For more information: Talking PointsThe Nature of the Opponent Alexander describes the enemy and how he fights: "Here the foe will not meet us in pitched battle, as other armies we have dueled in the past, save under conditions of his own choosing. His word to us is worthless. He routinely violates truces; he betrays the peace. When we defeat him, he will not accept our dominion. He comes back again and again. He hates us with a passion whose depth is exceeded only by his patience and his capacity for suffering. His boys and old men, even his women, fight us as combatants. They do not do this openly, however, but instead present themselves as innocents, even as victims, seeking our aid. When we show compassion, they strike with stealth. You have all seen what they do to us when they take us alive.... The question is one of will. The foe has no chance of overcoming us in the field. But if he can sap our resolution by his doggedness, his relentlessness; if he can appall us by his acts of barbarity, he can, if not defeat us, then prevent us from defeating him. Our will must master the enemy's. Our resolve must outlast his. (pages 77-78) Alexander addressing the troops after the enemy massacre of 1700 men on the Many Blessings River, a fight at which Alexander himself was not present but other officers commanded in his absence: "All fault resides with me, my friends. I have committed the cardinal sin of the commander: underestimation of the foe. The Desert Wolf [the troops' name for the enemy's guerilla commander, Spitamenes] has not beaten you who rode in that column; he has beaten me. By Zeus, I believed we would thrash these devils in a matter of months. I deemed them ignorant savages, unlettered in modern warfare, and no match for our force, which has vanquished the mightiest empire on earth. I was wrong. Clearly the enemy understands us, while we do not understand him. He has made us dance to his tune. He possesses answers for every tactic we throw at him. He is shrewder than we are. He has out-fought us and he has out-generaled me." (page 222) * * * Many times in the days since 9/11 it has been easy to despair not only of the seemingly boundless bloodlust of our enemies, but also of the feeling that the world has never before seen an enemy like fundamentalist fascism. And it gets worse: we face an enemy that is rarely if ever defined by geographic boundaries. Al-Qaeda is a movement, a loose affiliation of cells, and by some definition a philosophy. There will be no end to the War on Terror as there was in, for example, the American Revolution, when the end of the war was the end of the war, and both sides accepted the outcome and moved forward. Today, our enemy isn't just trying to expel us from some place. Many of them are committed to our total annihilation, no matter how long it takes. However, Alexander was up against this as well as he cut his way through Afghanistan, so at least we know that we are not alone in history. But unfortunately, Alexander's experience in this kind of fight does not provide much of a blueprint for success today. We are still fighting an opponent that we initially underestimated and have yet to understand. What is the Definition of Victory in Iraq? "What we must accept about this theater of war," Philip [a high-ranking officer in Alexander's army] explains one night to Matthias and other Macedonian soldiers, "is that military victory is impossible. So long as even one man or woman of the enemy draws breath, they will resist us. But what we have achieved, by the ungodly suffering we have inflicted upon them, is to drive them to the point where they'll accept an accommodation, an alliance if you will, that they can call victory, or at least not defeat, and that we can live with. "Then, between paying them off, severing them from their northern allies and sanctuaries, and keeping enough forces in garrison here, we may be able to stabilize the situation sufficiently so that we can move on to India without leaving our lines of supply and communication continually vulnerable to assault. That's the best we can do. That's enough. It will suffice. "In the end," Philip says, "the issue comes down to this: What is the minimum acceptable dispensation? Short of victory, what can we live with? We cannot slaughter every man, woman, and child of the enemy, however gratifying such an enterprise might be." (pages 320) * * * It will always be difficult to say that Iraq is finished business because success there cannot be defined by a number or an event. We've rebuilt and reopened schools. Is that victory? People have returned to work. Is that victory? People have exercised the right to vote and the leaders have written a constitution. Is that victory? Those are all elements of success. However, anyone who wants to portray our efforts as a failure needs only to point to some unsolved problem or awful event: roadside bombings, unrest, or insurgent recruiting, for instance. This is less an argument about facts than a political, semantic argument to roil domestic public opinion. Another Way to Achieve Reconstruction When we return to Artacoana, the engineers have laid out a new city. The metropolis, to be called Alexandria-in-Areia, is a model of our young king's shrewdness and of his reckoning of the