"The Naked Ones"

In August of 812 AD the 6th Abbasid Caliph Amin, son of Harun al-Rashid, found himself trapped inside Baghdad, abandoned by his court and besieged by his brother, the soon-to-be-Caliph, Ma'mun. Amin would soon lose his empire (and his head) but it would be years before Baghdad was safe for Ma'mun.

One of mankind's most prolific historians, Muhammaad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, a tough-minded contemporary of the dueling Caliphs, recounted in his voluminous Annals how the people of Baghdad--the proletariat that is, the vast unwashed, or as Tabari referred to them, "the naked ones"--held off for almost a decade the best armed and trained force in the world.

The Baghdadis supported the doomed Caliph Amin (only until his head was severed from his body), not necessarily out of inherent loyalty to his family, but because they were Baghdadis. They fought for their homes and they fought against Ma'mun--Baghdad's 'liberator'--as one who didn't have the interests of the Land of the Two Rivers foremost in his heart.

It was hardly a fair fight, a fact well attested to by many chroniclers of the time. Smugly confident of victory, countless well-armed Khorasanian soldiers accoutered with shield, chain mail, iron helmets, greaves, and sharpened swords, we are told, were overcome and defeated by swarms of poor, desperate Baghdadis armed with nothing more than reed-mats, stones and their wits. It was only in 819 AD, after his army was bloodied and wrecked, that the tangled warrens of Medieval Baghdad were finally made safe.

The stories brought down to us by chroniclers, like Tabari, of Khorasanian soldiers defeated by hordes of pitiful, ululating Baghdadis are certainly apochryphal, and yet they have that eerie ring of modernity the purveyors of RMA and transformation would've been wise to understand. For what it's worth, I don't think 4GW is all that new, either, just another of history's countless reversions to the mean. (But that's a whole 'nother post.)

Although I don't believe history repeats itself and I'm not a member of the Santayana school of historical determinism, ("Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it") I admit there are times when I hear a faint rhyme coming over the horizon. Whether it's a merry band of modern day poets, a Caddy full of subwoofers or the vanguard of history I can't yet discern. But I do know this:

No matter how much civilian 'strategists' want them to, no matter that your M1-Abrams' has a Hotmail® account and no matter how good you think your logistics are, the critical elements of organized violence like friction, chance and the fog of war, never, ever change.

What's worse, as if I haven't already said this a million times already in a thousand different ways, is that our President committed the most common historical blunder there is when he underestimated the enemy (arrogance and hubris seem to be all too prevalent in the affairs of men). A good leader can overcome friction, chance, and even the fog of war. But arrogance?

Well, arrogance coupled with an unwillingness to size up one's opponent properly is fatal, as we, like the Caliph Ma'mun, back in 812 AD, are finding out.

Like I said earlier, it isn't a perfect repitition of history, but it sure has a familiar ring to it, no?