Onasander

He pledged the army would take action against those using weapons or harming civilians, but added: "Don't worry. Everything will still go on normally. We will try not to violate human rights too much. http://m.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27490670

Why make a wine no one can drink. Its like a group of vegetarians rausing a herd of Kobe cattle.... most delicious meat out there....

I more or less want a pedestrian sense of the distances involved in my head, so I can better gauge historians understandings. A historian who doesnt get out and walk his ancient history is questionable at best. You can write about Hannibal leaving warm Spain and crossing the alps in the winter, but I would much rather the insight of one who traced the route and did it himself.... little stuff no one else noticed would pop up from doing it..... it would give incredible depth to a historical work. I have no intention of reenacting Hannibals march by the way, just a example.

It It is a opprotunity and a excuse, hence why such guys got hanged..... but there is a obvious peer pressure component that only a rare personality type can resist when literally everyone is doing it in a society where conformity is encouraged. The Dionysian mentality (classical I mean, the Nietzschean version is not immune to this, but is more individualistic) conforms quite well to small group bonding, especially if its a military unit of strong social stresses and emotional friction. Alexander the Great died in a dionysian drinking bout..... you intentionally do stupid wild shit, loosing a sense of yourself, at least your responsibility in regards to your inhibitions...... they would tear live animals apart and eat their quivering flesh..... as a group. When you look at group behavior, especially in military units, you have to consider this Dionysian impulse. A mere rational explanation they did it because they wanted to doesnt come close to properly diagnosis the extent of cruelty and absurd lengths of inhumanity otherwise normal people would go through, united around the twisted ideas of one or two..... people not necessarily even in official charge. My Lai is a good example..... in Vietnam when guys started cutting ears off people and making necklaces out of them. Now clearly..... most guys didnt do that. Yeah..... insanity happens any class, creed, nationality, military or whatnot.... you draft a bunch of guys with little screening, a wack job is going to.get through..... but others played along.... others did it too. The balance of introverted inhibition and self responsibility collapsed, and the insanity of a deranged man on a extroverted level came through. After time, on a sane reflective level, such practices, if not punished and suppressed, can become the norm. Its why raping and pillaging was the norm for a long while. The earliest concepts we have of western military cults that tried to rationalize this phenomena are hunter cults from Persia.... hunting wild boar and so on. Its not something incompatable with village life, but has issues with say..... a city state with more solid fortifications and a clearer diffraction in regards to what autonomous group behaviors are acceptable in defense of the walls, and what can be done outside of them in no mans land, or that of the enemy. Not every behavioral impulse could be indulged in in any given place..... and friction, misunderstanding, and outright rebellions in regard to this occurs to this day. The right hemisphere controls geographical facts and tests data for its correctness..... but isnt the intellect. It doesnt like it together..... doesnt linguistically describe it logically a priori, doesnt know who is bad or wonderful. At a very stupid core, in every human, especially men, even more so armed men, left and right hemisphere concepts link up in patterns not acceptible to sedentary life.... more fit for nomadic life..... to borrow the historian Ibn Khaldun's dichotomy. It gains a functional logic of its own, and most men..... most sane and rational men, pursuers of a refined and most rarified eudomonia..... will eventually succumb to. A few personality types are known to be more resistant to such pressures. Your INTJ for example..... the Supplementary Mortar Areas appear to fall under their direct conscious thinking style, and its the part of the brain that puts a slam on the brakes in regards to Dopamine flow. They are much less prone to extroverted pressures. I am one..... I was out of a battalion of over 600 of only a handful of guys who didnt drink, or take up smoking, or use drugs. The impulse of accepting peer pressure over my better judgment was creepy to me, I could never accept loosing control over a catch phrase or group enthusiasm. But I always thought 'I am here to be a good soldier, and good soldiers do the stupid stuff they are asked to do by commanders, and you need to maintain high morale in others' so went along with..... some of it. But half the time I was a kill joy, never got in trouble for stuff other guys do (got introuble for being injured without permission to be injured apparently towards the end). Thats one of the few personality types, a almost idiot savant, that can snap out of it because he never really was in it in the first place. But such guys are encouraged to be officers, not enlisted..... as every enlisted soldier will point out to them. None the less, they are around in small numbers in every battalion. I recommend a psychologically balanced and interdependent team of check and balances per squad. Your not going to pull that off using Kiersey Typological Assessments like the army now teaches however.... you need something a bit more elegant and targeted, so you average platoon sargent can pull off analysis and rebalance his men. Unfortunately, specialization and rank wont always allow a proper balance. But merely writting off the Dionysian impulse underlying all men as not the primary factor is incorrect..... it blinds us to the nature of crime in a military unit, the necessity to search out its gravitas and reverse engineer how it got its tentacles slowly wrapped around what should of been a good unit, so you can understand it, and spot it in other units..... your own, and that of the enemy. A Dionysian enemy unit behaves differently than a clearer thinking, more orthodox unit. They can have very strong ties to the mafia, relative independence and lack loyalty to a central command like the rest of the military units do, relate to the local population much differently than is the norm via intimidation, extortion, and appealing to a sense of cultural machoism that many will find appealing, independently funded from the black market or drug use..... exist as a cancer on society..... you cant get such a unit to successfully stand down and surrender, and rolling in tanks is going to do little to stop them..... they bleed into the population..... But such units are a concern to military commanders. Easiest way to learn to come to terms with them, is to learn about similar impulses in out own military. As it is largely a blindspot, we have little power to stop your average paramilitary kingpin who has rank in both the military and local cartels. They ironically were the winners of the cold war era, and internationally cause the most violence and destabilization.

