Fabius set about fighting a war of attrition against Hannibal, cutting off his supply lines and refusing to engage in pitched battle. These tactics proved unpopular with the Romans. As the Roman people recovered from the shock of Hannibal’s initial victories, they began to question the wisdom of the Fabian strategy which had given the Carthaginian army the chance to regroup.[1] Fabius’s strategy was especially frustrating to the majority of the people who were eager to see a quick conclusion to the war.

Romans were not as different as you might think, to today’s people who complain about Iraq being too long and costly.

Because Romans are the same kind of humans that we are today, with no fundamental difference at all.

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

Consul Varro, who was in command on the first day, is presented in our sources as a man of reckless nature and hubris, and was determined to defeat Hannibal. While the Romans were approaching Cannae, a small portion of Hannibal’s forces ambushed the Roman army. Varro successfully repelled the Carthaginian attack and continued on his way to Cannae. This victory, though essentially a mere skirmish with no lasting strategic value, greatly bolstered confidence in the Roman army, perhaps to overconfidence on Varro’s part. Paullus, however, was opposed to the engagement as it was taking shape. Unlike Varro, he was prudent and cautious, and he believed it was foolish to fight on open ground, despite the Romans’ numerical strength.

Having “alternate commanding officers” is as diastrous back then as it is today. And reckless folks who go into ambushes without consideration of long term strategic or even logistical issues, are just as useful for the enemy back then as they are useless right now.

You will be hard pressed, calgacus, to find any really “big” differences in war, on a fundamental or detail level.

I’m going to have to cut this argument short, so I’ll only respond to some of the points. I think I’ve outlined my position pretty well, and there’s a point where further outlining it would do no good.

However thats not how most Iraqis see coalition forces in Iraq.

The fact that Iraqis want us to leave eventually, is proof that they do see us as their protectors. To Arabs, having someone as a guest, and having the guest protect you instead of you protecting the guest, is an extreme social faux paus. It hurts their pride, and their sense of honor and self. And of course, given the Shia vs Sunni action, the Shia would obviously prefer us to leave, because they would like the reigns of power and they would like to start deciding the fate of the Sunnis. The Iraqis have, on a mainstream basis, considered US actions very “weak” and “merciful”. Too merciful in their view. One of the ways of doing their own thing, is to get us to leave, thereby supporting them only in the background as their own security forces decide the fate of people the Iraqis would prefer to see dead or dying.

The main point though is that the vast majority of Iraqis in every poll do not see coalition troops as their protectors – they see them as occupiers.

That’s not a difference you can psychologically separate out. Nor is it something polls can, without being very specific and philosophical in crafting specific questions.

And all wars are not purely about will power – they are also about war aims and what each side is capable of if it wins and will settle for at a minimum.

It is the same thing. What each side would settle for, is based upon what they are willing to fight for and what they are willing to give up. Basically, their willpower, and at which point their willpower ceases to exist to continue the fight if they get x y and z.

At its basic, will power is the desire of the human being, analyzed through psychology. Human psychology has everything to do with war.

I didn’t say that lack of willpower doomed Hannibal because i don’t accept that Vietnam, Hannibal’s campaigns and the Iraq war are all identical – and arguing that they are makes no sense.

That is because that is my position, not yours. It would make little sense because you don’t agree on the premises of the 2nd Punic Wars or of the Vietnamese wars. That is no surprise.

I accept that there are some similarities between all wars but you have to look at the (often big) differences as well as the similarities.

other than crafting a different kind of human being, there can be no “big” differences between wars such as Vietnam and the 2nd Punic Wars. That is produced via deducation. We are the same human beings as we were 2000 years ago. Therefore how we conduct war is fundamentally the same, with only the minor differences of technology and newness.

Well it is true that every Hannibal requires a Varius, but in this case, Hannibal didn’t win so many victories because of a fluke that he was always pitted against bad generals. Any general that allows Hannibal to choose the terrain of battle, won’t win without a superior cavalry force to Hannibal’s own.

