John Keegan, one of the UK�s foremost military analysts & historians, wrote the following in the Daily Telegraph last week,
Forcibly, America is becoming an imperial if not an imperialist country. The attitude was exemplified by an encounter I had with a tall, lean, crew-cut young man I met in Washington. Our conversation went as follows:
�Marine?� I asked.
�Yes,� he answered.
�Have you just been in Iraq?�
�Afghanistan. Just got back.�
The exchange was straight out of Kipling.
I say to our ally, welcome to Empire & all of that entails. I now need to find a copy of the Kipling poem used in the title & post it.
Posted by Mr Free Market at December 21, 2006 10:01 PM | TrackBackArithmetic on the Frontier
Rudyard Kipling
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A GREAT and glorious thing it is
To learn, for seven years or so,
The Lord knows what of that and this,
Ere reckoned fit to face the foe—
The flying bullet down the Pass,
That whistles clear: “All flesh is grass.”
Three hundred pounds per annum spent
On making brain and body meeter
For all the murderous intent
Comprised in “villanous saltpetre!”
And after—ask the Yusufzaies
What comes of all our ’ologies.
A scrimmage in a Border Station—
A canter down some dark defile—
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail—
The Crammer’s boast, the Squadron’s pride,
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!
No proposition Euclid wrote,
No formulae the text-books know,
Will turn the bullet from your coat,
Or ward the tulwar’s downward blow
Strike hard who cares—shoot straight who can—
The odds are on the cheaper man.
One sword-knot stolen from the camp
Will pay for all the school expenses
Of any Kurrum Valley scamp
Who knows no word of moods and tenses,
But, being blessed with perfect sight,
Picks off our messmates left and right.
With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem,
The troop-ships bring us one by one,
At vast expense of time and steam,
To slay Afridis where they run.
The “captives of our bow and spear”
Are cheap—alas! as we are dear.
Keegan seems to be getting more and more loony with the passing of time.
Responding to an attack is not imperialism. Keegan has lost his way. Seems to be falling in with the French "Hyperpower" theory.
Posted by: Richard Cook at December 9, 2003 5:42 PMRichard
I think you have got the wrong end of the stick here. My reading of it is that the US now faces many of the issues, in terms of stratagy, administration & tactics that faced the British Army during our days of Empire.
I don't think that Keegan was making any value or critical judgement, merely that as any student of military history knows, look to the lessons of the past for the solutions of today.
Of course, that is not a hard & fast rule, but time spent reading a few campaign histories is frequently time well spent.
Witness if you will the reappraisal of the Normandy Campaign of 1944 by NATO commanders when they were developing their theories for the defence of Western Europe from the Warsaw Pact.
Anyway, lets be honest, its a fine way to spend a cold evening, in front of a log fire, large glass of malt, pitching into a bit of Kipling!
Cheers
Posted by: Mr Free Market at December 9, 2003 6:02 PM