A Military Historian’s Omnibus

Summary

Summary of "A Military Historian’s Omnibus" Episode of The Victor Davis Hanson Show

Release Date: June 19, 2025

Hosts: Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler

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1. Modern Equivalents to Historical Military Leaders

Listener Question: A member of the Victor Davis Hanson Fan Club, Paul Puccinow, inquired about modern-day equivalents to renowned military leaders such as William Tecumseh Sherman, George S. Patton, and the ancient general Epaminondas. Paul asked, “Does Victor believe that there are any modern-day, the last 30 years, 'armies of liberation' and any equivalence of Sherman or Patton?”

Discussion: Victor and co-host Marcus delved into the characteristics that defined these historical figures: moral clarity, the ability to marshal large, motivated armies, and the capacity to execute decisive campaigns. They explored the challenges in finding contemporary parallels, emphasizing the transformative impact of modern technology on warfare.

Notable Quote:

"In the age of drones, sophisticated satellite imagery, nuclear weapons, hypersonic missiles... a huge column of 100,000 men are going to just, boom, take off unless they have very good air support, satellite blocking image."
— Marcus [07:15]

2. The Impact of Drone Warfare on Infantry

Topic Overview: The conversation shifted to the role of drones in modern conflicts, particularly their devastating effect on infantry units. Marcus cited a statistic indicating that "65% of infantry losses in the Ukraine war on both sides are from drones," highlighting the vulnerability of traditional ground forces in the current technological landscape.

Discussion: They debated whether the integration of drones and other advanced technologies could allow for the resurgence of large-scale, mobile armies reminiscent of historical models. The hosts questioned the feasibility of maintaining such forces without significant advancements in air superiority and defensive countermeasures.

Notable Quote:

"You have to have air superiority 100% or it would just be destroyed as it walked, as it went forward."
— Marcus [07:45]

3. Analysis of William Tecumseh Sherman and the Black 54th Regiment

Listener Questions: Bill from New Jersey and Marcus Burkett from South Carolina posed two interconnected questions:

1. Insights on the Civil War’s Black 54th Regiment from Massachusetts and its commanding officer, Roberts.
2. An analysis of General William Tecumseh Sherman’s complex views on race and his military prowess.

Discussion: Marcus provided an in-depth examination of General Sherman’s strategies and personal beliefs. He contrasted Sherman’s tactical genius, particularly his infamous "March to the Sea," with his contradictory views on racial supremacy. Despite harboring racist beliefs, Sherman’s actions during and after the Civil War, such as emancipating slaves and supporting African American pioneers, showcased a nuanced character striving for a more humane approach amidst the brutality of war.

Notable Quotes:

“He [Sherman] probably did more for African American slaves than any American general, even more than General Howard, the founder of Howard University.”
— Marcus [10:15]

“They treated him with respect. He gave them land, so they liked him.”
— Marcus [14:30]

4. Reflections on the Iraq War: From Support to Critique

Listener Question: John from Milford, Connecticut, queried Victor on when he concluded that the Iraq War was a mistake.

Discussion: Victor recounted his initial support for the war post-9/11, influenced by the prevalent belief in the presence of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) under Saddam Hussein’s regime. He detailed his firsthand experiences being embedded with U.S. forces, witnessing the harsh realities of war, and interacting with both American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. These experiences led to his growing disillusionment, particularly regarding the inefficacy of nation-building efforts and the high human costs involved.

Notable Quote:

“I went with a group on Blackhawks. I was embedded and I flew around and you know, you see these kids right next to you... Why are we over here? Do we want to win? Are we not? Are we going to march through.'”
— Victor [31:22]

“If you're supporting this war, you have to go over there at least and see what it's like and what these kids are doing.”
— Victor [30:00]

5. Evolution of Mounted Warfare: Horses in Ancient Greece

Listener Question: Charla Gibson requested a brief lecture on how horses transformed warfare in ancient Greece, specifically focusing on Philip and Alexander’s military campaigns.

Discussion: Marcus explored the strategic advancements introduced by Philip II of Macedon and his son, Alexander the Great. He emphasized the development of the Companion Cavalry and the use of the sarissa—a long pike that extended the reach of infantry formations. These innovations allowed for more dynamic and effective battlefield maneuvers, enabling Alexander’s forces to achieve decisive victories against classical Greek phalanxes.

Notable Quote:

“They were the first to do a couple of things. They started to arm the rider and the horse with pads and sometimes with bronze protection... They had horses with sarissas that are about 12ft pikes, and they had armored horses and they had big horses.”
— Marcus [38:28]

6. The Byzantine Empire: Its Overlooked Legacy

Listener Question: Brian Bagley asked why the Byzantine Empire is largely ignored in historical narratives and whether its fall significantly altered European history.

Discussion: Marcus argued that the Byzantine Empire played a crucial role as the bastion of Western civilization from the 5th to the 15th centuries. He attributed its historical neglect to Eurocentric biases and the lasting impact of Edward Gibbon’s portrayal of Byzantium as decadent in "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Furthermore, the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans shifted the focus of Western Europe towards maritime exploration, inadvertently sidelining the profound contributions of the Byzantine era.