Certainly a conditional surrender is a deal – but what’s wrong with a deal to end a war

because it doesn’t end the war. It is only a deal to stop fighting now, and continue on the fight when everyone’s recovered and in need of more bloodshed. Surrenders are de facto, a decisive conclusion to any war. The US surrendered the South, and gave into all the demands of the Vietnamese, unconditionally. In that no deals were made to get back American POWs in return for cutting funding off for the South. and if there were deals, that would be another debate.

So in a way, anything that does not end a war permanently cannot be a surrender, regardless of the name people call it.

For Vietnamese in the past and Iraqis now this serious threat is continuing deaths in war and rule by a government controlled by another country.

Americans and British people don’t face the threat of an Iraqi invasion if we lose this war – and the threat from Al Qaeda isn’t likely to be reduced even if we win it.

So there’s an asymmetry of motives and that’s the cause of the asymmetry of willpower.

The Romans and Carthaginians believed empire and rule by conquest was perfectly normal – today most people (myself included) believe it’s wrong.

I accept that people will usually rally behind military forces they wouldn’t normally back if they percieve them as defending them against foreign attack.

However thats not how most Iraqis see coalition forces in Iraq.

First there were no Al Qaeda cells able to operate in Iraq before the 2003 invasion – the only exception being in the far north which Saddam’s forces were excluded from after 1991. The 2003 invasion brought Al Qaeda to Iraq.
So Iraqis aren’t going to see the US as their protector on that count.

The majority of the insurgency in Iraq is Iraqi. There are an Al Qaeda minority but their relations with the native insurgency are very poor (the major exception being some Iranian units training the Badr brigade and other Shia militias). Every poll shows most Iraqis

Nor is the US percieved as a protector by those whose friends, family or neighbours have been or are being taken away for torture or execution without any trial by coalition or Iraqi government forces. Nor by people who survived the assaults on entire cities which inevitably ended up killing hundreds of civilians each time while most of the insurgents moved elsewhere in advance.

The main point though is that the vast majority of Iraqis in every poll do not see coalition troops as their protectors – they see them as occupiers.

The difference between World War Two and the Vietnam war was that WWII was between major powers fighting over empires.

The Vietnam war was one of the superpowers against a state that , even if it won, could not and would not invade or attack the US.

The Vietnamese were fighting for their independence – the US were fighting for the domino theory – which was never very convincing – and even if it had happened would not have seriously threatened the US.

I accept that there are some similarities between all wars but you have to look at the (often big) differences as well as the similarities.

And all wars are not purely about will power – they are also about war aims and what each side is capable of if it wins and will settle for at a minimum. Not all war is total war. Vietnam for the Vietnamese was total war because they either won or else became effectively a colony again controlled by a government installed by another country. For the US it was never a total war because if they lost they simply lost control of Vietnam without facing any attack on or invasion of the US.

I didn’t say that lack of willpower doomed Hannibal because i don’t accept that Vietnam, Hannibal’s campaigns and the Iraq war are all identical – and arguing that they are makes no sense.

“It doesn’t matter how many men Rome has to throw at Hannibal’s professional army, because they would all die once on the field.”

Hannibal’s initial victories were as much due to bad Roman generalship as they were to his veteran troops and tactical skill. If , for instance , 10,000 triarii spearmen hadn’t been left in the camp at cannae his envelopment tact.

Certainly a conditional surrender is a deal – but what’s wrong with a deal to end a war ? – especially when the US had all the cards so could pretty much dictate terms, just allowing the Japanese to save a little face.

The Japanese had no fleet and no airforce and there were no significant land forces in Japan itself – they were all stuck on the mainland facing annhilation by the Soviets. It was the Soviet invasion of Manchuria that led to Japanese surrender. The atomic bombs were totally unnecessary as Admiral Leahy, Winston Churchill and Basil Liddell Hart all argued at the time.

