Tunisia was the country where the Arab Spring revolts against autocratic rule began four years ago.
Of all the countries affected, Tunisia has made the most successful transition toward democracy, recently completing presidential and parliamentary elections and a peaceful rotation of political power. Security forces have struggled against occasional attacks by Islamic extremists, but they have usually occurred in mountainous areas far from the capital.
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"Gunmen in military uniforms attacked a museum in downtown Tunis around noon on Wednesday, killing 19 people" — including Polish, Italian, Spanish and German tourists.
"The identity and motivation of the attackers were not immediately clear."
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What's not obvious about Islamic terrorists who want to destabilize a country in order to impose their vision of Islamic society?
Tunsia's border with Libya is still closed, I think.
It's unfortunately a possibiity that rubble does cause trouble.
Attacking Tunis is no different that the Bali bombings, or the Boston Marathon. The message is, " we can attack you anywhere". JI didn't blow a place in Jakarta. They chose a Hindu tourist location.
Whew! Fortunately, this had Nothing to do With Islam.
Amish extremism strikes again!
Islam's good image and that of its Muslim practitioners remain intact. The world can continue to breathe easy that it has nothing, absolutely nothing, to fear from Islam.
The problem is these thugs only have to be lucky once--we can foil a hundred plots but if one gets through they've achieved their purpose of terrorizing anyone not on their side. All we can do is continue to hunt and kill them, and hope to degrade their capabilities until only the most inept killers remain.
I am surprised the U.S. hasn't been hit in a spectacular fashion since 9/11. I'm sure our countermeasures have had some part in that, but eventually one of them is going to get through.
"Whew! Fortunately, this had Nothing to do With Islam."
You forget, Christian crusaders did some pretty awful things a thousand years ago, so none of us can criticize even if we aren't Christians ourselves, because social justice.
Privilege. I forgot to blame white cisgender privilege.
Misleading headline.
It didn't "include" Poles, Italians, etc... they were who was killed. Saying that a bunch of Europeans were "included" in a killing in Tunisia gives an impression that they were caught in the crossfire but that they are only a portion of the total dead: but unless there's damning counter-evidence elsewhere, it appears that they were the target and pretty much the sum total of casualties. A more proper headline would be:
Muslims kill European Tourists.
Of course, such a headline would immediately expose the lie that we can't possibly know what the motives for the attack were.
"The identity and motivation of the attackers were not immediately clear."
Suicide note of Western culture.
Must be the Romans.
I wonder if this is like the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, where a team of young Islamic rural bumpkins who had never seen the city were trained, armed, and brought in to do mayhem.
"The identity and motivation of the attackers were not immediately clear."
I have it on good authority it was a typesetting error and was accidently cropped. The full line originally read:
The identity and motivation of the attackers were not immediately clear - to morons
I'm still thinking the problem is the use of nonunion drivers and guides for the tour buses.
This is Carthage, whom as any historian learns were the dedicated and skilled war winning enemies of Rome. The two fought over and over until one side was not just occupied and back at peace for a while but was removed from the face of the earth.
Italians like visiting the ruins of Carthage like Japanese like visiting Pearl Harbor and seeing the sunken USS Arizona.
IMO the instinct runs deep among the Tunesians to join a new Stronger Islamic Horse that offers hope of removing Rome and its Church from the face of the earth this time around.
You can always count in ISIL to remember their history.
"Agrarian reformers."
It used to be common practice to say something along the lines of:
No group has taken responsibility for the [insert event].
Why don't they just do that? It's a lot more intellectually honest (and actual news) than the laughable "the motive wasn't clear". Barring the possibility we've entered bizzaroland where Muslims attack tourists to steal their iPads, the motive is presumptively clear (based on all recent history) until proven otherwise.
West Town said...
Must be the Romans.
I know that there are some innocent Tunisians, but your comment points me at the Third Punic War (The Last), between Rome and Carthage.
Carthage was built where Tunis is today. After Scipio Africanus the Younger, beat the Carthaginians, they burned the city for 17 days, tore it down "so that no two stones stood together, killed the warriors and sold the rest of the people into slavery, "thus solving the Carthaginian problem once and for all time"
The rough man in me sometimes wants to make glassy rubble out of some of these places...