Ive been thinking of back packing from Aristotle's Hometown in Greece, to Rome, up through the coastline, likely start off in Sparta first, then Stagarite, then up the coast.... I have no idea of how they deal with pedestrians, or how to use a bidet though (you straddle it, with hands on the wall and beace yourself for the squirt I guess).... I dont want to get deported for walking down a backroad, and the appeal of driving is low..... I got a bunch of vacation time I cant cash in, so..... cheapest flight to greece, then cheapest flight back from rome = 70% of my expense. Has anyone ever backpacked in europe before? I mean real back packing, not the smores in the hostel kitchen before catching a bus to the next city..... I walk slow from a bad knee, but go very, very far, like the tortoise in the tortoise and hare..... would like to see the countryside. Dont want jailed though for passing throug on foot.

Okay, back.... So you have this finite resource pool to recruit manpower from, train and maintain a force. It costs millions of dollars in fuel costs for example for a airborne infantry unit in fuel costs and supplies, and maintaining more complicated than necessary communications with higher echelon (means above, in this case above brigade, which is usually the local base..... guys in division and corps and in the pentagon need training watching and pretending to coordinate the little units everywhere)..... This is..... all to train for circumstances NOT of the military's choosing; our war colleges run a million simulations, and our intelligence services are very very active..... and some is common sense, but there are always those random, unexpected wars no general expects.... so they just prepare for everything. Countries who do this survive, countries who dont collapse or are defeated.... the paradox is simple, the old world considers the US a very new country, but our government is technically one of the oldest continuously independent nations.... we are still in our first republic, France is in its Fifth, likely Sixth here soon. Ancient Persia..... Iran, 1979.... Russian Federation, early 90s, China..... 1949, or the birth of the CCP a few decades earlier.... the US keeps its head above the water. England does too. These considerations are part of the reason why. Now..... given such a military responds to such circumstance, known and unknown..... Obama can literally toss a bunch of troops into a UN Peacekeeping mission tomorrow for any reason.... you end up with a quality vs quantity issue, coupled with technological sophistication and technological diversity, gardening techniques.... and everyone has to be very young, physically fit..... Imagine the insanity of recruiting for that. Military can very rarely recruit enough in peacetime, hard sell when people are shooting and blowing up soldiers. You end up plying very ancient, dishonest yet time tested recruiting efforts.... where every recruiter is as honest as a door to door vacuum salesman, desperate to get enough in to get the guys in charge of him, crazed flying monkies, off his back. He knows several wont make it, but there is a weeding process. In basic, Drill Sargents just.... grimace seeing half the confused as fuck weaklings bumble around. A chunk gets weeded out, rest sent to units. Units see a bunch of still confused guys stumble into their barracks, continue to weed them out. Bad apples get weeded out, but some bad apples rot, and their seeds take root.... not because its the military society, but a human one... dominated by the irrational impulses of young men. Just like in colleges, cliques of alcoholism and drug use pop up.... just easier to track, as it tends to keep to similar ranks within the same units. In society in general, not so obvious to track this. Many get treated, move on. Some get kicked out, a few military prison, but the sense of loyalty and willingness to overlook a battle buddies minor vices allows this to take root in a unit, and some bad guys get promoted. They have a good enough record compared to others.... and its not like a bunch of special forces and rangers are going to leave their units voluntarily and show up to a so-so unit, and spruce it up. So... alot of NCOs, especially the lower grades, get ranks because they are the lesser of evils from a unimpressive force, and hopefully can be made into something awesome.... sometimes just that happens. Hence the system of merit. But a good old boy system coexists alongside of it. Has its advantages and disadvantages. Most higher NCOs from E-7 to E-8 come from the good old boy system.... never left the military, kinda got lucky, laided liw, had a few friends above, and screwed just enough people over to sneak up the ladder. They believe they know enough, and oftentimes can infact demonstrate objectively they do in a array of circumstance. They have a Libertine sense of justice, so Jag is always on their ass if they dont check with Ethics before 'Disciplining' the troops they have charge of. I dont expect genius or deep insight from such men.... and neither do they. They expect it from a officer, oftentimes a Lt. just out of college, majored in English in college, ran track.... and is fucking clueless. He is like, 22-24 years old, been in the army 5 minutes.... played alot of vudeogames and lost his virginity a rad bit late to someone he would rather forget. Those people.... they are capable of making..... very average, very inexperienced value judgments, reflecting the general values of the society they come from. Most are as general good or bad as their society. But its not a democracy. Its a hierarchy. Designed for quick and determined actions under hostile, lethal circumstances. A bad guy gets rank, bad apples below flourish. A guy who is neither good or bad gets rank, bad apples lay low, but dont get weeded. A good guy gets rank, he hits severe institutional friction from what is bad yet has rank/numbers. You cant just fire 400 guys from a unit of 700 because you suspect some used drugs on occasion but cant prove it, had been a shitty team leader, doesnt care, etc.... they exist not to give a liberal listening to music a good feeling about the Ethics and Moral disposition of the military, but to close in with the enemy, and kill. You need a boatload of guys for that. So our war colleges use every known trick to pull this off. The rotations I spoke of keeps bad cultures from taking root, but it also lessens the tightness of esprite de corps on a team, squad and platoon level, and even company and battalion level..... a company doesnt like to swap out platoons with other units for a bunch of alien guys you barely know from another unit. But this does reset to bad apples to a extent. But there are more ways to skin a cat, and this is just merely one component to the calculas. A point Caldrail can likely dominate me on, the transformation of the British Army under Wellington during the Peninsula War.... he recruited a bunch of worthless beggars, thieves, and rapists..... the very cream of British society at the time.... so all he had to recruit from population wise, and used them to liberate a Portuguese and Spanish population that had been raped and pillaged by the French..... you can grasp the paradox, now can't you... He used a variety of tricks, including hanging his own men if they were seen having sex with the locals, or not buying their supplies instead of taking them by force. The TV show 'Sharpe's ...... ' chronicals the evolution of the British Infantry from rude and backwards to rude and backward rapists, yet fiscally sound and rarely raping liberators. It was quite a task. They are still working on the rude and backwards to this day, but I think they will get it before the robots take over.