Notable Quotes:

“They did what the west couldn't do. ... As you survive and its heyday was the 5th century, 6th century, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, we got this wonderful reputation of it.”
— Marcus [44:06]

“The word Byzantine is really not an ancient world. ... They were romaioi, Romans. And the other thing very quickly is given if you read Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire...”
— Marcus [51:37]

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Conclusion

In this episode, Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler, alongside contributor Marcus, delved deep into various military history topics, drawing connections between past and present. They offered insightful analyses on the evolution of warfare, the complexities of historical military figures, and the often-overlooked significance of the Byzantine Empire. Through listener interactions, the show provided a platform for thoughtful discussions on how history shapes and informs contemporary military and political landscapes.

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For more detailed discussions and exclusive content, listeners are encouraged to subscribe to Victor Davis Hanson's website, VictorHansen.com.

Transcript

[Jack]

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[Victor Davis Hansen]

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[Jack]

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[Victor Davis Hansen]

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[Jack]

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[Victor Davis Hansen]

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[Jack]

We are back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Victor, here's a question from Paul Puccinow and Paul is one of the leaders of the Victor Davis Hansen fan club. He writes the first book that I read was the Soul of Battle. Does Victor believe that that there are any modern day, the last 30 years, quote unquote, armies of liberation and any equivalence of.

[Marcus]

I'm never going to say Epaminondas.

[Jack]

Thank you my friend.

[Marcus]

Just call him epi.

[Jack]

Epi. That's what you get for a classical education. Sherman or Patton. Are there any equivalents of epi, Sherman or Patton? Thanks from Paul.

[Marcus]

Victor yeah, the theme of that book was that there were times in history where people engage in linear marches and they were from more consensual societies than not and were trying to free people who were under the jurisdiction or submission to autocracies. And there was kind of a spirit in that army. That was Sherman's march to the sea in November to December 1864. Epaminondas Great March down to free the Helots. He didn't free the Laconian Helots, that would be Alexander, but he freed the Messenian Helots in the winter of 369 and 370 BC. And then I also talked about George Patton's I referenced that earlier the March from essentially July 1st all the way to Metz in mid September. And they were can you do that again? Can you form an army really quick and can you march and kind of be have the moral right on your side and have a spirit corps and I don't know a lot of it technological today with as we Saw with the Ukrainians and drones wiping out all of these targets, I just saw a statistic. 65% of infantry losses in the Ukraine war on both sides are from drones. I don't know if you could marshal an army without having. You'd have to have air superiority 100% or it would be just destroyed as it walked, as it went forward. And then in the post modern, I mean, when you're talking about a liberation of free peoples, I mean, we're talking about western peoples, I don't see any. Everybody in Japan, 1.3, fertility. Korea, 1.2, South Korea, Europe 1.4. I don't see a bunch of Europeans say, we're going to go help Ukraine and free them, and we're going to march through. And that's not going to happen. And we tried to do that kind of in that march to, you know, shock and awe. When we, we invaded Iraq and the idea was we were going to march all the way to Baghdad. I think it was like 400 miles that we did from the two prongs. But. And we were trying to liberate people. I think a lot of the neoconservative people said that we were going to be treated as heroes. There were people who did treat us as heroes, but that quickly dissolved into a messy counterinsurgency war. So I don't. It's going to be very hard, I don't think. You know, I just don't. It's very hard. In the age of drones, sophisticated satellite imagery, nuclear weapons, hypersonic missiles that a, a huge column of 100,000 men are going to just, boom, take off unless they have very good air support, satellite blocking image. I'm not saying that technology changes war permanently, but it puts us in cycles of defense versus offense. People get gunpowder, then all of a sudden you think body armor is out of it. You're never going to have body armor again. Well, we have body armor today. You, you think we're going to have air? The bomber always gets through. That's what we were told by the British government. Why, why build fighters? It always gets through. Can't stop it. Well, that wasn't true when you got sophisticated planes and then the bomber didn't get through because of fighters. And then there was jets, and then everybody said fighter. Well, you can't have a bomber anymore because these jets are so fast, they'll shoot them down. Well, you can have jet bombers can go faster. It's challenge, response, counter response challenge.

[Jack]

The drone stuff is really, you got.

[Marcus]

To know what cycle you're in, though, I think because of the fertility rate we're going to get, as I understand a lot of the research now on infantry, it's two things, robotics and body armor that will protect the person either through use of a robotic infantryman or new types of ceramics and fabrics that would stop a bullet. And there are some now that actually will do that.

[Jack]

But the drones work in killing an infantryman by just exploding. Right. And the force. I wonder how. How even how much you cover yourself with some degree of armor can. Can protect that.

[Marcus]

They said they were. I've been reading there's post traumatic syndrome because there's thousands now of these drone pilots in Ukraine. A lot of them are women. And they. When they have these little things that look like a sparrow hawk or something and they're chasing somebody through a trench or they have mixed emotions about killing that person.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Marcus]

But they're killing them in droves. And you can jam them. We're learning how to jam them and knock them down and stuff.

[Jack]

Well, I mentioned General Sherman. Paul had mentioned him in his question. And Sherman comes up again in another question. And this is from. This is funny. Hey, Jack. I'm a black dude, name is Marcus Burkett. He's from New Haven, Connecticut, near where I live, where actually I was earlier today, which is why I'm dressed so prettily. He lives in South Carolina. Huge fan of bdh. Question. Take the second part of this question, Victor. The first question is, Victor, can you speak on the Civil war, the Black 54th Regiment from Massachusetts and its commanding officer, Roberts? I believe he was the.

[Marcus]

Correct. That was glory, right? Glory, Right, yeah.

[Jack]

Second question. And can you speak on William Tecumseh Sherman, the Union general? He stood for the law and he had some favorable views of blacks, but still believed in the supremacy of whites. But still he was an unbelievably great general. Thank you and shout out to Sammy Wink. That's from Marcus.