weakness and cupidity of the foe. ... Why should we Macks spend blood and treasure to suppress the aboriginals? Let their foes do it for us. Alexander puts out the call, not only for masons, carpenters, and teamsters, to whom he promises work at wages unheard-of in these kingdoms, but for settlers and pioneers as well. To these he pledges land and pasturage, rights of way, warrants of exclusivity for trade and commerce. The southern tribes flood in, delirious at the prospect of lording it over their northern adversaries. Within days the construction site is overrun with every able-bodied tribesman in the region and half the respectable women, who serve as cooks and tailors, laundresses, nurses, vendors, seamstresses (a vital function, sewing tents and pack covers, groundrolls, straps, and panniers). ... Our king's scheme works. What had been, days before, the site of a grisly valley-wide massacre has become a burgeoning boom town. (pages 69-70) * * * Post-war reconstruction today is carried out by and large by the U.S. Army, but Alexander had another idea, which allowed him to rebuild a place quickly, not at his own expense, while also keeping control. He put out word that the tribes who had been oppressed by or jealous of those in some particular place could now have the place if they would only come and build it back up. There is no motive like opportunity, unless it is a combination of jealousy and revenge, and Alexander put all three to use. He got the work done and received the loyalty of the new leadership. Local Rule is Indispensable Great generals and governors of the Persians, nobles who have fought our fellows across all Asia—Artabazus, Phrataphernes, Nabarzanes, Autophradates, as well as the slayers of Darius: Satibarzanes and his cohort Barsaentes—have bent the knee and been received with clemency by Alexander. Who else can run the empire for him? Even the mercenaries Glaucos and Patron, commanders of Darius' crack heavy infantry, have come in with their commands and made their peace. (page 39) * * * Alexander understood what the U.S. is, perhaps, only now getting to put into practice in the current war: that the most effective government—the only permanent leadership—must come from those who live in the place to be governed. You cannot wisely or for long rule a place from without. Granted, Alexander's conquests had little choice but to submit or die, but he did make a peace with them and prudently accepted their service. He obviously was not in the practice of bringing along leaders to install as needed. And he also knew that these generals and governors, by virtue of their experience and heritage, could govern effectively—provided they were loyal to Alexander, and his power and prestige ensured that. "Mission Accom p lished" Banner Unfurled Prematurely in Alexander's Campaign, Too The fight, he says, will soon be over. All that remains is the pursuit of an enemy who is already on the run and the killing or capturing of commanders who are already beaten. We will be out of here by fall, he pledges, and on to India, whose riches and plunder will dwarf even the vast treasure of Persia. "That said," Alexander adds, "no foe, however primitive, should be taken lightly, and we shall not commit that error here." (page 77) * * * Alexander's campaign is rich in lessons for every war effort that followed. Alexander failed to get to India as soon as he expected because the war in Afghanistan refused to end. There are and will always be enemies and campaigns that continue beyond what seems to be the conclusion of major operations. When the follow-up, the sweeping up—the so-called minor operations—stretches from days into weeks, months and years, it dawns on you that "major operations" has more than one definition. What appears to be a loose end can be pulled and pulled until you've unraveled a lot of what you've done. The Role of the Soldier Through History "You're wondering what a soldier is, aren't you?" I tell him I am. He indicates a laden beast, mounting the track before us. "We're mules, lad. Mules that kill." (page 33) * * * The details change, but the role of a soldier is unchanged through time. It was in Alexander's day the same as it is today: to serve in combat and in virtually any other way that the commander sees fit. The job was bloodier in Alexander's time than it is in ours. There was far more hand-to-hand combat then than there is today, although you can begin to see the future of war when Alexander surprises the enemy with technology: catapults that hurl burning jars into the packed enemy lines, for instance. A soldier in Alexander's army was as likely to be killed getting to the battle as he was in the battle. My narrator found the most horrible conditions not in the fight but, for instance, in traveling the Khawak Pass across the Hindu Kush mountains in winter. (Not surprisingly, kush means "slaughter.") The Appalling Treatment of Women The European cannot appreciate the wretchedness of station of a lone female in the East. Such a creature is lower than a dog, for the animal at least has a worthy use to guard the camp. An unprotected woman isn't fit, in the eyes of her Afghan countrymen, even to be raped and murdered. They would sooner stone her. She is an outcast, abandoned by God and her