It's the Tribes, Stupid

Author Steven Pressfield gives the blogesphere a try with his newly launched site It's the Tribes, Stupid.

On the site he produced five videos, on his own dime, focusing on the Afghan (and Iraqi) conflicts and how the western forces must realize who we are fighting: The eastern tribesman. Pressfield makes the case that the US made a major mistake, blundering in and hoping the spread of democracy was going to be popular. Au contraire, these people do not want democracy, because they have a different way of viewing the world. Freedom for them has a different meaning. Democracy is a threat to rheir way of life and is to be fought off.

While researching Alexander the Great's conquest of Afghanistan, for his book The Afghan Campaign, Pressfield realized there were incredible similarities to the modern US action in that country.

I have a review of the book here: The Afghan Campaign by Steven Pressfield. (This is one of my most popular posts.)

For anybody interested in the conflict and open to alternative viewpoints, it's well worth your time to have a look. Personally, I think Pressfield's angle is the best explanation of why, after eight years in Afghanistan and six in Iraq, we are failing.

Popular Posts

I have some book and movie reviews coming up starting Monday. I'm frustrated and bored by the news lately, so I'm going to take the weekend to re-charge the batteries.

I want to take this opportunity to thank US military members on bases around the world who have read my book review of The Devil's Guard. It's my all time most popular post.

My second ranked is my review of The Afghan Campaign, by Steven Pressfield. I hope Mr. Pressfield reads my review, but I understand he has piles of fan emails to plow through.

The Afghan Campaign, A Novel By Steven Pressfield

After writing his novel, The Virtues of War, A Novel of Alexander the Great, Steven Pressfield decided to devote a new novel entirely to Alexander’s Afghan campaign 330-327 BC. (The Afghan Campaign, a Novel.) Unlike Virtues, we get the view from a regular serving soldier. It is meticulously researched, and you have the aid of maps at the front of the book to follow the action. With the NATO mission in Afghanistan going on in the present day, it is a timely read.

The narrator is Matthias, a Macedonian “scuff” who enlists into Alexander’s force after the glorious victories in Egypt, Arabia, Syria, Mesopotamia and Persia. This would not be the first war book, that features a character that has romantic notions of military service who gets disillusioned by the harsh realities. However, it is done well. The Macedonian, hence Greek view of war is one of honor. A pitched battle, despite the horrors, and violence is respectable. But for Matthias, the guerrilla campaign in Afghanistan is not this type of warfare. Mentally he is ill prepared for it.

I remember reading an article in 2001 before the US invasion of Afghanistan and they quoted an ex-Soviet general on his strategy for fighting there. He said “Lots of napalm.” The Soviets were in the exterminating business and saw that as the way to beat the insurgency.

So it goes with Alexander’s army of spears and swords. The enemy refuses to fight in the open and patiently retreats into the badlands, circling and waiting for a time to ambush. When they leave, almost by nature the locals engage in trade and are employed by the invading army. If it is not the opportunity to strike, they will cooperate. This confounds Alexander, because it is almost impossible to “win and secure” an area because the locals will turn coat on you as soon as it’s convenient. Hence, slaughter becomes the strategy.

Still green, Matthias and his team are ordered to execute some treacherous villagers. With no kills under his belt, as his colleagues hold down a grey haired old man, he is ordered gut him with a sword. Physically his body won’t let him do it and he botches the job. His squeamishness doesn’t last long when they discover mutilated, tortured, and burned bodies of Greek soldiers soon afterwards. (I won’t get graphic here, you can read that detail in the book.) The slaughter was perpetrated by women and children villagers. After that he kills willingly, aided by poppy seed chew and alcohol.

Guerrillas are caught and executed.

We kick down their gates and drag them into the dark. Orders have been issued not to put captives to the sword in front of their women. Better to haul them off into the desert, leaving their ends unknown; this produces a more abiding terror because of the natives’ belief in djinns and demons. The scent of blood draws wolves, who scavenge the corpses. The packs learn to follow us. Their yellow eyes glitter in the torchlight. They cannot be driven off, even when pelted by stones.

Matthius saves an Afghan girl from slavery, and from being beaten to death. He’s shocked to find out, rather than being grateful, her family wants her put to death in their twisted honor/shame code. This is an example of what the Afghans call A’shaara and it baffles the Macedonian occupier’s sensibility.

Alexander’s strategy is to co-opt as many Afghans as possible into his fighting force. It proves difficult, as observed with a new cavalry unit:

I am learning the Afghan mind and the tribal manner of expressing a thought. The brothers don’t mean their horses won’t let them. They mean their hearts won’t. Fighting Macedonian-style, as a unit, is unmanly in Afghan eyes. It lacks honor. It is effeminate. For the tribesmen of the steppe the object of battle is to count coup, to distinguish himself in the eyes of his fellows. The Daans have a phrase, ‘to kiss the mouth of death.” This is their warrior ideal. You cannot kiss the mouth of death except as an individual. So they won’t fight in wedges. They won’t charge boot to boot.

Ultimately this book is a gripping adventure. There are many counter-insurgency missions that keep you turning the pages. The locale is as terrifying as the locals: Huge mountains; snow squalls; and hot, ochre colored, barren deserts. Pressfield aims for realism, this is not a comic book. The hopelessness, and psychological pressure weigh on the reader.

