MilPub

Interesting story on the history blog regarding Herodotus, who some called the world's first historian.  Others apparently called him a fabricator.  And I have to admit that when I first read the story of 'gold-mining-ants' in his Histories I suspected he may have had one too many cups of grape.

And his description of  Egyptian 'baris' boats on the Nile that had no ribs, and dragged a two-talent (~52 kilograms) stone behind them on the river bottom, and were made of thorn trees took a lot of ribbing by those doubters who didn't believe such a craft ever existed.  But he has at last been exonerated by archeologists.  They excavated such a craft in the Nile Delta at Thonis-Heraclion.

  http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/54640#comments

Troop carriers perhaps?  Maybe not as they would have had to be towed upriver.  But going downriver that stone drogue being dragged behind would have made it a stable platform, slowed it down, and kept it in the main channel.  I've seen drift boats on the Wynoochee and Cowlitz rivers do something similar dragging a heavy chain on the bottom when fishing for salmon or steelhead.  Illegal as hell, and subject to heavy fine, but it's done anyway.

And the 'gold-mining-ants'  turned out to be somewhat true also - just a bad translation of the old Persian word for "marmot" with that for "mountain ant".  According to French ethnologist Michel Peissel anyway.  He says that local people in northern Pakistan have collected gold dust for many generations that had been inadvertently brought to the surface by marmots when digging their burrows.  

So I am confident that in the future there will be verification of some of Herodotus' other not-so-tall tales.  Maybe some budding archeologists can find traces of Phoenician sailors circumnavigating Africa two millennia prior to the Portuguese?

Or of Massegetae Queen Tomyris beheading Cyrus the the Great of Persia?   That may be a tough one as Cyrus' tomb was raided for grave goods and has lain empty of his bones for probably hundreds of years.   Plus Iran's Supreme Leader and his ayatollahs certainly won't allow any historical investigations about some female warrior besting  the man who has played such " a crucial role in defining the national identity of modern Iran."   Regardless, I'm waiting for the movie about Tomyris, starring the lovely and exotic Kazakhstanka Almira Tursyn.  To be released soon by KazakhFilm.

https://kazakh-tv.kz/en/view/culture/page_198349_a-historical-film-%E2%80%98tomiris%E2%80%99-is-nearing-its-completion

Update:   Xenophon claims Cyrus died peacefully in his sleep.   But he had no first hand knowledge, only what Cyrus the Younger told him.  But Cyrus the Younger was five or six generations removed and had an interest in vindicating the family name.  Sounds like a biased source to me.   I'll stick with Herodotus and the Kazakhs.

Buried under the flaming dumpster that is the Trump Shutdown was a pretty remarkable bit of policymaking that took place in Cairo the other day. SecState Pompeo delivered a little oration that was remarkable either for its' 1) mendacity, or 2) delusion. What fascinates me is that I'm honestly not sure which it represents.

You can read the full text of the remarks at the link, but the gist of Pompeo's remarks was that:

1. The U.S. is, and always has been, a "force for good" in the Middle East,
2. That Iran, OTOH, is massively evil and stinky and bad.
3. That Obama was almost as bad and stinky as Iran because he tippy-toed around in the Middle East while "apologizing" for bad U.S. behavior,
4. Unlike Trump, who is a real Man and loves him some muscular Christian war against eeeeevil Islamist terrorism and Iran,
5. That Real Muslims like y'all love, too!

Fred Kaplan sums up the problems with this nonsense better than I can, so I can't do better than quote him:

“America is a force for good in the Middle East,” Pompeo said at the start of his speech. But to the extent he defined good, it was solely in terms of helping certain allies (mainly Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia) while hurting certain enemies (ISIS, terrorists, and especially Iran). There was no recognition of complexity: Nothing was said about the Saudi bombing of Yemen (only Iran was painted as a force for bad, contrary to human-rights organizations); nothing was said about Trump’s divisions with Europe over Iran; nothing was said (one way or the other) about the role of Russia or Turkey in the Syrian conflict, or the Saudi murder of a U.S.-based journalist.

Obama may have been naïve in hoping that the pursuit of common ground and mutual interests might soothe the ancient tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims or upend the chessboard of Great Game geopolitics that have played on those tensions for centuries. But Pompeo’s speech makes clearer than ever that Trump has no interest in trying to soothe anything: He wants to take sides in the conflict, join the war—but even here, he has no idea how to do so with authority or effectiveness. He is indulging in partisan mythologies that bear little relation to the actual past and shed little insight on a fruitful way forward."

My question, though, is this - is this really "indulging in partisan mythologies"?

Or does this joker - and, by inference, his Orange Master - truly believe this nonsense?

I think the difference makes a difference, and that, in turn, goes back to the issue Andy raised in the comments several posts back about the difference between Trump and the Trumpkins words, and deeds.