They also would never have tolerated occupation as part of the deal, and they never would have actually stopped sabotaging the US reconstruction efforts. That surrender, is not a surrender. It’s just a ploy, an unacceptable ploy to Truman after so many had died for the end of the war, for Truman to tolerate some document that extends it unto the next generation.

By that logic, wouldn’t people blame the terrorists when terrorists blew up some ridiculously tall buildings in New York and brought down the wrath of the United States bomb arsenal upon them? Wouldn’t that make every Muslim and Islamic Jihadists, kick out the terrorists in their midst after getting continuously bombed by the USAF? Or would that just make them more supportive of terrorists when their homes get bombed because while Al Qaeda killed Americans first, Al Qaeda is the one they have to deal with as protectors? People will tolerate a lot from their protectors, against an enemy, regardless of who their enemy is, so long as their enemy is an enemy of their protector. We are Iraq’s protector, and Al Qaeda is obviously our enemy, so that makes Al Qaeda iraq’s enemy as well. The logic applies the same if Al Qaeda was in Pakistan, and we just threw some bombs around in there. Al Qaeda would be Pakistan’s protector, and people would side with Al Qaeda against us, because we are there just to attack them while AL Qaeda will be there forever.

Obviously your, cal’s, logic is wrong, not because I say so, but because it doesn’t depict reality with any real gold standard of accuracy.

What people gain or not, is not based upon some guy asserting his own opinions to the effect that he believes the war is useless because he personally doesn’t see any gain from it, therefore nobody else will gain as well. It’s a separate argument, requiring its own justifications and reasoning. One of the few reasoning you could use to justify why there is no gain for America in Iraq, is saying that the cost in money and blood is too high. But that does not in fact, detract from the maximal advantages of a front line logistics base with front line local support.

You, cal, would most likely have to justify your position that most Americans benefit not from the war, before deigning to speak for some foreigners in Iraq. It is connected. If you don’t know what is best for America, then surely you do not know what most Iraqis want or what is best for most Iraqis.

This is why i don’t believe for instance that the Iranian ayatollahs would use nuclear weapons or give them to Hezbollah or Al Qa’ida.

What makes you think that it would be suicide for them to get nukes? They already know the situation, and they still want them, and they openly talk about it. Obviously they don’t believe their actions will lead to their ultimate annihilation, at least not without taking their enemies to Allah with them, in a state of glory. Just because you think they are committing suicide, doesn’t mean they think they are committing suicide. As you demonstrated before, you believe that when they kill themselves, that they are throwing away their lives. That is your perspective, however, yours is not their perspective and it is a mistake to confuse the two. Since they believe they are going to Heaven and their heavenly rewards, they are not throwing away their lives, they are gaining a new and better life.

As for the puppetmasters, they don’t practice what they preach. But that doesn’t mean they don’t believe in what they say. Hypocrisy and inconsistency is not all that incompatible with fanaticism. Fanatics do believe what they want, and consistency has little to do with it. Therefore the Mullahs can say that they are not afraid of death, act like they are afraid of death, and actually be not afraid of death given how their beliefs work together. The mullahs in believing that they will win, do not believe they are committing suicide, so therefore all their actions will be based upon this sense of victory. Why wouldn’t they give nuclear weapons to terrorists if they know that they will win if they do so, and that the US will just complain to the UN about it? Fear isn’t stopping them. It’s not fear of death that stops them from committing suicide, it is the need for destruction that prevents them from leaving this mortal coil for their heavenly rewards. They are sacrifice their eternal rewards, to do Allah’s work on this mortal plane. In doing so, their rewards will be greater by far.

Let’s take your perspective that it would be suicide for Iran to give nukes to Al-Qaeda. Why would they believe so? If they did believe so, why would they openly talk about getting nukes and risk having a nuke detonated in America, by not their fault, and still getting the blame? Logic doesn’t parse when the variables for your perspective and theirs are included.

