[Vision2020] What Would George, Abe, and Genghis Have Done?

[Bill London]

My thanks to Nick and all those who forward interesting articles like this
one to V2020.
For me, V2020 has become an auxilliary newspaper, with these cherry-picked
features
BL




----- Original Message ----- 
From: <nickgier at adelphia.net>
To: <vision2020 at moscow.com>
Sent: Friday, December 29, 2006 11:33 AM
Subject: [Vision2020] What Would George, Abe, and Genghis Have Done?


> December 29, 2006,  10:22 am
> The New York Times
> What Would Genghis Do?
>
> The Los Angeles Times op-ed page convenes a panel of four historians to
discuss how a great military leader of the past might have handled the Iraq
war. Joseph Ellis, writing about George Washington, acknowledges the
ridiculousness of the exercise, . . . [but]still takes a stab at finding a
usable history lesson from Washington’s life. He writes:
>
>     Like the British decision to subjugate the American colonies, the Bush
decision to democratize Iraq has been misguided from the start. The
administration never appreciated the odds against its success, and it
disastrously confused conventional military superiority with the demands
imposed on an army of occupation.
>
>     No man in American history understood those lessons better than
Washington, who viewed them as manifestations of British imperial arrogance,
which he described as “founded equally in Malice, absurdity, and error.” If
dropped into Baghdad, he would weep at our replication of the same imperial
scenario.
>
> Harold Holzer, the author of “Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech that
Made Abraham Lincoln President,” finds the lessons easier to draw. He
writes:
>
>     So what might Lincoln do today?
>
>     First, focus on the real enemy: terrorists. When advisors suggested he
start a war with England merely to woo patriotic Southerners back into the
Union, Lincoln replied: “One war at a time.” He also rejected adventurism
against French-controlled Mexico. Today Lincoln would fight only the war
that needs fighting.
>
>     Second, embrace flexibility. Seek the right generals, strategies,
troop levels and weaponry, and be willing to change course and personnel
swiftly.
>
>     Third, communicate objectives with frequency, passion and precision.
No one can match Lincoln’s eloquence, but no president should abandon
Lincoln’s commitment to engage the public.
>
>     Fourth, spend more time at the front. Lincoln visited the troops
often, absorbing their pain and boosting their morale. Maybe his case was
better, but his manner of symbolizing it was best.
>
>     Finally, abandon the notion of divine will to justify war. Even the
pious Lincoln came to realize it was fruitless, even sacrilegious, to invoke
God as his ally. “In great contests each party claims to act in accordance
with the will of God,” he lamented. “Both may be, and one must be, wrong.”
As Lincoln understood: “The Almighty has his own purposes.”
>
> Adrian Goldsworthy, author of “Caesar: Life of a Colossus,” suggests that
Julius Caesar would have won the war but that the United States might not
prefer to have Caesar in charge. After all, “He left Gaul to make war on his
own country.”
>
> But if not Caesar, how about Genghis Khan? Jack Weatherford, author of
“Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World,” thinks the Mongol empire
wasn’t as tyrannical as it is remembered. Weatherford writes:
>
>     The Mongols spared anyone with a craft, such as carpentry, writing,
pottery, weaving or metal working. They fiercely enforced religious freedom,
which created an essentially secular state. In Baghdad, they gave many of
the caliph’s palaces to Mongol allies for more practical uses. They lowered
taxes for merchants and eliminated them for religious, medical and
educational professionals. They educated women along with men. For all
subjects, they instituted harsh laws enforced equally under nearly
incorruptible officials.
>
>     Fundamentalist Muslims look back at Mongol secularism as a scourge.
But, although U.S. rule in Iraq has produced a constant flow of refugees,
particularly religious minorities, out of the country, under Mongol rule
Christian, Muslim, Jewish and even Buddhist immigrants poured into the newly
conquered Iraq to live under the Great Law of Genghis Khan. It was said that
during this time a virgin could cross the length of the Mongol Empire with a
pot of gold on her head and never be molested.
>
>     By the time of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the political
achievements of the Mongols had been forgotten, and only the destructive
fury of their wars was remembered. Yet under the Mongols — and the legacy of
Genghis Khan — Iraq enjoyed a century of peace and a renaissance that
brought the region to a level of prosperity and cultural sophistication
higher than it enjoyed before or after. Any country with a bent for empire
could do worse than learn from Genghis Khan.
>
>
>
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