Great Captains - Hannibal

Hannibal is a difficult topic for discussion; since his successes were so enormous but yet did not produce a successful strategic result. A sort of extremely efficient and mortifying terrorist is perhaps a decent way to describe this legendary figure. Hannibal managed to face a technologically superior foe with better troops and best him on repeated occasions. Dodge suggests that Hannibal is sort of the birth of our modern conceptions of tactics and strategy, for in teaching the Romans how to fight wars he also was teaching all future western generations.

With his first 4 major victories he showed the Romans that "there is something in the art of war beyond merely marching out to your enemy and beating him by numbers, better weapons, or greater discipline." As much as Caesar or Augustus or Octavian Rome has Hannibal to thank for its transcendence; for such grander conquests would not be possible without learning first from an utterly exceptional leader.

Perhaps the most interesting aspects of Hannibal come from modern comparisons; how would a tactically inept, well constructed, well armed force fare against an extremely competent commander in charge of a heterogeneous force? In some ways we already have our answers; in the Korean and Vietnam wars an absurdly superior force was ably defeated, albeit not without cost. Of course Hannibal's campaigns were in enemy territory, against vastly more numerous forces.

The famed Battle of Cannae is discussed at length by Dodge; as by anyone else who discusses Hannibal. It is perhaps the foremost example of a numerically inferior force winning purely on the strength of tactical ingenuity; and not only winning but completely slaughtering the opposition. The standard idea that the center "must not fall" is turned on its head in this battle where the powerful flanks decide the outcome instead of the core conflict; the battle even  utilizes the hotheadedness of the opposing commander effectively. With 30-50,000 men Hannibal completely eradicated a force of 60-80,000; the roman legions' most embarassing loss in history.

Most interesting about this battle is the composition of Hannibal's force; with soldiers from Gaul, Spain, Carthage, Nubia, and other parts of North Africa; this is perhaps the most effective truly diverse force in the history of warfare. Even going to the Eastern commanders only the Mongolian hordes have similar amounts of diversity in their eventual conquering forces; though mainly due to necessity. One wonders how World War 2 would have gone if the Germans had been able to fully utilize their Italian, Romanian, and Hungarian allies. Even Napoleon himself frequently refers to the absolute inferiority of non French soldiers; this is a very common theme throughout history where the strongest force is the most ethnocentric one; but Hannibal just completely ignored that concept and was extremely successful as a result. Such a leader's communication abilites are beyond compare; to fully utilize such a diverse force effectively is incomprehensible.

Following Cannae Hannibal was offered a choice: to attack Rome immediately or instead wait for reinforcements from Carthage /defections of the Italian supporting states. However one does not lay siege to a million strong city with a force of 35,000 so his method of attack would have had to have been quite interesting. The various wars in China frequently had to deal with the issue of besieging a fortified city, as almost every large city in China had enormous, even unnecessarily large walls. So perhaps if Hannibal had been privy to Chinese sieging methods and tactical ingenuity he may have been able to take Rome; but it is certain that with western methods the task was impossible.

Instead Hannibal roamed the Italian countryside for 13 years; the Romans became more and more effective but still dared not face him in combat even with ridiculous numerical and functional superiority; this is where his existence as a terrifying being came to be; why the name of Hannibal still has tremendous connotations to this day. In some ways this is even better than Napoleon's numerous successes in the battles after Waterloo; where he frequently bested numerically superior forces and the "best strategy" became attacking where Napoleon wasn't. Dodge stipulates that he was able through being the original master from whom the Romans learned the art of war to completely stagnate the opposition; to prevent them from taking any truly offensive action. To forge for one's self an image of invincibility is a core component of any great commander's strategy; and Hannibal was the foremost at this aspect.