No, they should not of been accepted in the first place.... exactly. The vast majority of the population is unfit mentally and physically, and as warfare becomes more remote and technological, emphasis on mental fitness increasingly will take emphasis. However.... you will still need some deeply twisted pure fucking killers for Delta Force/Kombat Action Brigade like in the documentry " Killing Pablo ", for exactly what they pulled off in Columbia against the Cartel Leader Pablo..... he launched a armor assault on his countries own supreme court and was mass killing. Noting the need to occasionally counter such extremes with our own extreme, on a level of strategic elegance and finesse that keeps collateral damage to a bare minimum and stays within the scope of the just war principle 'You Don't Need a Sledge Hammer to Crack a Walnut'..... we have to look at the historic concept used in the analysis of the history of warfare, 'The Tactical Synthesis'.... The Tactical Synthesis is a matrix of interrelated strengths and weaknesses of any kind of unit in a army in opposition to any other, hoe they are expected to perform. In order to have a unit, you have to recruit them, which costs human manpower (18 years raising them and taking them out of the workforce) and financial pay l, maintenance, incentives, and other frictional costs to the government, before you even consider arming and training them. Arming them is now easier for countries like the US than training them. Finding trainers to train the trainees comes from within, preferably promoted on a merit based system. To gain merit, you either fight in war, or spend your peacetime career getting rank via.... training. In order to coordinate peacetime training, and maintain sane promotion of wartime trainers, you need a aristocracy of sorts, a war college and beauracracy..... Which never get along that well, as they tend to promote differing values..... List goes on and on.... I'll finish this after work tonight.

Did my post get deleted or just didn't load yesterday?

I was thinking Caligula.... thanks for the catch.....

Claudius was worst than Tiberius supposedly was.... however, was born into a imperial philosophy that was nearly puritanical. Its generally assumed Claude learned his bad ways from his imperial apprenticeship under Tiberius. However, all the reasons both of us suggested points to this being a politically motivated rumor mill, designed to wound Tiberius. He knew, for example, Herpes was spread via kissing, hence his laws discouraging kissing during festivals. Such a guy likely wouldnt have orgies. Then again....