[Marcus]

He was similar to Patton in that he was rhetorical and what he said didn't match his deeds. In other words, if you look what he said in his memoirs, and they're brilliantly written, I think they're even more impressive than Grant's. Well, Memoirs of W.T. sherman. He said things like, I'm glad we didn't occupy Mexico. I've been down to Mexico. I see what Mexico is like. I don't want those people in the United States. That was racist thing to say. But he was talking about the general poverty and he really detested the white. What he called the Cavalier class. He said, we're going to have to kill about 300,000 people in this war. We got to wipe out the Cavalier. He talked about the plantation. He said, they can't work with them. They're so wealthy and they're horsemen and they're aristocratic and they think they're so much better. He was talking about people like Wade Hampton. When you actually looked at him, when you look at the march, he freed blacks from the slaves, probably 20,000 of them, as he went through Georgia and the Carolinas later. And he created a pioneer corps. And so when he went to the plantation, I'm doing this by memory, but of Hal Cobb, who was governor of Georgia, he freed, I think, 200 slaves. And then his wife, Hal Cobb's wife, he said, well, you guys keep calling me a terrorist in the papers. If I'm such a terrorist, why did the governor leave his women folk here? Wouldn't I kill them and rape them, my men? But no, I didn't, because you know that I am a humane person. And this army of the west is a humane army. And everybody says that we're raping and killing because they were burning Confederate public railroads and armories and things. They didn't burn small houses. They did burn plantations. Anyway, the point I'm making is that he was criticized because he had some. General Logan and a few others that were Southerners, and these pioneers followed the army. And when you read Henry Hitchcock and memoirs of people on that march, they had never seen a black person before. The armies that were. This was a northern Midwestern army. It wasn't the army of the Potomac at all. It had no. Very few immigrants in it. It was Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana. And they were all farm. And that's why they were so different, because when they got down to the south, they actually. The south, the labor on the plantations was black slaves and then a wealthy aristocratic class. But they knew how to camp better. They knew how to feed themselves, they knew how to farm, they knew exactly how to scrounge, which type. So they were very successful. And they had never seen black people before. Many of them, they talk about it, and they felt very sympathetic to the way they were being treated, and so they allowed them to come along. And then they went ahead of the army and they corduroyed what they called corduroy, muddy roads. They put logs down so they could. Wagons could go over. And there was at one point, a lot of them got killed when the Confederates ambushed. And people said, well, Sherman let him go. But when he got to Georgia, Savannah, and went in the Carolinas. He started to gift African Americans offshore islands. And he said, these are your 40 acres and a mule problem, all that stuff. And he didn't have the authority to do that. And he was severely criticized. But he got it. He. He insisted on that. And then when he had the march into Washington after Appomattox, it's. It's. Everybody should read that about that march. We have contemporary descriptions from Europeans about it. And so they had the army of the Potomac. It had all brand new uniforms. They were all white off. No offense, Jack off the boat from Ireland. And I'm just kidding, but there were a lot of immigrants. The Irish Brigade, it was a revolving army. They had been wiped out. You know, when you're fighting at Antietam and Gettysburgsburg and Wilderness, in seven days, they were just wiped out. More people. But the army of the West, Sherman was very. He got criticized. He did not like frontal engagements. He only had one, and it didn't go well. So he was outflanking. He was destroying the wherewithal that fed the armies. But when he marched, he got all these guys. He had 60,000 of them, and they were all tanned and they were big and husky farmers. And they had all these black, big guys with him. And he let them march at the front of the army with picks and shovels and all of their engineering equipment. And the German ambassador was quoted saying, oh, my God, I've never seen an army. This guy could go right through Europe with that army. And then everybody was scared of it because they had attacked him. So when he met this Secretary of War, he didn't shake his hand because he'd been attacked. And they had sent a embassy down to Savannah to chastise Sherman because they said he hadn't been nice to freed blacks. So then they brought in a lot of blacks who had been on the march or knew him when he got to Savannah, and Sherman couldn't talk to them and Chase and all these other people. What's his name? Stanton. And they started to enter. Their emissaries interviewed him, and they all said he was a great guy. They treated him with respect. He gave them land, so they liked him. Then after he had this army, people said, oh, my gosh, he's got black pioneers, he's got farmers. He's angry at the United States. He's not going to disband it, and he's going to take over Washington and he's going to destroy the army of the Potomac. You can't stop him. And he Kind of fed that little. He was kind of tweaking them. And then he got to the bank of the Potomac and he just. All, you guys are going home. We'll see you. He was a great man.

[Jack]

Hallelujah.

[Marcus]

But he was a. He was in. He was. He did not believe. He was a man of his time, so he didn't believe that slaves were the exact equal. But he probably did more for African American slaves than any American general, even more than General Howard, the founder of Howard University. But he was very empathetic, and he really did not like the way. And his army did not like the way African Americans were treated in the south on the plantations. He freed them. He destroyed the plantations. I mean, I don't even want to get into Columbia, South Carolina, what he did. But his basic argument was, you started the war. You said that you were military superior, that your chauvinistic culture of cavaliers would destroy our motley immigrant army. You had the African American slaves. We didn't. We. You wanted to fight. Now we're here. Come out and fight me. He was much better equipped. You know, at the end, they had Sharps repeating rifle.

[Jack]

Victor, I have another Civil War related.