The reason why Palestinian women blow themselves up to kill people, is because that is one of the ways they get honor, respect, and a bit of glamour in their otherwise misshappen lives. Therefore, it is still based upon people caring for how their lives go. It is not Western suicide, in which someone is too broken hearted to continue living, thereby choosing the path of self-extinction. Those who we are talking about don’t choose the path of self-extinction, they choose the path of the enforced extinction of others for selfish rewards, of whatever stripe is available, heavenly or perception.

One American analyst has conducted a comprehensive study of every act of suicide terrorism over the past 25 years to understand what drives suicide bombers and why suicide terrorism is on the rise around the world. He says it’s too simplistic to assume Islamic fundamentalism in the central cause.

Might we suggest having two sources and not “one”? Since we’re going with the anonymous I know who you are but you don’t system, why not just go with 5,000? Finding sources that are out on a limb, must be hard it seems.

Robert Pape, after all of your studies, all of your trawling over hundreds of cases of suicide terrorism over decades, how did you react to the London bombings?

Londom bombings=Not Communist members

You need to check your sources, cal.

KERRY O’BRIEN: You say that September 11, Bali, Madrid and now the London bombings are not part of an Islamic fundamentalist attack on Western civilisation, Western decadence, yet the kind of hate literature that comes from Islamic extremists say exactly that, an attack on Western civilisation, Western democracy.

Your position derives seemingly from some guy saying that half of world suicide whatever bombers are secular. And then the interviewer says that this same guy thinks 9/11, Bali, and Madrid are NOT part of an Islamic Fundamentalist attack. If this source guy of yours think these are not Islamic Fundamentalist, but secular, then obviously somehow or other he WILL get 50% of total suicide bombers as “secular”, now wouldn’t he?

ROBERT PAPE: We have strong evidence to the contrary. The British Home Office just released a four-volume report that they conducted in 2004 – and you can find it on the London Times web site – that four-volume report is about attitudes in the British Muslim community.

yes, we have strong evidence to the contrary that London and 9/11 etc were not based upon Islamic suicide mentality. That doesn’t seem sane or even common sense acceptable, but if you accept, why would I not accept it? Maybe because the logic doesn’t parse here either?

ROBERT PAPE: Suicide terrorists are not mainly depressed, lonely individuals on the margins of society. I’ve studied 462 suicide terrorists from around the world since 1980. Few fit the standard stereotype of a depressed, lonely individual on the margins of society. Half of those 462 are secular and therefore not religious fanatics.

Here’s a newscheck for cal and Robert. If you think the London Bombings were done by “secular Muslims living in the West”, you got a slight problem. In that, that’s not a position I can accept, nor is it a position that is consistently valid.

The BBC peddles this sociological view consistently. In 1997, for example, it stated that Muslims “continue to face discrimination,” as witness the fact that they were three times as likely to be unemployed long-term as West Indians; and this has been its line ever since. If more Muslims than any other group possess no educational qualifications whatsoever, even though the hurdles for winning such qualifications have constantly fallen, it can only be because of discrimination—though a quarter of all medical students in Britain are now of Indian subcontinental descent. It can have nothing whatever to do with the widespread—and illegal—practice of refusing to allow girls to continue at school, which the press scarcely ever mentions, and which the educational authorities rarely if ever investigate. If youth unemployment among Muslims is two and a half times the rate among whites, it can be only because of discrimination—though youth unemployment among Hindus is actually lower than among whites (and this even though many young Hindus complain of being mistaken for Muslims). And so on and so on.