Steven Pressfield on Democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan

Steven Pressfield has written two books about Alexander the Great: The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Greatand The Afghan Campaign: A Novel. While researching the projects, he couldn't help but see the parallels of what is going on today with the US interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. I found this op-ed he wrote in 2006.

The tribesman does not operate by a body of civil law but by a code of honor. If he receives a wrong, he does not seek redress. He wants revenge. The taking of revenge is a virtue in tribal eyes, called badal in the Pathan code of nangwali. A man who does not take revenge is not a man. Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and the sectarian militias of Iraq are not in the war business, they are in the revenge business. The revenge-seeker cannot be negotiated with because his intent is bound up with honor. It is an absolute.

Perhaps the most telling difference between the citizen and the tribesman lies in their views of the Other. The citizen embraces multiplicity; to him, the melting pot produces richness and cultural diversity. To the tribesman, the alien is not even given the dignity of being a human being; he is a gentile, an infidel, a demon.

The tribesman grants justice within the tribe. In his internal councils, empathy, humor and compassion may prevail. Outside the tribe? Forget it. Can Shiites really sit down with Sunnis? Will the pledges of Hezbollah or Hamas to Israel prove true?
The democratic virtues of the Enlightenment, the Rights of Man and the American Constitution are not virtues to the tribesman. They are effeminate. They lack warrior honor. "Freedom" to the tribesman means the extinction of all he and his ancestors hold dear; "democracy" and Western values are a mortal threat to the ancient and proud way of life that the tribal mind has embraced (whether Scythian nomads, Amazon warriors, or American Indians) for tens of thousands of years.

Here is another essay on tribalism he wrote earlier: It's the Tribes Stuipid.

Book Review Blitz

There are a that I’ve read over the year that I’d like to recommend. Since I read them a while ago, and had no idea I’d be blogging, I never took notes and my memory isn’t clear enough for a full review of them. So I thought I would do a quick hit blitz of books that I particularly enjoyed.

I’m a big fan of Amazon. It’s a great place to buy for the discounts and for the reference software they have. If you create a profile, they will recommend books that fit your reading pattern. I have found so many great books this way.

So here are a few I recommend:

Amazon.com	Darkness at Noon, by Arthur Koestler Many people recognize this title but it seems not many people I talk to have read it. An old Bolshevik revolutionary, Rubashov, now a Soviet official, is falsely accused of treason and sent to stand trial. It is a fictional account of the famous Stalinist Show Trials of the 1930’s. The party wants him to publically confess to trumped up crimes before his execution. How do they get him to do it? This is a brilliant book about idealism and humanity.
Amazon.com	Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, by Simon Sebag Montefiore After reading Darkness at Noon I went out and bought this Stalin biography. It’s an account of life inside the Kremlin with Stalin’s top officials and his inner-circle. As the back cover says: “Who were his Himmler, Goring, Goebbels? How did the ‘top ten’ families live?” The paranoia, intrigue and executions. What was behind the decision making? … Stalin was an evil genius.
Amazon.com	The Company, by Robert Littell This was a beautiful accident. I picked it up on a whim at the bookstore. I had never heard of it or the author. It’s a fictional account of the CIA from its foundations in World War II through to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The tragedy is the pattern of American meddling. The CIA, for example, encouraged a revolt in Hungary in ’56 and an attack on Cuba in ’61 both with disastrous consequences for people they were trying to help. The weakness of democracy is that it’s hard to see projects like this through when the going gets tough. The Soviets are much better at espionage but their system was ultimately unsustainable. Littell wrote a follow up novel, Legends, continuing with the CIA after the Cold War. Though shorter, it is just as great.
Amazon.com	Tides of War: A Novel of Alcibiades and the Peloponnesian War, by Steven Pressfield I was sold on Pressfield after Gates of Fire, the historical novel about the famous battle at Thermopylae in 480BC between the Spartans and Persians. In Tides of War, he gets more ambitious and covers the prolonged Peloponnesian War 431-404BC between Sparta and Athens, from the Athenian point of view. At first I couldn’t help but think of it in a 20th century context: Britain (Athens), a democracy and great mercantile sea power, vs. Germany (Sparta,) a rigid, authoritarian society with a fearsome land army. However, I came to see it as an examination of the flaws of a democratic power when trying to fight wars. The Spartan general, Lysander, has a speech on how to defeat the Athens demos not by big victory but by holding off and playing for time. “For every hour we deprive the foe of victory is another we turn his own strength against him.” North Vietnam said the same thing about the Americans… A bonus about this book is the wonderful maps of the Mediterranean, in and around ancient Greece, to help you follow the battles.
Amazon.com	Berlin Noir, Philip Kerr Another wonderful accident, this is three novels in one. They are about private investigator Bernie Gunther during the late 30’s in Nazi Germany. As I mentioned before on this site, I enjoy the noir genre, and with Berlin as the backdrop I knew I had to buy it. Gunther has witty one liners that surpass Chandler's Marlowe. Many top Nazi officials make appearances. The Nazis had a gothic/occult revival going, with Himmler as the main enthusiast. Kerr exploits this to the fullest.