Frank Thomas

The Big Hurt

Today is a good day, today Frank Thomas went into the hall of fame on the first ballot with a solid 83.7% of the vote. While there's lots to say about the ballot and the general silliness of Bonds and Clemens not being in the Hall of Fame I'm still extremely happy. When I was growing up Frank Thomas was easily the best player in the league, and thus I became a White Sox fan; and through thick and thin (63-99 this year) I still am. Miraculously we did win a World Series on the way and Frank was on that team (albeit injured for much of the season); which was the most exciting baseball thing ever to occur.

When Frank started being injured in the late 90's/early 2000's my interest in baseball waned; meanwhile Bonds had the 4 best offensive seasons of all time and I only watched parts of the last one in 2004. I didn't have cable for a while so watching baseball was challenging to say the least and without Frank being there it never felt quite right. Of course he came back and had a really good end to his career with excellent seasons in Oakland and Toronto; despite him not being on the White Sox at the time I was still really invested in his performance.

Fortunately we eventually got TBS and WGN so I was able to watch a fair number of White Sox, Cubs, and Braves games and even tuned in to watch Randy Johnson's perfect game in 2004. Still, an entire 3-4 years was lost solely due to the incredible presence of Frank Thomas missing or being injured; that is how influential he was on my baseball life. A naturally enormous person who spoke out against steroids when no one cared, now he gets in on the first ballot as a result. Note: I don't actually care about steroids but it definitely swung Frank from a 76-77% of the vote type of guy to an 80-85% type; so that's pretty cool.

I don't even have to look up his stats, .301 batting average, 512 Homers, 1701 RBI; he's easily the best offensive player of the 1990s and just an utter beast. One of the best right handed hitters of all time gets his due, and I think for the first time the White Sox have a first ballot HoFer; though we have had quite famous borderline cases such as Minnie Minoso and even Harold Baines. Baines might eventually get in on the Veteran's committee and he'll have Frank to thank, he is the first DH for the majority of his career to make the Hall and sort of paves the way for David Ortiz, Edgar Martinez, and Harold Baines in the future.

Great Captains - Alexander

I have an enormous amount of respect for anyone who attempts to identify, let alone describe, the greatest commanders in history. The man in consideration today did so 124 years past in the grand old year of 1889 (not to be confused with 1898, Remember the Maine). He is our present day prototypical military history "buff" with a great attention to commanders of the west and none whatsoever considering the east. He also has a short lived military career, as one might expect; a veritable American Clausewitz with not so impressive an impact (though certainly deserving of no disparagement on the line of Clause either). He gave 6 hour long lectures considering Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Gustavus, Frederick, and Napoleon and eventually went on to write books about each of them, dying before completing the last sections on Frederick the Great. The term "Great Captain"* appears to be Napoleonic in origin or at least frequency, now we haven't such exalted terms to deal with commanders. I shall write a critique of each of Dodge's six lectures in order, beginning with Alexander; both as a better means to digest the information therein and as an exercise in potential future endeavours (though I do consider the east in my own deliberations).

* Napoleon himself identified Turenne (and possibly Prince Eugene) also as a Great Captain, whether this be French bias or an actual veritable selection is worth consideration.

Firstly, I fully admit to not knowing a great deal about Alexander and this continues to be a bit of a gap in my scope of knowledge (though knowing a great deal about Toyotomi Hideyoshi, King Wen, Wu Qi, and Cao Ah Man should suffice). But there does seem to be this pervasive element that persists even today citing Alexander as the "greatest," while he may have been the first of his kind in the West he was also facing largely inferior tactically incompetent commanders. Now this is where the argument begins, does his being the first ingenious tactician make it implicit that all other such tacticians stem from his accomplishments. Can all tactical innovation stem from one man? In a word, no, but the great leaps forward no doubt come from individuals of extreme competence placed in fortunate positions. The slow methodical evolution of warfare is undeniable, but so is its stagnation in the absence of true greatness.

Dodge's descriptions of Alexander focus on one key battle at the Hydapses; perhaps against Alexander's most skilled foe, Porus of India. Here he executed an exceptional strategic maneuver in crossing an ostensibly unfordable river unopposed and further executed a masterful tactical maneuver in outflanking the opponent's nigh invincible front (composed of 200 Elephants and 30,000 infantry); however it does seem that the opponent failed miserably on both the strategic and tactical fronts. This does not disparage Alexander's extraordinary performance nor the importance of the battle itself in a historical context, it simply brings forth the question: What if Alexander had faced a truly competent opponent? One can never say.