The West is a formidable enemy, however, difficult to defeat, for it exists not only in the cities, the infrastructure, and the institutions of Europe and America but in the hearts and minds even of those who oppose it and wish to destroy it. The London bombers were as much products of the West as of Islam; their tastes and their desires were largely Westernized. The bombers dressed no differently from other young men from the slums; and in every culture, appearance is part, at least, of identity. In British inner cities in particular, what you wear is nine-tenths of what you are.

http://www.city-journal.org/html/15_4_suicide_bombers.html

You may or may not think that someone is “secular” because he lives in the West and listens to rap and rock, but that has nothing to do with whether he believes there is a heaven to go to after he kills himself and those around him.

The least that can be said, is that your link doesn’t support any assertion of yours that 50% of suicide bombers are not religious. The most that can be said, is that your source proves the opposite, based upon the inconsistencies in logic of your source.

There are parallells between Iraq and Vietnam and the most basic is that the majority of the Vietnamese didn’t support the US or the governments it backed – and the majority of Iraqis in every poll want coalition troops to leave Iraq.

The most basic psychological trigger to whether someone supports you or not, is based solely upon whether someone believes you will or not. The Roman city-states in Italy, did not believe Hannibal was going to win against Rome. So they did not join him, even though Hannibal was ostensibly there to liberate them from Roman Imperial control. The Italians knew that if the y joined with Hannibal, and Hannibal lost, the Romans would decimate the survivors to say the least. Therefore the perception that one’s own personal interests is at risk from supporting Hannibal, the perception causes people to act in a certain way.

Instead of arguing, as you do, that at any given time, people in Iraq or vietnam supported or “not supported” the US side, you should focus on something that actually has merit. Which is, by which factors may you use to manipulate someone’s perception of victory, and therefore convince them to join your side either temporarily or permanently. Human negotiations and fate is not about any one particular moment in time or space. It is an ever going renewal process, of negotiations and renegotiations, deals and backstabs, and so forth. You prioritize talking about the Iraqis, absolute style, wanting the US to go away and how the Vietnamese were, absolutely, not on our side. Your absolute style violates Heinseberg’s uncertainty Principle. Which is just as true of humans as it is of atomic particles in motion.

Also military force and torture didn’t persuade the Vietnamese to give up

Since it persuaded the Vietnamese to not support America, obviously the vice a versa argument is flawed in either its premise or conclusion. Since the Vietcong got a lot of effectiveness out of cutting off the arms of people who were aided by American medical units sent to vaccinate Vietnamese villagers, this spurious argument that “torture” doesn’t persuade people, isn’t based upon any reality in this century or the last.

The Vietnamese were never going to give in. They’d fought the French and the Japanese for decades before they even started fighting US forces.

You mythologize the Vietnamese. No one is invulnerable, just as no one is immune to torture and interrogation. The United States of America, after having faced Hitler and Stalin, thought themselves invulnerable as well. But Vietnam proved how easily willpower may be sapped and destroyed by subtle forces, propaganda, and deceit.

The Japanese thought themselves invulnerable, that they would fight to the death instead of surrendering. They were wrong as well, just as you are wrong that the Vietnamese would never have given up.

and assassination in the ‘Phoenix Program’.

Phoenix came after the US lost, not before. So it didn’t contribute to the war effort at all, but it did break the back of the Vietcong (those that remained after Tet that is, which weren’t many). So technically, if Lyndon had the balls to authorize the program during the war, it would have helped win the war and it would have most definitely destroyed the Vietcong much earlier.

They only began using Kamikaze tactics when they were already losing – and it wasn’t terrorist organisations or insurgent cells carrying them out it was the regular military.

obviously when you want to prove whether or not someone has the will or not to fight to the death, you shouldn’t be using some arbitrary comparisons like kamikaze tactics on both sides. Since the subject is the will to win, you need to talk about the will to win, instead of obfuscating the issue by attempting to make parallels between suicide bombings and kamikaze pilots. It’s incompatible to the subject. The will of the japanese was to fight until total annihilation, rather than surrender. The will of the Vietnamese, as your position asserted, was never giving up after fighting the Japanese and French for so long.

Artificial comparisons don’t go to the heart of things.