PS: I was traveling with my wife in Austria near Durnstein when we learned of Osama's passing from some Polish tourists, who approached us at a rural buss stop and in the only language we shared, smilingly told us:
Osama ist Todt!
If only the extremists had decent jobs, with retirement plans and health benefits, this never would have happened.
All the people involved in this unfortunate incident were victims of capitalism.
Similiar thoughts Trad guy :)
Prime Minister Habib Essid said at a news conference that the dead included 17 foreigners and two Tunisians.
One dead Tunisian was a Guard. The other had to have been very unlucky. The killers clearly were not picking targets at random...
I didn't know those damn tea partiers even knew where Tunis was. Add this to their ever expanding list of atrocities.
The gunmen were looking for jobs. Duh.
Eagerly awaiting the Starbucks barista response...
Must be Mormons upset over Mitt's loss.
If they were smoking, they were revolutionaries; otherwise, not.
They must have been upset at a Rick Steves video.
Drill Sgt:
I think you forgot one ingredient. Salt. They salted the earth.
This is Carthage, whom as any historian learns were the dedicated and skilled war winning enemies of Rome. The two fought over and over until one side was not just occupied and back at peace for a while but was removed from the face of the earth."
Well, except it wasn't actually destroyed. Overall (and with notable exceptions) the ancient Romans were pretty good at assimilating conquests into the Roman world, and by the end of the first century Carthage, with a population of some 500,000, was the second largest city in the western Empire.
It was also a center of early Christianity. In looking at Tunisia today it's hard to believe the region once enjoyed wealth as a producer and exporter of grain, but Carthage would have remained a wealthy city at least until the decline of Rome in the fifth century, and the City's subsequent conquest by Vandals (prior to being over-run by the Islamic expansion of the 7th century, of course).
Not to worry, they're just JV.
Michael said...
Drill Sgt:
I think you forgot one ingredient. Salt. They salted the earth
I know the story...
Urban legend. too many tons would have been needed and salt was worth a lot...
but the message is clear. the Romans had had enough...
Carthago delenda est
Peter said...Well, except it wasn't actually destroyed.
Actually, it was turned into pasture around a natural harbor. a century later Julius Caesar rebuilt it.
Here is the wiki version:
Many Carthaginians died from starvation during the later part of the siege, while many others died in the final six days of fighting. When the war ended, the remaining 50,000 Carthaginians, a small part of the original pre-war population, were, as was the normal fate in antiquity of inhabitants of sacked cities, sold into slavery by the victors.[2] Carthage was systematically burned for 17 days; the city's walls and buildings were utterly destroyed. The remaining Carthaginian territories were annexed by Rome and reconstituted to become the Roman province of Africa.
Time for an interfaith summit.
If this is any indicator about "Arab Spring", it's going to be a long hot nasty summer.
Thank you for the context Trad Guy and Drill Sgt. The extent of my Classics education is listening to Victor Davis Hansen on Hugh Hewitt's Radio Show, or Dr Larry Arn (president of Hillsdale) on same during his weekly hour-long discussions.
And though I missed the Classics the University of California did make certain I took at least two feminist "enrichment" courses and had at least one raving lunatic Persian or Palestinian grad student in every sociology lab. Thanks, Left Coast!
The Romans did some things right--they used a combination of punitive measures (killing, burning) and incentives (opening up trade, Pax Romana, laws, scientific advancement) to keep an empire filled with diverse peoples in check for hundreds of years.
Let me take a wild stab in the dark here... Muslims?
Or rather people who've hijacked
The glorious and peaceful religion known as Islam. All praise Allah.
The so-called "Arab Spring" was a front for planned governance.
In his History of Christianity, Paul Johnson likened Rome, in its relationship to the constituents of its empire, to a sleeping lion: docile, peaceful, harmless. Small animals frolicking between its outstretched legs. Bird fluttering about the great maned head, perched on its back, singing and chattering. A scene of pastoral bliss. Until ... until the lion was roused to anger. Whereupon it stretched forth its mighty paw and with one savage swipe annihilated that which had awakened it.
Rome was a benevolent power--so long as you followed the rules. If you kept the peace, obeyed the laws, kept trade flowing, and rendered unto the Senate and, later, Caesar, that which was theirs.