[Marcus]

Question, but first, Henry, too, I think. Henry rifle.

[Jack]

I believe there's Henry still exists.

[Marcus]

Yes, you can buy those beautiful guns. Yeah, I was thinking of getting one the other day. California's so weird. It's hard to get ammunition and anything in the mail. You know what I mean? Here you can't even buy a gas blower. It's against the law. Well, somebody was so nice. I mentioned that on one of our podcasts. And then I just saw this gas blower show up. Really shipped, shipped here. I don't know how they shipped it.

[Jack]

My gosh.

[Marcus]

And I want to tell the listener, I use your beautiful gas blower.

[Jack]

That's. That's nice. I should mention my favorite brand of ice cream. You never know. I show up my house, hey, mention.

[Marcus]

Henry rifles, and I get a nice 30, 30 or 22 or 17.

[Jack]

I think they were actually made near me here because of a tremendous amount of gun manufacturers in Connecticut.

[Marcus]

I think they're all I know. How far are you from the Springfield Armory in Massachusetts?

[Jack]

Oh, it's my pedal on the metal. I could get there in about an hour.

[Marcus]

And is that still there or do they move?

[Jack]

Don't believe they're there anymore, but yeah.

[Marcus]

I think they will verify that.

[Jack]

I have to read an ad here now, Victor, people are right to be frustrated, but the question cost of health care, prescription drugs in America cost more than they should and more than almost anywhere else in the world. And that's why President Trump's new executive order to lower drug prices is such a big deal. It's smart, long overdue, and puts patients, not corporations, first. But while that change is being rolled out, let me tell you about a pharmacy that's not waiting around. Family Pharmacy is stepping up now offering 20% of the off all medications through June 30, so you can stock up and stay prepared. Whether it's ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, ethylene blue antibiotics, or just your daily prescriptions. They've got over 200 essential meds, no insurance needed. They work with licensed drug doctors in all 50 states to get your prescription and ship it right to your door. So go to allfamilypharmacy.com Victor and use the code Victor20. That's V I C T O R, the number two, the number zero. To save 20% today, this is what healthcare should be, affordable, accessible, and back in your hands again. That's allfamilypharmacy.com Victor use the code VICTOR20. And we thank the good people from All Family Pharmacy for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Victor, question here. This is from Bill, Bill in New Jersey. Huge fan of Victor. I listen to all his podcasts and also his other appearances. I would like a list of books or a single book. Let's just stick with the single. That would best explain the military and political parts of the Civil War. Is there such a book that combines two. Or maybe there's the best book on military and the best book on Civil War.

[Marcus]

The best written. Well, I would read the primary sources, the memoirs of Grant and Sherman and Alan Guelzo, the great Civil War and Lincoln historians. Got a lot of good books on it. Battle Cry of Freedom, you know, by the princeton historians. Great. McPherson, James McPherson. Yeah, it's wonderful. And then Shelby Foots, the best written. The Southern agrarian writer. It's. It's a brilliant book on the Civil War. John Keegan, I knew him really well and he had written the. He gave me a big break. He wrote the introduction to the Western Way of War. Everything he wrote was wonderful. The World War II book, the World War I book. This, of course, the Face of Battle, price of admiralty, although. But his book on the Civil War was his weakest. I think it was because I don't know why he was not in good health and he was writing very quickly.

[Jack]

Who's your friend that you see every day?

[Marcus]

James McPherson. What?

[Jack]

Who's your friend? I put that in quotes. That you see occasional summer that a certain place. Who did this PBS series on the Civil War, the documentary.

[Marcus]

Oh, yes.

[Jack]

Ken. Ken. I can't think of his last name.

[Marcus]

Ken Burns.

[Jack]

Ken Burns. Oh, thank you. From.

[Marcus]

Yeah, I told. I mean, we don't agree politically, obviously.

[Jack]

Well, I guess I was asking, though, what did you think of. Did you see him?

[Marcus]

He's brilliant. I said that to him once. I wasn't a big fan of his later work, but I said to him two things. And I wasn't trying to be obsequious because he's been. I don't know if he's fond of me or not, but I said to him, that was a brilliant piece of cinematography. It was. There was something about the, you know, people said it wouldn't work unless you have, you know, film clips and all that. And they couldn't have that in the Civil War. But all of those. All those still frames. And then they had those great people narrating. Shelby Foote was one of them. And then they had the music and he was really. He really nailed it. And I asked him, I said, I don't think people on your side of the political spectrum would let you do that again. And he said, what do you mean? And I said, because you had a tragic view of it. You were looking at the south as. That these were very brave people, very capable people, very honorable people in many cases. And they were enlisting for a bad cause, slavery. Yet you not only brought that out, but you kind of pointed out indirectly that the majority, and this is debatable, it's one of the biggest debates in Civil War history. What percentage of the south owned slaves? Was it 4%? Was it. You can define it by household versus person, etc. But basically the vast majorities of Southerners did not own slaves, maybe 90%. And they suffered because of that in the sense that their society, I mean, they suffered because of slavery was bifurcate medieval. There was not a vibrant agrarian industrial worker class to the same exact degree there was in the north because they had to pay wage labor. Slavery really hurt the South Southern economy. I really like Eugene Genovese, you know, and he was the great Marxist historian. But later in life, he became very conservative and he wrote about slavery.

[Jack]

Did you know him?

[Marcus]

I knew him. I did. I knew him.

[Jack]

Was he from Brooklyn?