They had offered to surrender on conditions which amounted to no more than saving face before Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

Surrendering on their conditions, is not a surrender. It’s called a deal. Surrender is not about deals. It’s about living or dieing.

The lesson to be learned, is still Hannibal’s campaign in Italy. Sure people can argue about Vietnam this, Japanese that, or Iraq over there, but Hannibal’s Campaign is pretty unquestionable, undebatable, and pretty much unarguable in a way given its historical age.

There was no lack of willpower on Hannibal’s part. He could not stay in Italy without a logistics base, and he could not get a logistics base out of local sources until he proves that he can occupy Italy indefinitely. In a way, Hannibal would get no local support so long as Rome existed to pay back the traitors once Hannibal has left. This is exactly the same situation in Vietnam, not because people argue about Vietnam being one way or another, because wars are fundamentally alike given a standard set of variables.

you, cal, seem to have the position that it wasn’t lack of willpower on the Carthaginian side that doomed Hannibal. That it was in fact some “manpower” thing going on. Hannibal with some tens of thousand, destroyed more than 200,000 Romans at Cannae and various other battlefields. It doesn’t matter how many men Rome has to throw at Hannibal’s professional army, because they would all die once on the field. It wasn’t Rome’s “men” that defeated Hannibal, it was his lack of supplies, and his lack of supplies came directly because Carthage would NOT send fleets to resupply him through the Roman blockade, let alone risk giving him reinforcements.

The lack of willpower on Carthage and the US’s side in Vietnam, is directly related to the logistics principle that causes guerrila wars, in fact all wars, to be won or lost. Without logistics, nobody can win, regardless of how large or proficient their army is. With logistics, even the most rag tag group of idiots could survive indefinitely.

Our troops and the majority of our public have no motive for being in Iraq. There was no threat to us from Iraq and there are no benefits for the majority of people for controlling it.

This again is similar to Vietnam – the issue isn’t a lack of willpower but an asymmetry of motives – the majority of people in the US in Britain gain nothing from being in Iraq and lose nothing if we leave – Iraqis on the other hand are being killed daily by coalition forces and the government forces they’ve trained – and irrespective of rights or wrongs (and there are plenty of wrongs on both sides) most Iraqis don’t want foreign fighters – coalition or Al Qa’ida – in their country.

I agree with some of what you say too.

“As for their puppet masters, obviously they care what’s in store for them if they are willing to send cannon fodder to die instead of blowing themselves up.”

I agree completely. This is why i don’t believe for instance that the Iranian ayatollahs would use nuclear weapons or give them to Hezbollah or Al Qa’ida. To do so would be suicide – and the leaders encourage other poor dupes to kill themselves – they don’t do it themselves.

“if they were like Western decadent atheists or communists, then by committing suicide they would show that they didn’t care. But since they believe in a heaven, with virgin and sexual rewards, obviously they do care what happens to them and their families who benefit from their martyrship financially.”

I don’t agree here. Suicide bombers in Lebanon for instance have included communists – in fact more than half of suicide bombers since 1980 weren’t religous – http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2005/s1418817.htm while Palestinian suicide bombers have included women and children who can hardly have been expecting virgins in paradise either. I’m not a Muslim but i’m sure the koran actually prohibits Muslims from throwing their lives away – the motivation is usually to end occupation by foreign militaries.

I agree Hannibal lost partly because his enemies in the Carthaginian senate feared the power he might get in Carthage from a victory over Rome – and Roman counter attack given Rome’s superiority at sea. Partly it was also just down to manpower though. The Roman military system of the time didn’t require troops to be paid and made the majority of their population eligible for conscription – the Carthaginians had to pay mercenaries , had a fairly small number of citizens and a lot of farmers who were basically slaves and not allowed to serve in case they revolted.

There are parallells between Iraq and Vietnam and the most basic is that the majority of the Vietnamese didn’t support the US or the governments it backed – and the majority of Iraqis in every poll want coalition troops to leave Iraq.