"Rome was a benevolent power--so long as you followed the rules. If you kept the peace, obeyed the laws, kept trade flowing, and rendered unto the Senate and, later, Caesar, that which was theirs."
It was also a preferable system even by today's values when compared to other contemporary systems. Which is why it's total BS that the Roman Empire always plays the bad guy in movies. What, was life under the Visigoths or Vandals just happiness and sunshine?
Damn anti-Roman bigotry! They've even tried to hide the fact that St. Patrick was Roman.
Rome was a benevolent power--so long as you followed the rules. If you kept the peace, obeyed the laws, kept trade flowing, and rendered unto the Senate and, later, Caesar, that which was theirs.
There was some 19th Century author (Gibbons?) who claimed that Pax Romana was such that a Roman Citizen could walk from one end of the civilized world to the other knowing that his person and property were safe. e.g. Knowing that if anybody f'd with him, a Roman Legion (the best in modern technology) would appear a year later and all the locals would be squatting on short stakes up their a$$es along the highway...to encourage the others...
When Hannibal invaded Italy in the Second Punic War his grand strategy for achieving victory stood on two pillars: fight and win battles against the combined armies of Rome and its Italian allies; and, in doing so, convince the allies to forsake their allegiance to Rome and join with Carthage.
His strategy didn't work. He fought and won three great battles against the Romans and allies, and several minor engagements as well. But the Romans countered by simply refusing to give up. Hannibal, raised in the very different "Oriental/Hellenistic" tradition of warfare, where the defeated admit defeat and behave accordingly, was totally flummoxed by this development. But his strategy really fell to ruin when the Roman allies, the foederati, elected to stay loyal to Rome. They liked Roman rule and the freedom and prosperity it brought them and, not least, because they held the status of Roman citizens and were thus able to exercise a limited but significant degree of self-government.
Drill Sgt.: It was Gibbon.
The Gospel of Christ offers a very favorable view of the Romans. Christ urged his followers to obey Roman law so long as their obedience did not compromise their relationship with God--which it did not. I think we can read much into His instruction. He did not regard himself as an adversary of the Romans. By the same token the Romans allowed him to evangelize and preach his word freely, and were reluctant to put him to death because, as Pilate himself admitted, he could find no guilt in the man. Christ on the cross forgave the Roman soldiers who nailed him to it, saying to God that they did not know what they were doing. And he memorably interacted, quite sympathetically, with a Roman Centurian in what is, IMHO, one of the most profound and beautiful passages in any language on the meaning of faith and what faith entails.
"His strategy didn't work. He fought and won three great battles against the Romans and allies, and several minor engagements as well. But the Romans countered by simply refusing to give up."
The Romans were also excellent at learning from mistakes and adapting, to a degree other armies wouldn't. When the Persians faced armored Greek hoplites with big metal sheilds and long spears, they were disadvantaged because their arrows were ineffective against them and they couldn't match the armor or weaponry, and got repeatedly slaughtered and then conquered. The Romans defeated the Greeks because their short sword, interlocked sheilds and flexible maniple formations enabled them to close on the hoplites and take them from the vulnerable flanks.
Scipio's battle against Hannibal at Zama also showed he'd learned to defeat Hannibal's tactics--use horns to scare their elephants into stampeding, open their formations to let their cavalry pass through, and envelope their flanks. They were an evolving, learning force.
Spartacus and his men learned the hard way of the Roman penchant for making a point. On the Appian Way between Rome and Capua about five thousand of them were crucified at interesting intervals. 120 miles. Do the math. Hard to miss.
Brando:
The Romans didn't fight with their shields interlocked. That was a feature of the Greek/Macedonian phalanx and a reason and cause for the phalanx's lack of mobility. The Romans fought in and "open" formation with three feet separating them from the men to their left and right: which gave them six feet of "combat space" for the employment of the gladius. They were swordsmen first and foremost but not duelists: they were expected to thrust overhand or underhand and, typically, at the unprotected armpit of the enemy warrior in front of the legionary to their right. But they could improvise if necessary or if the opportunity arose, and they had six feet of battle space in which to maneuver. Whereas their enemies, with their shields interlocked, could not maneuver. Also, the open Roman formation allowed fresh troops to cycle up to the front from the rear ranks, whereas the phalannx system kept the front rank fighter in place until they collapsed from exhausted or were killed. Such were the "mechanics of battle," as we say in the trade, when phalanxes fought legions.
