienced a partial collapse, and the large fluxuation from the Arab spring, which though hardly solely dependent upon their crumbling morale and self righteous defication, most definitely was part and parcle to the EU border issues, immigration, and current terrorism. This is a creature very much of their own msking , but it has its ideological roots in an earlier era that had nothing to do with the US or Islam. Look up the French Four Corporals during world war one. Its a cultural sickness of the mind unique to Europe. Our left in america merely aped the European movements. This war could of been ended a lot earlier. But it wasn't. We in fact have a billion Muslims out there, many of whom, in the case of this forum, deep interest in Roman history. I believe in a progressive navigation of conflict, where we create a war calculus of ideas and military strategy, of diplomacy and science, technology, trade..... to systematically undercut the impulse to war. They are indeed worshippers of Mohammad's adaptation of a pagan moon goddess named Allah into a male named Allah, they believe Muhammed caught a genie of all things, and their innate superiority and justifications to do terrible things. But they are human in doing so, as you are in declaring their backwards inferiority, and willingness to dispense their lives for their aliveness. I'm not too quick to punish men without insight to a endgame. I don't do things merely due to the impulse to do so, or because I'm quick to emotion or anger. Justice is not a feeling, but the rationalization process that leads us to appreciate, at my best, and my worst, That I Am, and Thus You Are. Societies may come to hold innate advantages over another at times, but they are still all men. We change, and we stay the same. Sirach and Ecclesiastes. Athens and Jerusalem. I can accept these dichotomies. God gave us freewill, and I'm not about to turn my back on God by turning my back on man, disrespecting his creation. Your wrong, the monuments can clearly be recreated. What can't be recreated are the lives lost on either side in preserving stone. I recommend a reading of Ibn Khaldun, his Muqadimmah is a eye opener.

I really don't care if in 500,000 years from now historians intreperate our era like the end of the movie Idiocracy, when the UN (pronounced Un, not U N) lead a army of dinosaurs to defeat Charlie Chaplain and his Nazis empire. We can leave micro encodings on the rebuilt monuments, listing they were replicas of images post war, date of manufacture, location, etc in them. Large monolithic structures can just have it openly printed on a pillar, small items acid etched. I assure you, a 3-D copy is better than dropping a group of paratroopers on site to blow half the site to hell with devastating air support to hold back ISIS shock troops. It may hurt a feeling of authenticity, but that is of a incredibly minor matter in comparison to more human life being lost. Our technology is incidently posed to recreation of sites. What's the first thing we do when a conflict breaks out? We send high resolution satellites overhead. And before that, if a site is worth preserving, there was already some billion tourist selfies. Like, right now, Cambodia keeps arresting tourists who bare their butts in front of the Angor Wat temples.... They can't grasp why that is happening. There are a million pictures floating out there of it. If we ever lost them, we could rebuild them if we desired to have them once ayain., and it would on many levels be fairly accurate. Knowing this, I would be hesitant to agree to have you drafted and sent with a rifle and helmet to stand outside of one of the temples to hold off a pissed off Chinese battle group that thought for whatever hypothetical reason blowing up the temples were a swell idea. This is a issue that will become perennial to archeology, historians, and tourism for now one, as long as war exists. I don't want people dying because of a horribly misplaced belief in the sanctity of historical site, that somehow blowing up a Buddha or even the Washington monument is crimes against humanity, like genocide is.... Its very shit headed, but its definitely isn't comparable, and we certainly have a plethora of options now available that will allow us to recover to the point that the rebuilt sites will look identical to the former. People matter more. I'm not dying for a decayed pillar, and I'll be damned if I'm going to consent to some kid dying in my place for some bad idea.