Also military force and torture didn’t persuade the Vietnamese to give up – it turned even more of them against the US and the governments it backed in the South.
It’s having the same effect in Iraq. CIA analyses show that most Iraqi insurgents have nationalist as well as religious motivations and have had a friend or member of their family harmed by coalition forces – http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1508-2005Feb5?language=printer

If enough military force employed ruthlessly enough for long enough was going to get the insurgents to give up the US would have won in Vietnam where it spent over a decade with tactics like strafing anyone that moved from helicopters, carpet bombing and torture and assassination in the ‘Phoenix Program’.

It wasn’t enough. The idea that if there hadn’t been political opposition to the war back home the US would have won sooner or later just doesn’t stand up. The Vietnamese were never going to give in. They’d fought the French and the Japanese for decades before they even started fighting US forces.

The Iraqis and the Afghans arent going to give up either – even if everyone in the US and Britain rallied behind the war.

The Japanese in WWII aren’t really a parallell. They only began using Kamikaze tactics when they were already losing – and it wasn’t terrorist organisations or insurgent cells carrying them out it was the regular military.

They had offered to surrender on conditions which amounted to no more than saving face before Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
The defeat of their fleet and air force produced those offers. Those offers were rejected not because of any need to defeat the Japanese psychologically but because Truman wanted to show the Soviet Union the Us had nuclear weapons and was prepared to use them – hardly much of a justification.

Cal even recognizes it in Iraq, that the US wins every battle, that he recognizes is the problem, the problem of reinforcements. Obviously by calling a withdrawal, as he does, he is not reinforcing the forces in Iraq. Since this lead to the defeat of Hannibal, even after he won every battle, then obviously calgacus knows that he prefers defeat in Iraq over victory for the US forces. And yet all this seems to be not connected in a way, given his arguments.

As for fighting fanaticism. The best way to fight fanaticism is to do what we did to Japanese fanatics. Find the psychological chink in their armor, and use shock and awe to transmogrify their behavioral patterns using whatever possibilities are available.

Since they are going for heaven, yes… they do….

As for their puppet masters, obviously they care what’s in store for them if they are willing to send cannon fodder to die instead of blowing themselves up.

If they didn’t care, they would all committ suicide and join Allah, but they don’t, now do they.

If they did they wouldn’t be prepared to committ suicide.

if they were like Western decadent atheists or communists, then by committing suicide they would show that they didn’t care. But since they believe in a heaven, with virgin and sexual rewards, obviously they do care what happens to them and their families who benefit from their martyrship financially.

Hannibal of course one every battle he fought in Italy but still lost the war because he couldn’t get as many reinforcements in Italy as the Romans and the Romans stopped fighting major battles with him – the same problem we face in Iraq.

Nor was he fighting a guerilla war – guerilla warfare is carried out by small groups who attack then hide the way Iraqi or Afghan insurgents are – not by whole armies in open mass battles like Hannibals battles.

So the problem we face in Iraq isn’t guerrila warfare. Gotcha.

We aren’t fighting ancient wars decided by battles and sieges though – this is much more like Vietnam or past wars in Afghanistan like the Soviet-Afghan war.

The principles of warfare have always been the same and have always stayed true to the same. There is no difference to a fight now as opposed to back then, except in terms of technology, training, and lack of discipline.

Vietnam, exactly as with Hannibal. Win every battle, suffer ultimate defeat because someone pulled your plug back home. In fact, the Romans influenced the Carthaginians to abandon Hannibal, and the Carthaginians did. The Vietnamese influenced Congress to abandon South Vietnam, and they did. Talking about how this war is more similar to Vietnam than “old siege battles” doesn’t really do anything other than prove that people like making petty differences and blowing them up into battlestars.

This inability to understand “ancient wars” also prevents a person from understanding modern wars. Since all wars are the same in principle and logistics, by not understanding one, you will be unable to understand them all.