I've published several articles on this aspect of the Roman way of war, btw.
The Crusades claim 19 more.
Roughcoat wrote:
The Romans didn't fight with their shields interlocked. That was a feature of the Greek/Macedonian phalanx and a reason and cause for the phalanx's lack of mobility. The Romans fought in and "open" formation with three feet separating them from the men to their left and right: which gave them six feet of "combat space" for the employment of the gladius. They were swordsmen first and foremost but not duelists: they were expected to thrust overhand or underhand and, typically, at the unprotected armpit of the enemy warrior in front of the legionary to their right. But they could improvise if necessary or if the opportunity arose, and they had six feet of battle space in which to maneuver. Whereas their enemies, with their shields interlocked, could not maneuver. Also, the open Roman formation allowed fresh troops to cycle up to the front from the rear ranks, whereas the phalannx system kept the front rank fighter in place until they collapsed from exhausted or were killed. Such were the "mechanics of battle," as we say in the trade, when phalanxes fought legions.
Yeah but did they know how to do the lift the hidden spears at the last moment when cavalry is charging you move that William Wallace did to take out Longshank's cavalary that we saw displayed in the movie Braveheart? Called the William Wallace spear thing a magig if I'm not mistaken.
Just more workplace violence.
"Braveheart" is a veritable tsunami of bad history. Its relationship to historical fact is roughly the same as the relationship of Bullwinkle J. Moose to a real moose.
They're making a big budget movie about Hannibal. Since Hannibal was an African, expect the Romans to come out looking like the villains of the Punic Wars.......A landed aristocrat lived better in Roman times than he did at the time Gibbons wrote Decline & Fall. Gibbons knew that and blamed Christianity for subverting the empire......It could be argued that the Roman Empire succeeded but it was a clotted and static success. It took many, many centuries but we're doing better than the Riman Empire, so screw Gibbons.
That's why you have to be careful about ordering the tuna, especially in hot weather.
That would be Gibbon not Gibbons.
Roman civilization which encompassed a period dating from the semi-mythical founding of Rome in c. the 8th century B.C. to the fall of Constantinople in 1453 endured for two thousand-plus years. Insofar as Western Civilization (including American civilization) is a continuation and extension of Roman civilization, then it is altogether valid to say that Roman civilization is still very much with us (albeit in evolved form) and that we are very much a part of it.
In other words, Roman civilization was and remains a resounding success.
Hannibal was African only in the sense that he lived in Africa. Ethnically he was a Semite, descended from Semitic Phoenician settlers from the Levant.
Roughcoat said...
The Gospel of Christ offers a very favorable view of the Romans
I'd worry about Revelations, though, what with seven-headed beasts and what not.
I've published several articles on this aspect of the Roman way of war, btw.
Cool! Serious question, then: why didn't the Roman army widely adopt polearm type weapons? I recently read about the battle of Pharsalus and the account put a lot of weight on Caesar's surprise 4th line using their pilia like spears to stab at Pompey's cavalry (under Labineus)--going so far as to assert that this tactical decision is what turned the battle (having that extra line and using it in that way to counter the cav). The R. army certainly faced Greek formations that used v. long spears and in addition the Romans weren't opposed to varying the armaments of certain subgroups to try and gain a tactical advantage. Why no Roman glaive, or guisarme, or even a falx (since they certainly came up against those) with a longer handle? Or am I ovelooking some weapon they did develop that fit that role (effective anti-cav, useful anti-infantry)?
I had a Tunisian friend who was always enthusiastically boosting the country, the people, the cities, and all other things Tunisian. I hope things aren't taking a turn for the worse -- it was nice to think that at least one country was actually benefiting from the Arab Spring.
Hoodlum Doodlum:
Thanks for your interest. Good question re Roman arms. Unfortunately I must fly out the door in a few minutes and cannot answer your question with the full explanation it deserves.
However, and very briefly, writing in haste: like all developments in the sphere of military endeavor there is no one simple answer to the question of why the Romans used certain weapons while eschewing the use of others.
That said, the Romans armed and equipped themselves as they did because for the most part, and in most instances, and for a very long time, the system they developed worked quite well. The Roman systematized their military, which is a way of maximizing efficiencies (with respect to training, tactics, etc.) but which also tends to discourage innovation.