Only thing causing me to entertain the possibility is how Claudius turned out... but you had Augustus and Arius Didymus looming large in Tiberius' moral makeup as to how to conduct himself.... It's within possibility, either direction, just the stories are not believable, and we see political scandals fed by rumors all the time. I can't think of anything technologically supporting this story.... but then again.... Claudius. How do you explain Claudius breaking with the Augustan/Didymus Puritanical standard completely on his own without help?

Basically, I know the name of the town mentioned, but not quite certain why.... they keep claiming its 20 miles south of Bahgdad, on the edge of the triangle of death, but I was sent to Iraq a few months later to the Triangle of Death, which was to the West-Southwest of Baghdad. I think they are actually closer to the Polish area here. Anyway..... some things should jump out: 1) A Group of soldiers, everyone enlisted of lower rank, manning a checkpoint, over a long period of time..... to the point of building negative rapport with the locals. The nature of these checkpoints were like miniforts..... walls of concrete and metal-cloth dirt barriers, with a 50 cal or at least a heavy rifle like a 240 on it, a vehicle or two, radio, guard tower, and likely a rotating stopsign and traffic arm to lower and raise. Nothing is every quite standardized, its not designed to survive a tank or determined mortar attack, relying on other fixed positions and aerial assets for support. 2) The main guy charged was mentally unstable, and the highest ranking guy was a very low, almost certainly inexperienced NCO not too recently promoted. Im willing to bet he infact stayed in the same team as a NCO that he was in when he got promoted, leading to no real difference to the leadership he provided as a team leader when he wass a specialist. Not positive, but I got that gut feeling, given what happened). 3) Such checkpoints were primarily manned by Iraqi Police. They learned alongside of Americans. Mixed forces, or at least side by side. 4) The victims family understood the local fort was accountable to higher command, and went to another cgeckpoint to report. This checkpoint had to physically send guys down instead of just radioing in a WTF is going on request. A investigation occured, soldiers coverstory was assumed legit. 5) A platoon of 4-5 humvees would of rode out, each one taking a checkpoint, with a NCO, with a few grades of NCO spread between each one, ultimately under a Platoon Sargent or Lt. to Capt.... who would of done checks on each point on occasion. 6) The guy was discharged eventually after returning, but whole squad got busted in end.... evidence collected and Im guessing a confession or rumor mill brought the squad down. A NCO should of put a immediate stop to this private's comments early on, instead of letting it fester, day after day. Furthermore, they should of rotated out with other checkpoints in the sector. The mere fact that the Iraqis understood this checkpoint was bad, but they could approach another neighboring checkpoint is evidence that they could tell the difference between good and bad soldiers, with a expectation of justice.... which they EVENTUALLY got. Had they rotated this ground out more frequently, and switch the NCO out to another squad or platoon, or even company after promotion, and had the Staff Level and above NCOs done their job on checking up on the NCO and his group, instead of letting this lone ranger mentality develop, tgis would never of developed beyond a comment or two. I'm pretty damn certain I would of shot the crazy guy had I recently been moved to that team and such a rape unfolded.... no way I would of just pulled watch.... that can only happen in a NATO level unit via extreme isolation where the demented outlooks of a single individual could override the outlook of a entire team. They had plenty of institutional variables that could of been put into effect to avoid this. Therefor, chief responsibility falls on the Battalion CSM and Lt. Colonel for getting lazy and not having these obvious rotations to prevent criminal insulated cultures from arising in the first place. Yes, this team did the crime, but command failed them by not stopping it from happening prior to the deployment.

While you learn some of the background arguments of Anti-War Philosophers before your time (so you may understand their arguments and much better augment yours) I googled a case.... such cases are rare in modern NATO armies, so Ill list this one and pick it apart from the apparent details: http://m.nydailynews.com/news/crime/soldier-convicted-raping-killing-iraqi-girl-commits-suicide-prison-article-1.1619054 http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmudiyah_killings

So.... can this new Scotland be invaded by, say, Ireland? I would rather like to see a war skirting around Northern Ireland's shared waters, while the two republics launch Coast Guard and later Kayak/Rowboat raids on each other in kilts. Not really much of a reason to have a independent Ireland and Scotland outside of the comedic value of such a haphazard war. The Principality of Sealand can get involved too, have a cutlass battle on its battery deck. After seeing Cloud Atlas, I support any effort to subjugate the Scots to British rule.... their little pubfight towards independence lead to the death of planet earth somehow.... Tom Hanks barely survived hanging off a cliff as a casual side effect of it. I say, keep them in chains.