[Marcus]

Yeah, he was an Italian guy with a chainsaw. And I knew him when he had transitioned from a Marxist historian to a US and he was Elizabeth Fox Genovese with his wife. She was brilliant and her father had been a really brilliant geographer, geographical historian. I like both of them. They both died, they passed on. He was a creator of the Historical Society. It was kind of an effort to give a reasonable alternative to the American Historical association that had been taken over by leftists.

[Jack]

Well, what we call parallel polis.

[Marcus]

Right.

[Jack]

To offset the. Hey, Victor, we have some more questions to get your wonderful take on. And we're gonna get to one on the Iraq war when we return from these important messages.

[Henry]

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[Jack]

We are back with the Victor Davis Hansen show recording on Monday the 9th. This is the Victor's recovering episode, one of the two. This is the second that we're recorded. This will be up on Thursday, June 19. By the way, on Thursday, June 19. By then I will be a senior citizen Victor.

[Marcus]

So I'm looking forward to getting senior citizen 65.

[Jack]

I will be.

[Marcus]

My gosh, you look like you're 55.

[Jack]

Well, I am what I am. I'm going to get my senior discounts.

[Marcus]

I had a nice letter. A very nice woman said, you don't look like Skeletor. So you know what I did from on the website behind the paywall, when I'm answering questions, I'm going to put the picture of my bike accident and show you how Skeletor Was I'm going to show you how Skeletor was formed.

[Jack]

I saw you sent me that. I first of all that you would even send that to me. You do a selfie of yourself looking so banged up and then send it. It was really shocking picture. You'll scare children and what you'll scare people with that.

[Marcus]

I know it. And I, I want to get one.

[Jack]

Of those, those stickers, you know, they, they stick on, you know, not with glue, but to the back of your car. I want to get some VDH image that we can send to our listeners and viewers and even one of those ovals you see on the back of the car that have three initials. I'm do vdh. We're going to do that. No, my mommy. That's Lordy Lou. Lordy. What that is your just see your bike. Your front of your bike snapped off and. And there you were.

[Marcus]

That was my fault. It had a hairline crack in the fork and it was made out of carbon. Yeah. And the next thing I knew, I woke up and my two. My bottom and the upper lip were not connected to each other. I mean here they were just. And I have.

[Jack]

You have a rugged handsomeness from that. Okay, let's. Now let's ask this a question from John, who happens to be a friend and he happens to live in Milford, Connecticut. John asked a number of questions, but I got to pick one Victor. When did you decide the Iraq war was a mistake?

[Marcus]

I supported it because of 911 and I don't know if I would have fully had. I, I did believe that he had wmd. I'm half believing that a lot of the W and D that he had, he shipped out. The other thing about the Iraq war was they had been since the incomplete first Gulf War and the no fly zones and all they had. Remember, they had destroyed the Marsh Arabs. They had committed genocide against them. They were persecuting Shia. Not that we should get into anybody's business in a cost of benefit analysis, but at that time there were all of these. I was talking to Christopher Hitchens a lot and he had written a lot that while Saddam Hussein was not an instigator of 9 11, he was aware of it. He had been. Put it this way, some of the worst terrorists in the world that had killed Americans were residing in his regime. Abu Nadal and other people. I once wrote an article about all the reasons why you would like to go in there. But why did. That's not the question. The question is why did I change? I thought first of all in a Costa Ben Remember, Donald Trump at this time was telling everybody he wanted to impeach. He was for the war initially, and then he quickly got disillusioned. My criticism was it was everybody was saying it was my brilliant war and you screwed up. It's your peace. In other words, a lot of the neoconservatives, Richard Pearl, Bill Kristo, all of them had been hammering since 1998. Remember the project for a New American Century under Clinton. If you go back and read that, I thought it was Robert Kagan. They were all asking for a premature preemptive attack on forget about 9 11. They wanted to go in there and remove him and then democratize the area. I never believed any of that. But after 9 11, I thought we should at least take him out and leave. But as the surge started, now that we had the insurrection and then Petraeus wanted the surge 2006, I thought, if you're for the war, then you have to be for the war. As Matthew Ridgeway once reportedly said, there's only one thing worse than a bad war, and that's losing it. So I thought, if you lose this war, it's going to be catastrophic. So I when the surge started, that was the worst of all 2006 and 7. That's when if you look at the casualty figures, that was the area. But so in 2006, I went with a group on Blackhawks. I was embedded and I flew around and you know, you see these kids right next to you sitting out of the Blackhawk with a.50 caliber machine gun. You talk to them. And then back at the base, I talk to people. But more importantly, the next year I was embedded with HR McMaster and he was on a mission from Petraeus to chronicle the Arab rebellion. The sons of Saddam and all those people who he flipped, remember, they were joining us and that's what won. They had the war won. And I noticed something very quickly that we said we were nation building, but we weren't really. That was just what we said. Stanley McChrystal and most people were killing Al Qaeda, ISIS, Saddamites. That's what broke the back of the resistance and allowed there to be peace. So when the time Obama was elected, 2009, when he took office, there were more people in the US Military per month being killed by accidents than in Iraq. It was pretty much quiet. Then he pulled out, as you remember, and ISIS came in. And then Trump fixed that. But my point is, why did I change? Because I got over there twice and I went with our friend Rich Lowry, once he was embedded, we had a rocket that went right at us, almost killed us. It skipped. Anyway, I started talking to all these kids, and I would see all this wealth there. I mean, wealth in the sense of Humvees for a line forever tanks, just an incredible amount of material. And you talk to all these kids, and then they would ask you. They said, why are we over here? Do we want to win? Are we not? Are we going to win or not? I Want to know, Mr. Hansen, are you here to say to me we're going to win? Because I don't want to? Winning, right?