Which is not to say that the Romans didn't innovate and make changes. They were quite adept at learning and applying the lessons they learned in war, and in defeat. Take for example, the discarding of the phalanx array and the adopting of the manipular system, a Samnite innovation, which not only increased the battlefield mobility of their field armies but also gave the Romans a more efficient means of expanding their forces to include young men from the lower classes. It was a change was driven as much by cultural imperatives as it was by the tactical advantages it conferred. Same goes for the reforms instituted by Gaius Marius, which resulted in the cohortal system. And so on.
Because the Romans weren’t overly worried about cavalry attacks, they didn’t develop specialized weapons to deal with them. Because of the depth and mobility of its constituent elements, a legion deployed in full battle array was a very difficult and usually impossible nut for a mounted force to crack. Think of the British squares at the battle of Waterloo. The British troops didn’t have long halberds or pikes, just rifles with bayonets, yet they easily withstood and turned back Ney’s massed cavalry assault.
It was more important to the Romans to have a systemized military system that could efficiently put large numbers of trained men into the field. Kind of like the American ground forces in World War II. The U.S. didn’t develop heavy tanks that could match up with the “big cats” (i.e. Panthers and Tigers) of the Wehrmacht’s Panzerwaffe, but that’s because they were more concerned with quickly fielding large numbers of mechanically fast and reliable medium tanks that could get the job done, if at a cost. Similarly, the Romans were fairly indifferent to the concept of elite forces, they wanted efficiency, they wanted to train large numbers of their young men to fight in the same manner, and they were willing to sacrifice some tactical advantage to achieve it. They also eschewed the use of archery, which is a “skill position,” as it were, and which was antithetical to their system of heavy infantry armies composed of citizen soldiers. (Also, archery was really ineffective against the armor that the Romans and other civilized polities were able to mass produce rather handily.)
The Celts might have been fiercer, the Germans crazier, the Spanish infantry more skillful: but a trained legion was a meat grinder that pulverized even the fiercest, craziest, and most skillful of their enemies. Hannibal, a true genius, understood that the Romans used the same tactical system every time in every battle and was able to use his knowledge to annihilate a hecatombs of Roman men at the Trebia, Lake Trasimene, and Cannae. But the Romans learned from their mistakes, and adapted--and won the war.
Blogger Zach said...
I hope things aren't taking a turn for the worse.
They just did Zach. That's the point.
Roughcoat said...
Because the Romans weren’t overly worried about cavalry attacks, they didn’t develop specialized weapons to deal with them.
They also eschewed the use of archery, which is a “skill position,” as it were, and which was antithetical to their system of heavy infantry armies composed of citizen soldiers. (Also, archery was really ineffective against the armor that the Romans and other civilized polities were able to mass produce rather handily.)
Regarding both cav. and archery, I was thinking about Carrhae as an example of a situation from which one might have expected innovation in equipment, although polearms wouldn't help much against mounted archers.
You've made me consider, though, that maybe the easier answer is that the army was organized to best fight their more typical opponents, and those were unlikely to field large cav. forces to begin with. Roman civil battles were a different story, but the army wouldn't have been designed to fight against itself!
Thanks for the thoughtful response.
Quite welcome, my pleasure.
Carrhae is sort of the proverbial exception that proves the rule. It wasn't a lack of proper weapons that destroyed the Roman army, it was skill of the Parthian commander in staging a tactical scenario that would allow him to maximize what was best about his force: mobility and rapid maneuver capability. In a sense it was maneuver, i.e. tactics, that killed the Roman army! All the pikes and halberds in the world could not have saved them from their fate.
Thanks for some informative postings.....I understand that the Roman Legionairres used to retire to Spain after ther term of service.. The Spanish infantry were thus their direct descendants......In one of Keegan's books, he talks about how the people of the horse had the edge in conflicts. The Parthians, Huns, Arabs, Ottomans, Mongols won their battles when they could mass sufficient forces.
The Roman legions used swords as a primary infantry arm for a rather short (although very exciting) period of their history (maybe 200BC to 200AD). The rest of the time, the spear was the primary arm. Even in that period I cited, I'll bet the spear still ruled in certain theaters--I doubt they were fighting off Parthians and Persian heavy cavalry charges with short swords.