Following the descriptions of the battle Dodge quickly goes into a slew of praises and mild criticism, the lack of permanence of the Greek Empire evidently falls solely on Alexander's shoulders here; as does a certain over-lust for war in place of cultural innovation. This is a common theme no doubt, but I think the main issue is that Alexander died young, not that he would be incapable of creating a massive cultural restructuring of the known world. He also highlights that Alexander was prone to anger which is kind of crippling on the military front against a truly skilled adversary; however Dodge also says that "we can discover in him no military weakness." Thus, Dodge is too prone to praising Alexander on the military front and too prone to criticizing him on the domestic front, this is a very common historical outlook on Alexander and no doubt at least partially stems from Dodge's source materials; but I think it is somewhat short-sighted. A man of Alexander's competence could perhaps achieve almost anything if he set his mind to it and received no great ill-fortune along the way; but he was extremely fortunate in war and battle in terms of the capabilities of the opposition and extremely unfortunate in terms of the circumstances of his death (though perhaps his own excesses caused this premature downfall).

Begging the Question

I've been reading Aristotle's Metaphysics, which is in some sense the basis of Western philosophy. In the present translation by one Hippocrates G. Apostle (yes that's the name of a dude who lived in the 20th century) there's an inclusion of the concept of begging the question. When I took philosophy courses this was one of two constant paradigms that we would come across. The first is that Determinism is both universal and indefatigable. You can deny determinism but you can't disprove determinism so that the end result suggest something akin to determinism is extant. The other is that one can't make a philosophical argument that doesn't conclude with the same precise reasoning that initiated the argument (if p therefore q, q being a derivation of p).

This was always interesting to me, that every core philosophical argument like John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism or Bentham's irrefutable nonsense has this same issue. You can sort of disguise this or create an elaborate web in which other reasonings are included, but the core principal lies the same; the human brain seems unable to create a boundless argument in such a way that the beginning formulation is not in some way reflected almost exactly as a core component of the ending formulation. What I mean by boundless is that the argument in and of itself doesn't occur in a physical reality; it doesn't utilize or base itself on things that happened or will happen, it bases itself on the general descriptions of things as a whole.

Note I don't think either Determinism or Begging the Question negate the need for Philosophy; all men seek some sort of greater purpose in their actions, no matter how fleeting or frivolous. I simply think that we are incapable of doing so without using the basis of our own knowledge; in some sense "Thinking outside the box" is an impossibility; of course your core thought processes will be based on your own experiences. It is quite an interesting conundrum. Philosophy is something I value quite highly though I doubt my capacity to improve upon this all-encompassing flaw.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

If there's one thing you can rely on with extremely stupid titles it's that they'll state the title verbatim in the movie somewhere, and this middling middle chapter is no exception. This movie has the same problems that the first film did but I think there's a little less action on the whole so it winds up being slightly worse. I suppose you could also say that nothing actually happens over the course of the movie other than they walked for a while; the LoTR paradigm, but it's probably the worst in this rendition.

However apart from the obvious issues I still enjoyed my time watching the film. The action scenes are entertaining, the movies is reasonably humorous, and the Jesus imagery is now split between two characters instead of emblazoned on the Oakenshield solely (note: every human male hero in Peter Jackson's Tolkien adapatations is basically an image of Jesus). I don't necessarily mind this it just gets a little overbearing a la the Matrix Revolutions. A film like Gladiator does Jesus imagery pretty damn well (if unintentionally), and Braveheart does it pretty good too; nothing wrong with pseudo Jesus archetypes, but if you drag it out for too long it just gets sort of cheesy and irritating.