You never had to deal with a situation where guys were killed slowly, their stab wounds used as fuck holes, all dying except one before reinforcements arrive. It's a deeply disturbing situation.... not something polemicised by someone who had to live with the reality of it. So.... Which way you want to go with this one, Herbert Marcuse, Bertrand Russell (Caldrail went to school with him, same class), Guy Dubord, General Smedley Butler, Diogenes, Emerson, Thoreau, ? Or some lesser known anarchist or communist writer in protest? If you want to do this fine, but like.... at least study up on the guys who did this already, so we don't have to reinvent the wheel post by post. This isn't criticism of your views, but like..... I really don't want to walk you through the most elementary aspects of Just War Theory and the Anti-War movement. Most decent soldiers have a respect for it, and as a philosopher I'm expected to know both sides. There is a reason why wars continue to exist despite kids rising their fists in the air dressed in black tossing out punk phrases recycled from French Detournement from the 68 riots in France. It's ironically is a part OF the spectacle of war culture. You say "Why" but I can just as easily point right back and say "How would you know, and are you not just reacting to a inherited ideological scheme yourself emotionally, garnished from feasible sources in media and literature?" The Anti-War movement exists now a days more or less to excuse war..... gives segments of society a controlled way to op out, and recycle feedback into the ethics of how future wars will be waged. It's the truth. It's all a rather silly game of the left and the right symbolically generating new wars over the centuries.... always a anti war faction.... and they always inevitably reform war.... and people still die in the next one.

I don't recall anyone from my brigade involved in a rape, officially or in the rumor mill in Iraq, but one guy did go on a rape spree just prior to deployment, he was from the Dominican Republic.... pretended to be a undercover cop and pulled women over, got out pretending to speak into a invisible mic on his shoulder, and told the women to get out. He raped them on the hood, and moved on. Last he did that night was a teenage girl, with her mother watching in the car. He wasn't armed or even big, a rather small guy. Another guy (completely unrelated) Sat in his car as his girlfriend knocked over a liquor store. Both happened right before we deployed. Our unit had a very anti-rape program in Kuwait (our brigade had female soldiers in support units) and Iraq. However, about a week after getting out of the army, I was informed two guys in my unit went AWOL, a private raped his buck sargent in a argument..... the first was arrested, the latter..... well...... army told all his friends and relatives he wasn't in trouble for going AWOL..... but I suspect he still never showed up. I can't blame him. Now.... you say 'soldier', but these guys would still exist with or without the army. They were everyday people sitting next to you in a restaurant. A lot of men are off balanced in the military, not because the military made them nuts or immoral, but because they were nuts to begin with, and people just didn't see the signs or know how to fix the situation before it became one. This is in a sense a failure of the military..... in not being able to diagnose and prevent such moral failures..... but is also of equal quality in existence across society..... such issues would exist with or without it. It's hard as he'll to get higher ups who are not interested in the finer details of just war theory and how it applies to their position to acknowledge any role. I had a very solid background in this area before deploying..... we had some good programs, and if the program existed they extolled it, but the higher NCOs aren't exactly promoted Sargent Major and above for reasons of intuition and ability to make theory into practice.... that's more expected of officers, though it's not as bad as it used to be in older armies. I think eventually the solid division between Officer and NCO will fade..... not the functions persay in all places, but the concept of exclusive responsibilities of a general categorical nature from lowest to highest..... it's hard as fuck to get new ideas (or even really old ones) through via the conservative NCO corps, they are used to initiative being started elsewhere, and are hesitant to be the first to put two and two together. However, you can usually drop any ideas to a low ranking officer in head quarters unit and it blossoms.... we.... by we I mean I, had a very hard problem in Iraq with detainees being released to walk home minus shoes. NCO s ran the detainment center.... took a low ranking 2nd Lt. to acknowledge something was wrong..... NCO s justifying care, if they don't care, and someone lower in rank has a issue, that person is insane. Lots of little stuff like this..... my favorite was how our E-8 Sargent Major accidentally made a concentration camp in our base purely by accident for reporters to photograph.... We had a giant power plant on our base.... and the Soviets built it... and built a small apartment complex, a few dozen rooms, next to it. We called it the Russian village. A unit before us used it, but it was rotten and decaying by Time we took the base..... so our Sargent Major (not CSM, rank right below him) decided to get rid of the occasional vagrant on base..... over a thousand Iraqis worked in the power plant per day.... a malfunctioning plant.... and this was in the triangle of death..... I did the count a few nights in a row..... over 200 each time, sleeping in bushes or under plywood, outnumbered Iraqi offices,nor on the floor..... I told him, he said it wasn't the case. I ins insisted, and he challenged me to internet brain puzzles instead. Well, some of the people started insisting they had property rights on the base..... to which he said no, and I brought up the squatting rights issue..... Which he denied any such thing on a military base. He decided to just put roll after roll after roll of concentina wire around the Russian village to keep people out.... it was rotten but could still be used. A few other rules added, including to stay out of it. Well, the ministry of electricity got the idea of letting workers overflow into the village..... no one believed me. I was till banned from going in there. So we had Iraqis jumping over rolls of bath wire..... living in there..... with no trash pick up, so garbage everywhere.... the outhouse just not doing what it was support to do, so guys just went anywhere..... and best of all, they started breaking up the wood and Palm leave woven structures that held many buildings together (ad hoc repairs) and everything began collapsing. We next to never got reporters in, but one from Time Magazine got lost or something and showed up at our base with a camera in hand, wanting to go out our north Hafez which was elevated ABOVE this camp...... he went by when I was walking by him, say a bunch of small Iraqi's looking up at him, behind barb wire and trash, looking unclean and miserable..... that guy got all excited and just started taking pictures like crazy. So now, historians will someday look through time magazine archives, and wonder why our base, in the triangle of death, had a concentration camp. It happened purely through thick headed action of the higher NCO mentality, and unwillingness to grasp the consequences. Multiple aspects were brought up, but all was minor seemingly, and had no interest to them..... then a reporter shows up, and it all goes to hell. But that division also has its advantages. Part of which is the capacity to train guys consistently, and be able to implement a variety of ideas to the lower ranks who wouldn't have the slightest clue how to make it happen. Sometimes it still doesn't happen.... but they did stop guys from raping women in combat.... Which is good.

