The fox knows many tricks, the hedgehog one good one.
–Archilochus of Paros, poet and mercenary of the 7th Century B.C.E.
Most of us have certain concepts of honor (a difficult word to use with a straight face these days) that we carry around in our heads and even, perhaps, base our thoughts and actions upon. We aim to do what we believe is “right” and we try to avoid doing what we think is “wrong” or “dishonorable.”
But where do these concepts come from?
Are they universal?
Does everyone in the world subscribe to them?
I don’t think so.
In fact, I think our Western notions of honor are specific to Western culture and Western civ.
Was there ever a battle that illustrated this more than Thermopylae?
Consider the notion of heroes (the Spartans and their Greek allies) and villains (the Persians and armies conscripted from the empire.)
Start with the opposing kings …
One watches the battle from a throne, safe from all harm. The other fights in the trenches alongside his countrymen.
To us in the West, Xerxes was a coward and Leonidas a hero. But from the Eastern point of view, their king was a semi-divine figure. By watching from afar, he acted as a kind of god, inspiring his men and giving them courage by his witness. For him to hazard his flesh on the battlefield would have been an affront to heaven.
How about stakes?
To our Western eyes, the enemy was invading to take away our freedom, to destroy the concept of democracy, and to enslave us all.
But to Xerxes’ eyes and those of his followers, their army was invading Greece to avenge a wrong that had been done to them by the forces of Athens, who had burned one of their subject cities, Sardis. Worse, the Greeks refused to submit to the King of Kings, who ruled by divine dispensation. The Greeks were in defiance of heaven.
How about the way the different sides fought?
To Western eyes the Persian use of missile weapons—arrows, slung stones, flung lances—or the rush-and-retreat assault by cavalry was cowardly. Because the man who struck did so from a distance and without risking his own life. Noble youths of Persia were taught
to draw the bow and speak the truth.
To Persian eyes, the Greek method of close-quarters fighting in armor was barbaric, not to say plain crazy. It lacked grace and dignity. It required no skill, only stubborn, mulish tenacity.
That’s us, today.
That’s where our notions of honor come from, whether we realize it or not.
The quotation that starts this episode comes from the mercenary and poet, Archilochus, one of my favorites. I used it as the epigraph, the opening quote, in Gates of Fire.
The fox knows many tricks; the hedgehog one good one.
The fox was the Persians. In fighting, they had scores of ways to attack — on horseback, with the bow, with the flung lance, with foot archers, etc. etc.
The hedgehog was the Spartans and the allied Greeks. In fighting the hedgehog backs into a defensible position on the ground and fights from there. You can’t get behind him, you can’t get beneath him, you have to attack head-on … and in that kind of fighting the hedgehog is ferocious.
That was the Spartans. They knew how to stand and hold their ground. From behind the wall of their shields, if they could maintain it, they could kill you all day long and you couldn’t get to them.
The other aspect of Sparta/Greek/hedgehog fighting was that it was head-on, straight-up. It’s a firepower concept, a sledgehammer concept, as opposed to an agility point of view or hide-and-seek or attrition warfare.
Have we in the West changed or evolved from that? Consider how the U.S. fought in Vietnam with huge bases, airpower, and “enclaves.” Or in Iraq in Desert Storm and post-9/11. Or Afghanistan. Or even how NATO plans to contest an invasion from Russia or the U.S. Navy anticipates war at sea with China.
Our Western notions of what is effective (and what is honorable) have not changed since Archilochus’ hedgehog. We’ll talk about that more in the next episode.
Steve,
Refreshing to try to think of the battle from the Persians’ perspective of duty, honor, country. I found this to be easier to do while listening to this than (insert embarrassed emoji) it has been for me to try to see things from the perspective of political ‘adversaries’ here in US the past few months.