[Jack]

What did winning mean?

[Marcus]

What winning meant was to destroy the opposition and leave it calm. And then supposedly they had been told we were going to get a constitutional government like Egypt or not a constitutional, but something like Jordan or Egypt or something like that, so that it wouldn't be, you know, it would not be a host of terrorists. It wouldn't do all that. And I couldn't answer that. So I thought to myself, if you're supporting this war, you have to go over there at least and see what it's like and what these kids are doing. So I did it twice. And I had really bad kidney stones. I remember that I stayed one year at the palace of Saddam. I interviewed David Petraeus, who I thought was very heroic. He was flying all over Iraq in very dangerous areas. There was no safe area there. I was at the airport when a rocket almost got us. I was in the Green Zone when they would send in more anywhere there was. So when they said that, I saw that they said, well, J.D. vance was just a Marine reporter, and he wasn't in a combat. He was just. There was no safe places. They could kill you anywhere there. But I just got to the point, point when I came back that I thought, you either have to win the war or you got to get out, or you've got to tell everybody what you're doing because you're sending all these poor kids that are 18, 19 from working classes, and the people who are sending them are from the intellectual elite classes. It just bothered me. And, you know, I tried to do a lot of stuff. I drove a T34 tank for about. I went out. It was just like Wild West. Somebody said, you want to go out with a. With the Iraqi army and see how they're training? I did. I walked out and they said, here, take a AK47. So I started shooting it. And then the guy said, this is better than your guns. And I said, no, an M4 is much better. So he took the AK47 and he threw it in the dirt. He took all the sand and poured it on. He jumped on it and he had me jump on it. Said, now shoot it. And it shot. And then he did that to another, an American M16 derivative, M4, whatever. And it didn't shoot. Said, which would you rather have? I don't know how to shoot very. I mean, I used to shoot shotguns pretty well, but I didn't. It was hard to shoot. In other words, it was very inaccurate. And then I got in the tank and we had. My grandfather had a D4 from World War II or D2 with a little things like this when I was a kid. So I was able to drive it a little bit. And then I saw people. Well, the weird thing about it was you were in Iraq. And all of a sudden I said, I know you. You're from the Monterey Postgraduate School. Yes, I know you. You were in the military history working group. You. I know you, too. And then Chris Gibson, who's a wonderful guy, he's a congressman for three terms, and he just text me and said, I hear you're here. I'll be there in a second. And all of a sudden I turn around, he's. He gets off a Blackhawk with an M16 and says, hello, how are you? It was just. And then I remember this one day, a person said, would you like to get on a. A flight into Balad Air Base and see the hospital? I said, yes. So we're going there. I think I told you that. And we kind of did a slow thing where they pushed a type of scanner as X ray scanner on a pallet off, but they didn't quite stop. Right. And it wasn't a C17, it was a C135.

[Jack]

Oh, it was a cargo.

[Marcus]

Yeah, cargo. We were in a cargo thing. So he said, when they. When we slow down, you jump off of the scanner and you can watch the H. So I did with another guy. And then I get into the hangars, they had Soviet hangers and everything, you know. And a guy goes, you look tired and you can hear, like people attacking the base. And he said, what do you want? Do you like a Haagen Dazs with almonds or do you like it without almonds? I said, I went with almonds. And then somebody gave, do you want an oat latte or do you want this? And they had this. And then, you know, I went into the surgery center and they're. It was just horrific. It was so weird. You know, and anyway, it was a colossal effort of the best of Americans. And I just came back thinking, you can't oppose this unless you get them all out. If they're there, whoever's making the decision, you've got to support them. But they, I'm not sure they should be there because from my point after I went over there and coming up, that's why I went over there, because I was getting to the point where I don't think this whole country is worth one dead American. I was so mad. And there were a lot of nice Iraqis, but I just didn't see. You take some kid that's working in an auto shop in Indiana at minimum wage and then you put him in a Blackhawk and he has to fly around and get shot at all the time, for what? And then these people who dreamed all this up. And then I kind of felt guilty that I had been part of the people who supported the war and hadn't been over there. But in defense, a lot of the people that I now disagree with, they were very brave. Max Boot was a big hawk, but he went over there and he was embedded. Mark Stein went over there very early. And didn't he drive across Syria in a rental car? I think he did, yeah. Mark Stein did. He did. So there was a lot of people there. I saw a Hoover fellow there. It was just. It was. But it was not going to work. It was.

[Jack]

Well, especially the nation building aspect.

[Marcus]

You talk to people and it was not going to work. People are people. Their culture is culture. I didn't go to Afghanistan because that was considered the good war. Remember we won that supposedly until the withdrawal and this, the Iraq was the bad war. But I always thought Afghanistan would be harder for a variety of reasons.