Whether on foot or mounted, the spear, the pike, and pole-arms dominated ancient and medieval battlefields. The Romans and Napoleonic-era cavalry were among the few exceptions. The Romans could pull it off because they had superior training, discipline, and tactics, not to mention manpower. They had a real professional army, whereas most of their foes did not.
That being said, I think the Romans got lucky--if they had run into the Macedonians during Alexander's time I think they would have gotten spanked.
On a more practical side, my family and I went on an ocean cruise a year or so ago.
Sadly I was forced to leave my carry gun home (no guns, no knives, no nothing on board) and rely on them to 'protect' us. Real unhappy about it but that is the way it is.
Well when you give up your right to protect yourselves don't be shocked if the authorities get there to late (as they usually do.)
That being said, I think the Romans got lucky--if they had run into the Macedonians during Alexander's time I think they would have gotten spanked.
That could well be so, and I'm sure a lot of Greeks during the time of their civilizational clash liked to think so — but the historic fact is that the Greeks never beat the Romans.
As Nobel Prize winning historian (in Literature) Theodor Mommsen put it in his famous “History of Rome”:
“A wondrous charm attaches to the name of the Epirot [King Pyrrhus] — a peculiar sympathy, evoked certainly in some degree by his chivalrous and amiable character, but still more by the circumstance that he was the first Greek that met the Romans in battle. With him began those direct relations between Rome and Hellas, on which the whole subsequent development of ancient, and an essential part of modern, civilization are based. The struggle between phalanxes and cohorts, between a mercenary army and a militia, between military monarchy and senatorial government, between individual talent and national vigour — this struggle between Rome and Hellenism was first fought out in the battles between Pyrrhus and the Roman generals; and though the defeated party often afterwards appealed anew to the arbitration of arms, every succeeding day of battle simply confirmed the decision.
“But while the Greeks were beaten in the battlefield as well as in the senate-hall, their superiority was none the less decided on every other field of rivalry than that of politics; and these very struggles already betokened that the victory of Rome over the Hellenes would be different from her victories over Gauls and Phoenicians, and that the charm of Aphrodite only begins to work when the lance is broken and the helmet and shield are laid aside.”
You can always count in ISIL to remember their history.
Almost 100% wrong. Islamists care nothing for history — at least if it's pre-Mohammed, pre-Islam history. To them, that's not just history, it's infidel history, kafir history — and it's not just forbidden, it's haram (the highest stage of forbidden) — it's Boko Haram. That's why Islamists destroy all the old statues and artifacts — they're distractions from the One True Religion and hence abominations.
Now if you're talking about history since the foundation of Islam — Islamic history — they'll remember that forever.
Brando,
" All we can do is continue to hunt and kill them..."
No, that is very from from all we can do. I'm not meaning to advocate in favor of doing more than "hunt and kill"... but please let's be realistic about what our range of options really are.
Not long after I posted the above re Islamists' a-, even anti-historicism, V.S. Naipaul (who, full disclosure, I have to admit in previous years has been one of my educators in this regard) published this piece at the Daily Mail. Excerpt:
“The particular fundamentalist ideology of ‘Islamist’ groups that have dedicated themselves to terror – such as Al Qaeda, Boko Haram and now in its most vicious, barbaric and threatening form the Islamic Caliphate, Isis or the Islamic State (IS) – interprets the foundation and the beginning as dating from the birth of the Prophet Mohammed in the 6th Century.
“This fundamentalism denies the value and even the existence of civilisations that preceded the revelations of the Koran.
“It was an article of 6th and 7th Century Arab faith that everything before it was wrong, heretical. There was no room for the pre-Islamic past.
“So an idea of history was born that was fundamentally different from the ideas of history that the rest of the world has evolved.
“In the centuries following, the world moved on. Ideas of civilisation, of other faiths, of art, of governance of law and of science and invention grew and flourished.
“This Islamic ideological insistence on erasing the past may have survived but it did so in abeyance, barely regarded even in the Ottoman Empire which declared itself to be the Caliphate of all Islam.
“But now the evil genie is out of the bottle. The idea that faith abolishes history has been revived as the central creed of the Islamists and of Isis.”
Read the whole thing.
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