Zenpundit

My home blog is Zenpundit - devoted to history, defense policy, foreign policy, strategic theory, futurism, cognition, education and such esoteric subjects that manage to catch my eye. I teach, consult and write the occasional article.

New Series on Islamist Terrorism

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A new series on Islamist terrorism at Zenpundit.

Charles Cameron, former Senior Analyst with The Arlington Institute and Principal Researcher with the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University. He specializes in forensic theology, with a deep interest in millennial, eschatological and apocalyptic religious sects of all stripes.

Charles will be doing a series of guest posts at Zenpundit that will drill down into the important but often elusive religious-cultural connections that impact American national security and foreign policy issues.

First post:

Guest Post: Speak the Languages, Know the Modes of Thought

…..A couple of other recent items in the news about languages and translation at home and abroad should concern us.A report from the US Department of Justice on the FBI’s Translation Project was less than enthusiastic, not only finding that significant quantities of material collected in the Bureau’s highest-priority counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence collection categories were never evaluated, but that the number of translators inn the FBI pool had diminished since a 2005 audit, that in 2008 the FBI met its hiring goals for linguists in only 2 of its 14 critical languages, that security clearance and language proficiency training for a new linguist took 19 months before hiring could take place, and that 70 percent of the FBI’s own linguists in the field offices tested did not attend the FBIs required training course.
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Marching Upcountry with Xenophon

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The Xenophon Roundtable is coming to it’s conclusion. While we may see a few more “final” posts this week, for the most part, we have had our say. This was the third roundtable hosted by Chicago Boyz and the discussion was different in character from the first two because The Anabasis of Cyrus is of a different nature than On War or Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd. The first two books dealt with military theory but The Anabasis was not written by a professor of strategic studies or of military history, which Frans Osinga and even Carl von Clausewitz were. By contrast, Xenophon was an Athenian aristocrat at odds with democratic times, a brave soldier of fortune and foremost, a student of Socrates.

Xenophon the Socratic soldier and admirer of Sparta would never have written a book like On War because the character of war would have been of less interest to him than the character of men who waged it. Or at least the character of the Greeks who waged war and that of the leaders of the barbarian armies, Cyrus, Tissaphernes and Artaxerxes (ordinary, individual, barbarians are of no consequence to Xenophon except insofar as they are instrumental in carrying out the designs of their leaders). And their character at war and in peace were inseparable and constant, though having different effects, as Xenophon explained in his passages on Clearchus and his captains and his paean to Cyrus the Younger. It has been remarked in this roundtable by Joseph Fouche that Xenophon was thoroughly Greek in his attitude toward the barbarians which Joseph Fouche called a “mirror image” to the attitude of Herodotus toward the Others of the East. I agree, to an extent. The countervailing example though is Cyrus, on whom Xenophon lavished praise with so heavy a hand that it must have struck Athenian eyes as bordering on sycophancy toward a would-be basileus. Few Greek writers, other than Herodotus, were ever so generous with their pen to a barbarian.

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The Temptation of Xenophon

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The Anabasis of Cyrus, Book VI. Chapter 1.

“As they were thinking about all this, they began to turn to Xenophon. The captains approached him and said that army was of this judgment, and each showed his goodwill and tried to persuade him to undertake the rule. Now in some ways Xenophon wished for this, for he believed that in this way he would obtain greater honor for himself in the eyes of his friends; his own name would be greater when he should arrive in the city; and perchance he could become the cause of some good to the army.”

Leadership often brings with it opportunity, and by nature, leaders tend to be people who have in their characters, an ample amount of ambition. Most people tend to lose their heads when such opportunities arise and permit their ego satisfaction become a driver of their decision-making process. That stupid but ambitious officers are dangerous is an oft remarked truism, variously attributed to a constellation of German generals and field marshals. Xenophon was anything but stupid. Instead he had an intuitive, statesmanlike, grasp of the larger political realities of the Greek world even as he discerned the temper of the hoplite and peltast soldiers in the army to be one of shortsighted enthusiasm for his leadership that could wane when it created difficulties or danger.

Xenophon’s response to the soldiers also demonstrated the keen calculation of self-interest along with political realism:

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Xenophon Roundtable: The Art of Leadership

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Prior to the roundtable, Dave Schuler a friend an astute blogger, asked if it mattered to me if Xenophon’s Anabasis of Cyrus turned out to be a work of fiction? I thought for a moment and replied that if The Anabasis is a work of fiction, by Xenophon or attributed to him by some later writer, it is a very durable work of fiction because the lessons of the story have a timeless quality. One of the lessons of The Anabasis of Cyrus is on the art of leadership.

Throughout the text Xenophon gives contrasting examples of leadership in the narrative, and as with Cyrus and Clearchus, his explicit commentary. Xenophon’s conception of leadership goes beyond that of command and embraces political acumen, foresight and the moral example provided by Greek and Persian rulers ( used here in the same sense as Ambler’s translation, of anyone holding authority over others). In this conception of leadership, I think the teachings of Socrates lies heavily on Xenophon and the passages about Xenophon pressing forward to go East with Proxenus were included mainly to assert the independence of his judgment to his fellow Athenians.

How did Xenophon present the notable “rulers” in The Anabasis? A few examples:

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Book Review: The Bloody White Baron

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The Bloody White Baron: The Extraordinary Story of the Russian Nobleman Who Became the Last Khan of Mongolia by James Palmer

Special note: It was Lexington Green who brought this book to my attention.

The 20th Century was remarkable for its voluminous bloodshed and civilizational upheaval yet for inhuman cruelty and sheer weirdness, Baron Roman Nikolai Maximilian Ungern von Sternberg manages to stand out in a historical field crowded with dictators, terrorists, guerrillas, revolutionaries, fascists and warlords of the worst description. Biographer James Palmer has brought to life in The Bloody White Baron an enigmatic, elusive, monster of the Russian Civil War who is more easily compared to great villains of fiction than real life war criminals. Palmer’s bloodthirsty Mad Baron comes across like a militaristic version of Judge Holden from Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian or perhaps more like Hannibal Lecter with a Mongol Horde.

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