[Jack]

Well, Victor, I have a question about what else? Oh, about warfare and horses. But first I want to take a moment for our sponsor, OpenPhone. OpenPhone is the number one business phone system that streamlines and scales your customer communications. It works through an app on your phone or your computer. So no more carrying two phones or using a landline. With Open Phone your team can share one number and collaborate on customer calls and texts like a shared inbox. That way any teammate can pick up right where the last person left off, keeping response times faster than ever. OpenPhone is a no brainer. And see why over 50,000 businesses trust OpenPhone to manage their businesses calls and texts. OpenPhone is offering our listeners 20% off your first six [e-mail] Victor, that's O-P E N P H O-N-E.com Victor. And if you have existing phone numbers with another service, OpenPhone will port them over at no extra charge. OpenPhone. No missed calls, no missed customers. And we thank the good people and OpenPhone for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Victor, really interesting question from Charla Charla Gibson, who writes. I'd love to hear a lecture. No lectures, Victor. Just five minutes on how horses changed warfare in ancient Greece, specifically how Philip and Alexander incorporated horses in their campaigns to great success. That's from Charlie, Victor. No horse.

[Marcus]

Yeah, that was Frank Adcock in a little short book called the Greek and Macedonian Art of War. It was written. It's beautifully written. It's a little essay he wrote, but it was this. The status quo said that horses would not be prominent in the ancient world because they could not attack infantry because they didn't have stirrups. And I think John Keegan wrote about that, too. I think that's been modified now. But the point I'm making is that people who owned horses were aristocrats, because if you take an acre of land in the ancient world, it will produce two cows or three cows or 15 sheep or goats, or it will produce grain and barley or olive oil. But if you have pasture, it'll only be like one, not even one horse. So people who had horses, they were either the wealthy cavalry class, the hippies, we call them in classical Athens, or they were people from the vast plains of Thessaly and Macedonia, like the. So the Macedonians had great rolling pasture and they were kind of a monarchy, pre civilizational. They didn't have a city state system like the South. And they were the first then to do a couple of things. They started to arm the writer and the horse with pads and sometimes with. With copper, I mean, bronze protection. And then they started to use the. The Companion Cavalry had. The infantry had something called a sarissa that can be anywhere from 14 to 22ft in the Hellenistic period. I don't know how I've tried to do that. And it looks like a bow and arrow, a boat. But anyway, they. They had horses with sarissas that are about 12ft pikes, and they had armored horses and they had big horses. And they were the first to what we would call make shock cavalry. What does that mean? I mean, typically when Alexander or Philip's army approached a classical Greek army of hoplites that were just as good citizen soldiers, for the most part, they were mercenaries and paid soldiers, professionals. They would target an area on the line and Then bombard it with arrows, with javelins, slings, etc. And cause chaos. And then they would send in the companion cavalry, about 2,500 on each wing, led by Alexander and his father, but mostly by Alexander. And then he would break through that disorganized mass and he would. They could stab people that had armor on and blast through and then get in behind the enemy army. And that was the classical tactics. So that was the first time that horses played that role. But mostly infantry was the primary, because they were yeoman infantry, they were small farmers, etc. And they were the majority. The middle classes were infantry. And the Rome. Rome had very. They had always had to get auxiliary cavalry from pre civilizational people. So people that had horses in the ancient world, at least until the late empire, they were considered weird or pre civilizational or not sophisticated. There's land inequality, big barons that had enough money and pasturage to support horses, which were very expensive, but they were very valuable. So when Rome came in, they were an army of infantry that was just unstoppable, the legions, but they needed horses. When they started to see diverse horse people and what they did is they recruited them from the Germans, the Gauls, the Dacians, etc. They were auxiliary troops. And then just to finish the Byzantines, then who were dealing with the Iranians, the Parthians, the people on the east, they developed something called cataphracts or cataphractoi. These were heavily armed. I mean, they had a big Arab horse and they had metal armor on the horse and on the rider with lances. And they could go through almost anything. And that was the Byzantine's secret weapon or special weapon or shock weapon that made them very, very formidable.

[Jack]

Mentioning Byzantine, Byzantium or the Empire, that will be the subject of our next and final question. And we'll get. I will ask that of Victor when we come back from these final important messages.

[Marcus]

Foreign.

[Jack]

Davis Hansen Show It's Monday, June 9th. This episode is up on Thursday the 19th. I forget, Victor, if I did say you have a website, the Blade of Perseus and it costs $65 a year to subscribe, 650amonth if you want to do it monthly. And you would want to do that because you're a fan of Victor's writing. And twice a week Victor writes an exclusive article for the Blade of Perseus. And once a week he does an exclusive video and there's so much more there. So do check that out and do subscribe also if you're on X Victor's handle is at VD Hansen. We mentioned again the Victor Davis Hansen fan club on Facebook. You should check that out. And Victor is on Facebook VDH's Morning Cup. And as for me, I write the center for Civil Society's newsletter, Civil Thoughts. And you can go to civilthoughts.com and sign up and every Friday it'll come in your inbox and it's got 14 recommended readings. I know you will like it. Civilthoughts.com Victor Our final question is simple but it's from Brian Bagley. Why is the Byzantine Empire mostly ignored by history? The defeat of the Byzantine Empire changed European history. Is he right with that?