The features you've put together to allow us to 'recognize' the diverse elements at play in the subject of the overweight armchair military enthusiast, a manchild who doesn't necessarily relate to the Vietnam Vet's opinions, or for that matter to your unspecified reports of a universally abstract entity 'soldiers' or 'army' committing random acts of malicious tragedy throughout history, and without historical context. You only have to look at two former soldiers who post on this forum..... myself, a Iraq vet, and Virgil, who now runs a classic history forum..... neither of us fit the mold of the above, nor by reasonable means could be expected to understand this chubby guy who marches in parades. He is into the Voyuerism and Celebration of it, perhaps for readily identifiable reasons very apparent to a glance by a psychologist your mentioning. He may of came from a military family, or holds philosophically certain ideals, however correctly or incorrectly, as central to the perpetuation of self and community. In either case, he is obviously of little consequence, beyond inflaming a pet peeve in you. Cuba needed a Army after the Spanish American war due to a variety of post independence reasons..... Spain could return, they could become vulnerable to raiders and pirates, get absorbed involuntarily into another state (America for example), as well as had on and off again civil unrest. The current Cuban government line for the invasion by Fidel Castro was to overthrow American economic and cultural domination of Cuba, and that the military was largely a puppet of Cuba, was accepted enough by the Cubans, including enough defectors in the federal military, that Fidel won out. The diagnosis of some systemic effects are obvious.... the Cuban military did not believe in its mission, nor ever really bonded to the people. They existed uneasily side by side, for better or worst. The end result was a dictatorship ran by a oligarchy..... Which is something Aeneas tackles from a realistic, non-philosophical position, preceding historical precedents to illuminate his positions. He doesn't give preference to kinds of government, just the advantages and pitfalls of using military solutions to types of government under a particular topological disposition.... a fortified city. Your Cuba friends position is a learned response, and he holds it with some justification. Others hold the opposite, obviously, such as your fat friend, and he can claim it for equal justification..... he can be naive about the military precisely because the US military keeps foreign threats from him, so that he may develop such low outlooks, and not have to immigrate himself to another country. Indeed, rape and pillaging is a recurring theme in military history..... a petite bourgeois shopkeeper loosing his possessions goes against Just War Theory if he was a neutral party, likewise needless destruction, any kind of raping, and indiscriminate killing without cause related to the justifications of leading combat operations in the first place. However, soldiers hardly have a monopoly on violence. Even with nukes, modern weapons, and a few world and major regional wars in the twentieth century, I doubt soldiers too the majority of the violence pie in the 20th century, just easier to establish escape into anarchism in denouncing them than trying to grasp the phenomena of violence by its roots, in US, how we couple logic and emotion, and accept a telephony that ends in violence as a expression of gain, and a etiology focused on spite and hatred. Ironically, soldiers can be a solution to this, if and when the military establishment comprehended it,and the government presiding over the military enshrined such outlooks as conditions and principles to guide military theorist and commanders. Hence why we have West Point, Virginia Military Institute, and civilian organizations such as the US Institute of Peace in the US, and why even the lowest soldier is expected by congressional mandate to attend classes on The Laws of Ground Warfare annually. When excess occurs in violent intention, such as needless killing beyond justification in combat operations, you have the UCMJ, the Uniform Code of Military Justice.... and largely independent military prosecutors who are notorious for going a little too far in prying into possible or gossiped breaks with just war.... I know one guy in jail for merely defending himself in jail.... but given it occurred at a politically sensitive time in politics, in jail he went. No system is perfect, but the US and a great many other nations have such legal systems and war colleges designed to train and educate its leaders. As with everything, shit happens.... that's not a excuse, merely a observation, and a reasonable assumption shit would happen worst without them. But that's case by case, and each case needs debated in its own thread, which can happen here on UNRV given its a history site. I never liked getting thanks or honored. The WW 2 and Korean vets like that. I shy away from it..... but I recognize the necessity of continuing the military, and keeping it bonded, and the voters feeling like they own it, and control it to a extent, and censure it. The ritual of parades is there for a cultural continuation of a necessity of perpetuating such a outlook, by means of a showy ritual. I am more than willing to let the fat man lead, twirling the baton and crying about the honor of some flag. Flags are a sign and signifier, not the thing itself..... none of the guys I know who died in Iraq died for a flag, they died because they got blown up or someone shot them. But it's proven, if not useful to the military, useful in maintaining a military that is progressively more civilized and restrained, and more self aware of where it stands in the greater scheme of humanity. It's a step in the right direction, even though it's little more than a roll of dyed nylon flapping in the wind to me personally. If I'm the only one around, I don't notice or salute it.... you only pretend to when others are watching, and its that double standard that reinforces the overall behavior to remember..... BEHAVE!