The Elves are probably the coolest cats in the movie because they're not boring ass elves like they were in every other movie; Thran is a mean, greedy, old isolationist (which is semi-accurate) and speaks authoritatively, Lego is pissed off the whole time and the poor goblins/orcs don't stand a chance, invented Elvish chick is sort of swashbuckling. They don't have an overbearing tragic arc like the Dwarves do and they're just fun to watch. Want to watch Legolas casually murder 30 dudes? This is the movie for you!

I suppose that leads into another problem the film has, the villains just have no credibility up until Smaug, Smaug is great but he's only in like 30-45 minutes of the movie; for the rest of the time any obstruction or sideplot is just like a measly tapestry flailing in the wind; swiftly passed and swiftly forgotten. I thought they did the Nazgul really fucking well in Fellowship, enough so that they had credibility when they were in CGI land later in the series; Saruman was intimidating, the Eye was kind of cool. I guess ultimately I know that Dol Guldur doesn't really amount to anything in the course of the Hobbit so that whole bit falls flat since they're just alluding to shit that doesn't happen for 50 years the whole time.

Overall I like this movie, but it could be an hour shorter and they could have done the Hobbit in either 1 3 hour bigass movie or 2 1 hour 40 minute tightly paced movies; you don't need 3. They sure made it to Erebor though! It is worth noting that the visuals and cinematography are excellent, and the music is different enough to be interesting, but you kind of need something momentous to happen over the course of the plot. The Two Towers was way better.

Heart of Darkness and Leadership

I've been rereading this masterpiece by one Joseph Conrad and as one is want to do while reading exceptional literature have reflected on it. Heart of Darkness is extremely influential in all forms of media, the dichotomous representation of the Congo vs the Thames, the deterioration as one nears the farthest reaches away from civilization, and the awe inspiring presence of an exceptional man in an exceptional place. Kurtz, or perhaps simply the descriptions provided by Marlowe discussing Kurtz, is one of the greatest characters in literature. Unlike say Iago from Shakespeare's Othello, Kurtz is much more well founded let's say, a man of rarity but not impossibility. Iago has total, even supernatural control of men's fates in Othello, but Kurtz is limited and even waylaid by misfortune despite his incredible capabilities.

It is impossible to say who Conrad was describing in this, a person he knew, himself, or some one he believed was pertinent to society? There are many great leaders throughout history and they all have that sort of insatiable charisma that Kurtz had, the ability to inspire even senseless devotion even in a situation where society is no longer extant in any modern sense. Hitler, Napoleon, Alexander (who also died of illness), each of these men and more are reflected in Kurtz.

While self deification is a questionable practice there can be no doubt that one finds Kurtz to be the loftiest of individuals. He doesn't have any grand possessions, he simply has the capacity to inspire people through his personality and his fearlessness; if one wishes to become an exceptional leader one need only follow the example of Kurtz. Perhaps you will not be so unfortunate as to catch debilitating sicknesses along the way.

A most interesting facet of Kurtz is that he does not possess anything save for power, and modern representations of "great" men in American society certainly have wealth but they do not have real, impressive power.  Indeed, Wealth is something that people covet, they lust for, they yearn after. Power is something that people fear, they stray from, they quiver in the face of. Power is elusive in American society because everything is a nonsensical mesh of mysteriousness, who can say what organization wields actual power and what solitary figure controls those machinations. There is no such figure, there is no potential for such a figure, no need for a great leader at any point save when society begins to break down at which point one might arise for a brief period. Even in other countries this is a frequent occurrence. So what then do great men do when there is no viable use for their existence? Only to wait and hope I think, to wait and hope.

Aside: I found this article to be interesting, though the point is an obvious and unnecessary one the writer still conveys the necessary deference to Conrad prior to disparaging him.

AC4 Multiplayer Map Discussion

I've been playing ACIV lately which has just stupendous singleplayer but the multiplayer is a little screwy at present, that said the maps are fairly decent and I posted a large review of them on their feedback thread here if you're interested (I'll see if I can get it modified so it doesn't look like crap on the blog).