I had a similar short-lived epiphany when reading “Hunting the Caliphate” by MG(R) Dana Pittard and Msgt(R) Wes Bryant. Great read, from the senior officer and senior NCO, each chapter a different perspective. At one point, MG Pittard is trying to get the Obama Administration to ‘pay attention’ to ISIS to little success or avail. I felt the frustration and rage against the indifference of politicians viscerally.
Then, in a flash, I thought, “Oh. Maybe this is how – insert any disenfranchised demographic – must feel about – insert any administration’s lack of effort on their behalf.”
Collective vs Individual sovereignty is an argument that will likely continue as long as man exists. I think the answer is found between the tension somewhere. Is the Divine within or from above? How should leaders behave?
All of my instructors at DLI in Monterey were all native Russians. Something many of them noted was that the Russian people liked a ‘strong leader’, insinuating that the Russian people preferred Autocrats over the Western ‘soft’ leaders of democracies. Hard to understand from our perspective, but interesting and insightful nonetheless.
A timely post and exercise in cognitive jiu jitsu as we come out of an increasingly hyperbolic and irrational election season.
Thanks.
bsn
OK, I’ll take point…
Perhaps “honor” depends on how the war is conducted?
Go back to 2007 when the Air Force wanted to award their drone operators (sitting comfortably in an air-conditioned stateside office and going home nightly to wife and children) a just-released ‘Combat Action Medal’ on the idea they “actively participated in either air or ground combat.” The other service members, notably the Marines and Soldiers living and fighting in Iraq and Afg’s heat, dirt, squalor, and real combat, rightly howled their opposition.
Are drone operators combatants, in the historic sense? Hell NO! But then I was 2x in vics that were IED’d (Ramadi and Helmand), so I believe you’re not in combat if you have no risk of being killed.
I’ll also argue the West has lost it’s way in warfare. While drones, HIMARS, Cyber, etc are using technology to defeat the enemy and keep our KIA/WIA counts as low as possible, we’ve far overdone the comfort factor. Both Bagram and KAF had Burger King, Orange Julius, Tim Hortons, Starbucks, Harley Davidson, beauty parlors, and others catering to keeping our newest generation of combat troops comfortable. The Pentagon today is more able of a way to manage a war than fight one, and there’s really no honor in being a manager.
Next up…?
The angle that caught my attention in this one was “different types of combat.” It brought to mind a book I enjoyed a long time ago, Richard Bach’s novel “One.” In the story, he and Leslie are flying in their seaplane and somehow get caught in a space that’s in-between time and place, between multiverses. Wherever they land on this vast shallow sea, with apparent webs underneath looking like connected sandbars, they fall into some alternate universe and meet other versions of themselves — another present, a distant past, a far future.
In one chapter, they’d landed in a world that had transformed the practice of war. Nations still had air forces and armies and navies, but “combat” had evolved. Those competitions between nations were now acted out for global network broadcast, like a military ESPN, like a giant paintball game.
Richard and Leslie are talking to the alternate versions of themselves. They asked “Linda” how their world was able to transform. I transcribe:
***
Linda: “We had wars, too, years ago. World wars, till we knew the next one would be the end of us.”
“What did you do? How did you stop?”
“We didn’t stop,” she said. “We changed.”
She smiled, remembering. “The Japanese started it all, selling cars. Thirty years ago, Matsumoto got into air-racing in America — a publicity stunt, they put the Sundai automobile engine into a raceplane. They mounted microcameras in the wings for the National Air Races, shot some good footage and turned it into the first Sundai Drive commercials. Nobody cared that they finished fourth, Sundai sales went out of sight.”
“That changed the world?”
“Slow-motion, it did.”
“Along came Gordon Bremer, the airshow promoter, got the idea to put TV microcams and laser-tally guns in showplanes, laid down the rules, offered big prizes for air combat pilots. It was a local show for about a month or so, then all of a sudden, air combat was a spectator sport like nothing you’ve ever seen.”
***
https://archive.org/details/onenovel00bach/page/144/mode/2up
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