http://demonax.info/doku.php?id=text:how_to_survive_under_siege That is a translation of the text, online for free. It's not too long.

I recommend, since you are on a Roman Forum, and are touching aspects of statecraft, you should read Aeneas the Tactician/Aeneas Tacticus. Loeb classical library has the best version. Indeed, the military has scumbags, but also a lot of good guys. In fact, no section of the population is without either. We can test your opinions empirically and statistically, delving into the philosophy and theory behind having armies, their historical abuses to human rights, as well as hazards on not having them, as well as talk about the failure of your Cuban friend's former government's military, the bastista, to be respected, connect or bond to the people, allowing them to be overthrown by scum..... In dialectic debate, there tends to be two sides to every point, emotion blinds US to one side. We can talk about those scumbags Swiss soldiers in detail if you like as well, or the Swedes in the Congo. Read Aeneas first, he is the root of western military thought.

I don't recall any slave 'units', but outside of gladiators being drafted in.... I can't see the Romans making such a pathetic unit akin to the game's peasant units.... like, they had more self respect than to draft a bunch of barely armed pussies to fight. The slave units, if they existed, were barely trusted yet highly motivated.

Actually, perhaps like in Total War Napoleon, with its special high detail animals like Northern Italy, you can make one for the Jugunthine War...... the campaign of holding water sources and shadowing-countervailing your opponent involves slot of terrain. It should take quite a few turns, and the Romans, outside of local recruits from carthage, should be reliant on shipments of new troops that have to land at carriage before setting out, and the first turn they should be lethargic (heat exhaustion, takes a northern army 6 weeks to adapt, been that way since Napoleon in Egypt..... human physiology hasn't changed). This means if Juguntha is laying siege to Carthage, and you receive reinforcements in from say, Rome or Spain, low exertion level.... they become heat casualties quickly. However, say Sicily, not as much. Specialized recruiting rosters for where the units can come from will solve this. I also recommend a special campaign map, not of the countryside, but of Alexandria...... the city, with multiple turns per taking of sectors. Each battle specializes on a fight in a section of it. Same for Rome, and later Constantinople. You would basically on the Alexandria map sea to the north of the Isthmus, outlines of neighborhoods, but each neighborhood is a clickable battlefield to fight on.... in battle, the maps are much more exacting. In order to see the whole city, you have to fight a battle in each part. Hence, you can lead Ceasar's forces in capturing and burning down the warehouses for the library of Alexandria, or order your ships nearby for battle in a purely naval battle.