If this Pompeo word salad is simply an attempt to blow more smoke up the Arab world's backside, that's one thing. Propaganda and blather can be simply the bodyguard of lies that can be re-arranged, or abandoned, as needed. A realistic Middle Eastern policy can be crafted with one hand whilst the other performs silly magic tricks to distract the rubes Arab "street".

But the precedent here is the Bushies. I truly believe that the bulk of the Bush cabal really, truly believed their neo-conservative nonsense about smoking guns and mushroom clouds and letting freedom reign. The cynics, the Cheneys, were the minority. I think the bulk of the Bush coterie were captured by their own rhetorical disinformation and air-castle fantasies.

The trouble with sussing out the difference is the long history of piss-poor U.S. geopolitical strategic thinking. It's damn deadly difficult to determine whether the mistakes are deliberate and caused by a boneheaded idee fixee' driven into the policymakers heads by some political philosophy (whether Ayn Randian free market fantasies or "liberal interventionist" fantasies really makes no nevermind...), or whether they were simply mistakes driven by poor intelligence analyses and craptacular institutional structures of the U.S. geopolitical decisionmaking apparatus.

I think it makes a big difference whether these people are the fools, or the fooled.

But I'm damned if I can figure out which.

Watching U.S. policy floundering in the Middle East is like watching the obsessive-compulsive t.v. character Monk walking a sidewalk.

He knows there are cracks, but he assiduously avoids stepping on them, his arduous crack-avoiding walk allowing him to maintain a measure of equanimity. He would deny that he's making any accommodation for something that is driving him mad -- he would deny even seeing the cracks -- and so it is with U.S. foreign policy. The fictional Monk is OCD, but how do we diagnose U.S. policy, one as bizarre as Mr. Monk's strange denial and sidesteps?

Our leaders have been all atwitter about the upswell of mob action in Egypt, elevating mobocracy to democracy. This ignores the reality that mob rule should not / cannot be tolerated by any government, democratic, autocratic or otherwise. The U.S. has never tolerated mob rule, nor should we.

The streets of Washington were planned with crowd control in mind. The School of the Americas at Ft. Benning taught crowd control as a basic element of foreign Army training. U.S. mobile training teams worldwide taught the host nation forces how to control crowds. Here in the States, elite Airborne Infantry units have performed domestic crowd control, and the National Guard is well-versed in the topic.

So . . . why is the U.S. so optimistic about riots and mobs in the streets of Cairo? Further, was Obama's 2009 Hope - Change Cairo speech the match to this tinderbox (Dictators and Hedgehogs)? We are inconsistent: The U.S. heralds mobs in one place yet quashes them in another, forcing the residents to accept rulers they do not want.

How can the U.S. disingenuously press on with its counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan in the face of such hypocrisy? It spends trillions of dollars forcing people not to be insurgent, while sitting back on its haunches calling mobs elsewhere constellations of freedom fighting? Furthermore, isn't a mob a form of Low-Intensity Conflict (LIC)?

Will we allow Sadrist mobs to control Baghdad? No, so why can mobs overthrow a regime in Cairo but not in Baghdad? If U.S. policy is to empower mobs, then COIN should be abandoned as dead-in-the-water.

We need to think versus reacting in a Pollyannaish, vacuous Katie Couric moment. We do not know where Egypt will end up, nor do we know if the results will be constructive or democratic. Additionally, we do not know if democracy in Egypt will benefit the U.S. On the pragmatic side: What leader will cast his lot in with us when he knows he will be tossed to the wolves after he has done our bidding for 30 years?

One thing is certain: Democracy does not prosper in mobs.

Talk amongst yourselves . . .

There are never any guarantees in the world, ever.

There is always the arrow that flieth by day and the terror by night. The flu germ. The cancer cell. The dead spot in the heart muscle.But just for today, just this very moment, let us celebrate with the people of Egypt their victory over the hand of thirty years of repression, nepotism, and corruption.

Tomorrow may bring regrets. Sorrow. Disappointment. For some of us tomorrow will not come at all.

But just for today, let's all just walk like an Egyptian.

I know this isn't a U.S. foreign policy site and I know I've been posting WAY too much about the current Egyptian situation, but...

I'm bird-mesmerized-by-snake fascinated by the dynamics of principle and power at play here.

Some time ago I thought that the end was clearly in view. The Egyptian Army had publicly refused to shoot down the opposition. This is typically The End for strongmen. It was when the Iranian Army stopped shooting the anti-Shah demonastrators that the Pahlevi "dynasty" was finished. When they knew that they couldn't trust their armed forces to protect them the Ben Ali forces were done in Tunisia just last month. So when Mubarak's Army stated that it would not shoot at "the Egyptian people" it seemed like a public endorsement of the end of Mubarakism.

Now things look less clear.