[Marcus]

Yeah, I think part of it is that we that the locus of civilization. After the discovery of the new world in 1453 and the end of the Byzantine Empire and the rise of the Ottoman Empire, we now associate Western civilization with an area that was backward in classical antiquities. Britain, Holland, the Netherlands, France, Spain had ports on the west and they developed a very sophisticated trade to get around the Ottomans. But that meant the old silk routes were blocked by Muslims. So they said we're going to get to China or Africa along the African coast. And then the idea that the world was round were going to go west. That's why we get the word Indian right because they thought they were in India. So that wealth changed from the new world. And in terms of history, people say, well, the history of the west is the Western Roman Empire. And it really wasn't. If you look at where the scientific development was occurring in the empire. And we also say it's because the Republic started. Roman society started in the west in Italy. But by the time of the empire, if you look at documents talking about imperial income, it's all from Egypt or from Syria or from Iraq or what's Asia Minor that. And so the town, the cities like Alexandria, Pergamum, Tyre were just so a Thessaloniki, they were so much. And Constantinople, they were so much wealthier than Rome was at this time. I'm talking about 400, 350. So then the Western Empire collapsed sometime in the 470s but we forget that the Eastern Empire did not. And it existed for a thousand years because it didn't have a lot of religious schisms. You know, it didn't have Manicheanism or liberate the liberal or etc. Etc. Augustine was trying to do was solidify and unify the Catholic what would become the Catholic Church. But Orthodoxy did not have as many challenges. It united the Byzantines and The government, in a way that was not true of the west. And it had much more defensible borders. It got to the Tigris and Euphrates. It had the Hellespont from marauding people trying to get in. The walls of Constantinople were the most impressive in the world. The Theodesian walls, built around 440, 470, they were impenetrable. And then the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara, you couldn't get into Constantinople. And so this lasted for a thousand years. And it was a very sophisticated, brilliant society. I mean, Hagia Sophia by Justinian, it was the biggest church in the world for a thousand years until the cathedral, I think, at Seville. And it had the Justinian law co the brilliant effort of Belisarius to try to unite the fallen west and bring it back. He almost pulled it off, and I think he would have if they had not had the great plague that wiped out of a fourth of the Byzantine population. So my point is that why do we have a bad name? Why don't we give it credit? Because it did what the west couldn't do. And the answer is that as it survived and its heyday was the 5th century, 6th century, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, we got this wonderful reputation of it. And then the west caught up with it. And if you go today to Greece or somebody, they will tell you that Greece or Bulgaria or the west, the Orthodox countries were wealthier in antiquity. And the only reason that Western European dominate the EU was because the Eastern Catholic Orthodox saved them from Ottomanism. We were enslaved for 400 years. So you people in Italy could have the Renaissance. That's what they'll tell you. Or they'll tell you all of the great thinkers from Constantinople that had the majority of manuscripts that kept classical wisdom alive after the First Crusade, or right before, I mean, the Fourth Crusade, where the Franks destroyed Constantinople and they had to be, you know, rebuilt. That was. Western Catholics did that. And they will tell you that after the. During the fall of Constantinople, that all the great minds brought their scientific inquiry to Western Europe and that prompted the Renaissance. But I think what happens is that the discovery of the New World and the fights of the east with Ottomanism kind of warped our appreciation. We said, well, Western Europe was always wealthier, and today it's wealthier and it's. No, it wasn't always wealthier. The east was the bulwark of western civilization from 500 AD to 1500, maybe, you know, Black Tuesday, May 29, 1453. That was the end of it. I wrote about that in the end of everything, it was very tragic. The other thing very quickly is the word Byzantine is really not an ancient world. There's a city called Byzantium, and that's the one that Constantine the Great built on top of when he made Constantinople the city of Constantine. But it had been a very strategically located place. But the word. They never used the word Byzantium for Byzantine people. They were Hellenes. And what are the people of Byzantium for a thousand years call themselves romaioi, Romans, Roman. They were the true Romans. They thought that everybody had died in the west or had been conquered. They were the Romans. So why do we call them byzantines? It was 19th century German scholarship who started to write about them and they said, well, they're not Romans because the west fell, even though they call themselves romaioi, but they were Greek speakers. So what's a good Greek word for the area? That was Will, you know, they weren't Romans, really. It was kind of a chauvinistic attack on them. So they started using the word Byzantine, which had been used very rarely by the Byzantines themselves. Once in a while, you'll see primary sources will look called the people of Byzantine Byzantium, but it was not a word for the imperial civilization. It was romaioi, Romans. And the other thing very quickly is given if you read Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the last chapters are devoted to Byzantium. And he was heavily influenced by sensationalist primary sources like Procopius, Secret History and Theodora. All of the nudity, pornography, decadence, the Hippodrome and the Nika riots. And then he coined the idea that it was a decadent pale imitation of the Western empire. And he coined the idea, Gibbon did that the Church was, the Eastern Church was backward and superstitious. It had no experience with the Enlightenment, much less the Protestant Reformation. It had never had a Counter Reformation. It was just a ossified, solidified, calcified church. And he gave us the idea of Byzantine as a pejorative word in English, as something that's heavily bureaucratic and inefficient, which wasn't true at all. So Gibbon, really prejudiced, I think, against the Byzantines and the fact that it wasn't in Western scholarship. Most people in the Renaissance knew Latin, but they did not know Greek. So they did not have experience with Byzantine authors unless they had been translated.

[Jack]

I am so glad I forget who asked the question that they asked it, because I was fascinated. Victor, we're doing this trunk complicated shows because you've got things to do, like get your health back together. So we're going to conclude the podcast with that. Great answer. I want to thank everyone from the Victor Davis Hansen Fan Club on Facebook who sent us questions. Couldn't get to answer them all. It's a possibility later this year, Victor might be gone for a week or so doing this or that. And we will store these questions, reserve them for that opportunity. Victor, you've been terrific. Thanks for all the wisdom you shared. Thank you people for listening, watching, for commenting on the show, on YouTube, Rumble, Apple, wherever, Victor's own website. God bless. Thanks so much. And we'll be back soon with another episode of the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Bye bye.

[Marcus]

Thank you everybody for listening and viewing.