Examples immediately spring to mind: the Assyrians, the Spartans, the Romans, the Vikings, the Mongols, and the Nazis. These peoples elevated their respective militaries and martial prowess above all else. Unsurprisingly, they were bloodthirsty and ruthless. Unstinting ambition for imperial goals often drove them to remarkable feats of arms at an unconscionable and sometimes difficult to sustain cost. Yes, the Spartans defeated the Athenians, but that internecine quarrel paved the way for the demise of the independent Greek city states at the hands of Philip of Macedon and his son, Alexander (soon enough to be known as "the Great").
Yes, the Romans conquered an empire, but one of their own historians, Tacitus, put in the mouth of a Celtic chieftain this description of being on the receiving end of Roman "liberation":
"The Romans' tyranny cannot be escaped by any act of reasonable submission. These brigands of the world have exhausted the land by their rapacity, so they now ransack the sea. When their enemy is rich, they lust after wealth; when their enemy is poor, they lust after power. Neither East nor West has satisfied their hunger. They are unique among humanity insofar as they equally covet the rich and the poor. Robbery, butchery, and rapine they call 'Empire.' They create a desert and call it 'Peace.'"
Talk about tough love.
The Romans would certainly have to be in the running for "finest military" of all time. They conquered many peoples, expanded far, and garrisoned vast areas of the Mediterranean, North Africa, and what would become Europe, while their legions marched forth, often to victory (not to speak of plunder), for hundreds of years. Still, the gold medal for the largest land empire in history -- and the finest fighting force of all time -- must surely go to the thirteenth century Mongols.
Led by Genghis Khan and his successors, Mongol horsemen conquered China and the Islamic world -- the two most powerful, sophisticated civilizations of their day -- while also exerting control over Russia for two and a half centuries. And thanks to a combination of military excellence, clever stratagem, fleetness of foot (and far more important, hoof), flexibility, and when necessary utter ferocity, they did all this while generally being outnumbered by their enemies.
Even the fighting power of the finest militaries waxed and waned, however, based in part on the quality of those leading them. The Macedonians blossomed under Philip and Alexander. It was not simply Rome that conquered Gaul, but Julius Caesar. The Mongols were at each other's throats until Genghis Khan united them into an unstoppable military machine that swept across a continent. The revolutionary French people in their famed levà ©e en masse had martial fervor, but only Napoleon gave them direction. History's finest fighting forces are associated closely with history's greatest captains.
Measure that against the American military today. General David Petraeus is certainly a successful officer who exhibits an enviable mastery of detail and a powerful political sense of how to handle Washington, but a Genghis Khan? An Alexander? A Caesar? Even "King David," as he's been called both by admirers and more than a few detractors, might blush at such comparisons. After all, at the head of the most powerfully destructive force in the Middle East, and later Central Asia, he has won no outright victories and conquered nothing. His triumph in Iraq in 2006-2007 may yet prove more "confected" than convincing.
As for our armed forces, though most Americans don't know it, within U.S. military circles much criticism exists of an officer corps of "tarnished brass" that is deficient in professionalism; of generals who are more concerned with covering their butts than leading from the front; of instruction at military academies that is divorced from war's realities; of an aversion "to innovation or creativity" [leading to] an atmosphere of anti-intellectualism" that undermines strategy and makes a hash of counterinsurgency efforts. Indeed, our military's biting criticism of itself is one of the few positive signs in a fighting force that is otherwise overstretched, deeply frustrated, and ridiculously overpraised by genuflecting politicians.
So I'm sorry, President Obama. If you wish to address the finest fighting force the world has ever known, you'll need a time machine, not Air Force One. You'll have to doff your leather Air Force-issue flight jacket and don Mongolian armor. And in so doing, you'll have to embrace mental attitudes and a way of life utterly antithetical to democracy and the rights of humanity as we understand them today. For that is the price of building a fighting force second to none -- and one reason why our politicians should stop insisting that we have one.
"The Greatest Force for Human Liberation"
Two centuries ago, Napoleon led his armies out of France and brought "liberty, equality, and fraternity" to much of the rest of ancien rà ©gime Europe -- but on his terms and via the barrel of a musket. His invasion of Spain, for example, was viewed as anything but a "liberation" by the Spanish, who launched a fierce guerrilla campaign against their French occupiers that sapped the strength of Napoleon's empire and what was generally considered the finest fighting force of its moment. British aid to the insurgency helped ensure that this campaign would become Napoleon's "Spanish ulcer."
The "Little Corporal" ultimately decided to indirectly strike back at the British by invading Russia, which was refusing to enforce France's so-called continental blockade. As Napoleon's army bled out or froze solid in the snows of a Russian winter, the Prussians and the Austrians found new reasons to reject French "fraternity." Within years, Napoleon's empire was unsaddled and destroyed, a fate shared by its leader, sent into ignominious exile on the island of Saint Helena.
Like Napoleon's fired up revolutionary troops, the American military also sees itself as on a mission to spread democracy and freedom. Afghans and Iraqis have, however, proven no more eager than the Spaniards of two centuries ago to be "liberated" at gun (or "Hellfire" missile) point, even when the liberators come bearing gifts, which in today's terms means the promise of roads, jobs, and "reconstruction," or even cash by the pallet.
Because we Americans believe our own press releases, it's difficult to imagine others (except, of course, those so fanatic as to be blind to reality) seeing us as anything but well-intentioned liberators. As journalist Nir Rosen has put it: "There's" a deep sense among people in the [American] policy world, in the military, that we're the good guys. It's just taken for granted that what we're doing must be right because we're doing it. We're the exceptional country, the essential nation, and our role, our intervention, our presence is a benign and beneficent thing."
In reporting on our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Rosen and others have offered ample proof for those who care to consider it that our foreign interventions have been anything but benign or beneficent, no less liberating. Our invasion of Iraq opened the way to civil war and mayhem. For many ordinary Iraqis, when American intervention didn't lead to death, destruction, dislocation, and exile, it bred "deep humiliation and disruption" as well as constant fear, a state of affairs that, as Rosen notes, is "painful and humiliating and scary."
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