Mubarak has unleashed the "nuclear option" in the form of his own personal Basij. In this the Army has been at least complicit, and at worst supportive; soldiers around Tahrir Square have not stepped in to stop the counterattack, and while they have not shot at "the Egyptian people" they are clearly not interested in stopping others from doing so. So it now appears that the generals are hedging their bets to see if Mubarak's strongarm tactics will work.

The real loser here, regardless of what happens, is likely to be the U.S.

Given the position the U.S. has publicly taken there must now be some significant pain for the Mubarakites comensurate with their escalation of violence. This may be assumed to be the Obama Administration taking some harsh steps; cutting off all aid, or at least military aid, expelling Egyptian officers and troops from U.S. training courses, ending commercial and military ties.

Mark Lynch, who spends a good deal of time thinking about this area, says that the U.S. "...has no choice." but to do this:

"It must now make clear that an Egyptian regime headed by Hosni Mubarak is no longer one with which the United States can do business, and that a military which sanctions such internal violence is not one with which the United Staes can continue to partner. The Egyptian military must receive the message loudly, directly and clearly that the price of a continuing relationship with America is Mubarak's departure and a meaningful transition to a more democratic and inclusive political system. It must understand that if it doesn't do this, then the price will not just be words or public shaming but rather financial and political. If Mubarak remains in place, Egypt faces a future as an international pariah without an international patron and with no place in international organizations or forums."

I can see several ways that this will end badly;

1. Mubarak chooses, rather, to leave the U.S. orbit, and survives. We have a precedent here: Saddam post-1988. Not sure if we want a pissed-off despot with a chip on his shoulder alive and active in the eastern Levant.

2. Mubarak chooses to leave, and falls, but in such a way that his successor takes the credit rather than the U.S. Even worse, this successor may remember not the final dismissal but the years of U.S. support that preceded it.

3. Mubarak stays, acceeds to the U.S. demands, steps down, but is either succeeded by an Egyptian nationalist who chooses to focus on that U.S. support for his predecessor...or an outright radical...or no one - the national dissolves in chaos.

Over all I tend to agree with Lynch. If the U.S. fails to put the blocks to its client now it will forfeit any rights on the subject; we will be exposed as arrant liars and fools, we will look like the organ grinder made to dance as the monkey turns the handle, the slavemaster who bullies and threatens but cannot stop being defied and mocked by his own chattel.

But I think the lesson learned here is that any democracy that plots to make themselves "safer" by aiding in the oppression of others does, or should do, this with open eyes and the understanding that if you side with the slavers you should expect no mercy when Spartacus stands in your doorway with the sword red in his hand.

The U.S. that is trying to steer Egypt's government on moral and democratic behavior vis-a-vis their protesters and/or angry mobs is suffering a serious amnesia in regards to democratic behavior.

This amnesia is a result of the mass hysteria enveloping the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) which has allowed for the degradation of our founding principles. The U.S. is the apostle of international armed overreaction, yet we shamefacedly promote prudence to other nations. Our words do not accord with our actions. Likewise, no form of government should be expected to tolerate violent riots; democracy does not issue from this source.

Protesters do have a right of assembly if they are peaceful, yet in America we have created a new society in which protesters are limited to zones strictly cordoned off by the police. Protest around our leaders is not tolerated and protesters are routinely arrested and removed from public events -- a protest can be large but if avoided by the press, may as well have never happened.

Diligent reader and friend tw shared the non-coverage of an anti-war protest in D.C. last December, noted only, it seems, by a humble blogger:

"About 135 people were arrested yesterday in an anti-war protest outside the White House. This came as President Obama was revealing a new report that touted progress in the war in Afghanistan. ... (t)his act of civil disobediance [sic] and arrests apparently are [sic] not news.

"Those arrested included Pulitzer prize-winning war correspondent, Chris Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon papers, retired 27-year CIA analyst Ray McGovern, FBI whistleblower Colleen Rowley . . .(135 arrests in DC and that's not news)."

But while protest in America has died an ignominious death, the U.S. has the gall to encourage Egyptian leaders to accept protest of their government, all the while crouching like the Cheshire Cat, knowing the tanks and armaments wielded by the Egyptian authorities were fronted by them. Egyptian repression is facilitated by U.S. policy

Our advice is disingenuous. The U.S. has created phony villes of Democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan by the barrel of a gun and the bribe of cash and materiel, yet we would moralize to the Egyptians. The Egyptians, who have tortured prisoners for us in our extra-legal renditions.
We will use their non-democratic features when it behooves us, then come out from behind the skirt and admonish them to be kind and forbearing when their power structure is threatened.

U.S. tax dollars have funded and facilitated dictatorial brutality in the region, and we become poseurs when we pretend it is otherwise.

[Cross-posted @ RangerAgainstWar]