ancestors. Evil fortune attaches to her, and the clansman fears nothing so much as bad luck. (Page 141) * * * The Taliban treated women a lot like they were treated in Afghanistan during Alexander's time. Under the Taliban, women could not go to school, they could not take jobs, and they couldn't even leave their home without a male escort. The punishment was a beating, torture or death. My narrator describes how women were property—how they were valued as worth, in at least one instance, literally about half a mule. They were treated as pack animals on the long march. The Nature of War Reporting God, what a stench when a man's guts are opened to the air. That doesn't go into your dispatches, does it? We read nothing about the sound the 'follow-on' makes, going down the line of throat-slit men with a club, bashing skulls like walnuts, while the still-living men pray without voices or curse us in gurgling blood or plead for their lives. (Page 163) * * * The soldiers in Alexander's day had to deal with reporters. The reporting was of course not nearly as immediately influential as it is today, but reporters then were a lot like reporters today: they are far more interested in stories of great men and great battles than they are in the daily life of the grunt. My narrator, like every soldier after him, saw his share of blood and death, and he knew that this gruesome, life-changing experience was not going to be written down for the world to read. In this way again, Alexander's campaign in Afghanistan is just one more chapter in the history of war: men fight and die and change inside, but their individual stories will be lost to the ages in favor of some fabled romance of battle. The Killing Climate of Afghanistan The season is high summer. Every surface of armor must have a woven cover; otherwise the sun will turn it into a skillet. At home we have trained to march thirty miles a day with full kit and rations. Trekking now across Syria, fifteen miles feels like forty, and twenty like a hundred. The sun squats on our shoulders; we breathe dust instead of air. Our tongues are lolling like dogs' on the tramp to Marathus. (page 29) What makes Afghanistan so miserable is there's no shelter. The wind howls out of the mountains with not a twig to break its rush. Terrain is spectacular, but its beauty, if you can call it that, is stern and unforgiving. No trees intercept the rain, which descends, when it does, in volumes unimaginable. In the hot season you bind covers round every surface of metal exposed to the sun. To touch them unprotected blisters you to the bone. Now comes the wind. To trek in such a gale is like marching in a tunnel. (page 74-75) * * * Afghanistan is a study in extremes. The climate is hardly what any soldier would choose for a war. What Alexander's men faced is what soldiers face today: in Kabul, the temperature can vary from 50 degrees Fahrenheit at sunrise to 100 degrees by noon, and it gets even hotter than that on the plains. The winters are bitter and it gets well below freezing, especially in the mountains. But there is an odd saving grace, at least esthetically: Afghanistan has blue, cloudless skies over 300 days of the year. Afghanistan and the Poppy The primary narcotic in Afghanistan is naswar, or "nazz"—a dark resinous gum made from poppy opiates. You roll it into a ball and stick it under your lip. It turns your gums black. (page 44) * * * The opium trade and the history of Afghanistan are inseparable. Afghanistan has long been at or near the top of opium production for the world, even during the post-9/11 invasion. In 2004, 90 percent of the world's heroin came from Afghan opium poppies. Last year, drug cultivation and trafficking provided 60 percent of the nation's income. Farmers make a lot more growing poppies than they do growing cotton or fruit. Alexander and his man brought opium out of Afghanistan and introduced it to Persia and India. The Perpetual Challenge of Afghanistan The beauty of Afghanistan lies in its distances and its light. The massif of the Hindu Kush, a hundred miles off, looks close enough to touch. But before we get there, hailstones big as sling bullets will ring off our bronze and iron; floods will carry off men and horses we love; the sun will bake us like the bricks of this country's ten thousand villages. We are as overjoyed to be quit of this place as it is to see us go. I scoffed, once, at [the god of Afghanistan]. But he has beaten us. Mute, pitiless, remote, Afghanistan's deity gives up nothing. One appeals to him in vain. Yet he sustains those who call themselves his children, who wring a living from this stony and sterile land. I have come to fear this god of the Afghans. And that has made me a fighting man, as they are. (page 363) * * * Afghanistan is a beautiful, historic, pitiless place. Few have conquered it for long. Alexander is among the greatest military strategists of all time and this place became his strongest challenge. The climate and the land the people come together to make this a bloody and most often regretted battlefield, from Alexander in 300 BC to the Soviet Union almost 2300 years later. And those are but two points on a long timeline. The place changes a little; it is indomitable forever.
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