Umm..... your really going to include India during in its Mauryan Imperial age? I only ask, as the obvious absurdity of Chanakya's statecraft is very AI centered, and if your too realistic and by the book, it will be Marius Gaius trying to fend off buddhist-hindu armies each time. Kinda like how the Turks or Maratha empire could overrun Europe if the persians were weak.... it Just doesnt look right. I wouldnt know how you would want to go about organizing the political and oligarch al factions.... they are initially city based, but can ride to regional as governors or militarily, and can out of the blue become dynastic. Each city would need a potential dynastic loyalist rating for EVERY character.(how loyal will this place be if you become tyrant-emperor,and how loyal are you to the current senate, head honcho). This includes diplomats, spies, etc. Major cities like Alexandria being approached, then conquered, would have to affect this. Also, the solidity of cultural group feeling towards the dynasty-republic should effect your spying success. The presence of strong, non aligned oligarchial factions should make spying or sabotage harder, and cut into total economic output. You should be able to sabotage individual oligarchial monopolies however, much like a building, or offer them via diplomats or military leaders economic or property incentives to back you. However, even this should backfire..... if the incentives just make them more independent, then ha ha ha, your screwed..... your spying capacity goes up, dynastic loyalty down. The inverse, offering someone in Syria or Libya lands in Italy or France, makes them more loyal. This means, every region needs conquerable, locatable estates as a aspect of DIPLOMATIC.CURRENCY. If a faction holds it, they can assign it, or exhort it. During the Marius and Sulla campaign, this should be the primary factor for civic loyalty. Marius gives it to the people, stronger dynastic loyalty. Sulla to the Nobles, stronger tax. It effects the appearance of recruitable Equites, potential for angry mobs, assassination, for Jugunther to raise a uprising, etc. Last total war game on the computer i played was napoleon. Not upgrading for this game. Best of luck. Oh..... regional philosophy schools, based in Rome, Alexandria, Patiliputra, Crete, Perganum, Athens..... this is necessary for character development of statesmen.... they visit, they get smarter. You piss the schools off, your regional dynastic loyalty goes down, and the particular philosophical school in the next turn turns against your overall faction in the next few turns. Diplomacy, such as ceeding a estate to most philosophy groups will work (not the Cynics). How are you planning on making the counter-religious movements work post augustus? Christianity and the cult of isis was picking up steam.... had obvious effects down the road, but the romans reacted very differently.as time went on.

Since writing this, I saw the series finale of Spartacus,and they launch beams forward in a very similar manner.... just add nets. Watch it, it can work, make the lines disorderly at the very least. The TV show had the right idea, even though it was tactically silly how they did it for the ditch crossing.

No explicit narrative has survived. In Argonautica (iv.57ff) the "daughter of Titan", the Moon, was witness to Medea's fearful night-time flight to Jason, and "rejoiced with malicious pleasure as she reflected to herself: 'I'm not the only one then to skulk off to the Latmian cave, nor is it only I that burn with desire for fair Endymion'" she muses. "But now you yourself it would seem, are a victim of a madness like mine."[16] Lemprière's Classical Dictionary reinforces Pliny's account of Endymion's attachment to astronomy and cites it as the source of why Endymion was said to have a relationship with the moon as she passed by. Another Roman Endymion sarcophagus, mid-2nd century AD. (Metropolitan Museum of Art)[17] The mytheme of Endymion being not dead but endlessly asleep, which was proverbial (the proverb -Endymionis somnum dormire, "to sleep the sleep of Endymion")[18] ensured that scenes of Endymion and Selene were popular subjects for sculpted sarcophagi inLate Antiquity, when after-death existence began to be a heightened concern. The Louvre example, found at Saint-Médard d'Eyrans, France, (illustration, left) is one of this class. Some[who?] believe that he was the personification of sleep, or the sunset (most likely the last one as his name, if it were Greek rather than Carian can be construed from "to dive in" [Greek en (ἐν) in, and duein (δύειν) dive], which would imply a representation of that sort. Latin writers explained the name from somnum ei inductum, the "sleep put upon him."[19] The myth of Endymion was never easily transferred to ever-chaste Artemis, the Olympian associated with the Moon.[20] In the Renaissance, the revived moon goddess Diana had the Endymion myth attached to her. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endymion_(mythology) I gave a lot of thought to the above, one could carve a Shakespearean subplot giving the two massive depth of character on a Jungian level with the above. He would misidentify himself as Endymion, but she would be Selena. Attila dies of a nosebleed, and I think there is a myth attached to him that he is sleeping and will return someday..... anyway, there usually is to such steppe figures. One could twist this easily into a pretty riviting tragedy. I can see him explaining the murals on his wall, she interpreting them a very different way than him, a lover of true beauty, she seemingly herself as the myth simply not caring about him in it. I think of the donkey in the golden ass.... Machiavelli's version is the last I've read in some time, I see a big moon in the sky above as they move through the forest.

Baby Jesus, just like Will Ferral.