Michael J. Taylor

Clearly, there will still a lot of camp followers in Marius' army, and the soldiers had personal slaves (many of them armed) who performed menial labor, and soldiers were willing to fight to defend their property.

For all the hype that Gaius Marius turned his soldiers into tough "mules" who didn't need servants, an unexpected skirmish against the Ambrones turned into a pitched battle after Roman camp servants were ambushed drawing water.

(Plut. Mar. 19).

In keeping with Trump-style faux tough talk but a genuinely terrible answer. Sheer political malpractice.

And the consequence of Hegseth's reckless war criming is that it will be harder for *any* subsequent Iranian government to come to terms after the US has killed so many schoolchildren.

Ironically, this is why democratic regimes tend to be very good at warfare. They have political mechanisms to tell them how many people actually want a war, and they win because the populace is willing to make required sacrifice.

Too bad Trump thinks he's a dictator.

This is also why autocratic regimes are often very cautious about going to war--the enemy won't do what dear leader says.

Autocratic regimes lack both deep legitimacy to endure losses or the ability to gauge how popular a war actually is.

Embarrassing typos (AI generated?) for a post that basically admits that the soldier was blown up beyond recognition.

A lot more of this tragic incompetence in the chute.

Hegseth is the kind of fellow who says "the gloves are coming off" right before he beats his wife.

If its not war then its just murder.

My university received a few years ago the promise of the largest single gift to a public university in U.S. history. It was equivalent to 12 hours of bombing Iran.

Article 11 of the Treaty with Tripoli, signed in 1796, in which the United States proclaims itself not to be in any way founded as a Christian nation.

And totally antithetical to the consensus among the founding fathers---one of the most secular generations in history to date---that the United States was not a Christian Nation!

And we are scandalously low on munitions!

The sort of thing you are allowed to after Congress has declared war, which it hasn't.

Nothing to see here. Just blundering into a massive bloody ground war against 90 million people on terrain far, far less favorable to US operations than Southern Iraq.

Happy ἐξελαύνω Day to those who celebrate.

One of Biden's political strengths had been his ability to shift deftly with the Democratic base (i.e. gay marriage). But that dexterity was totally gone by 2024.

It's fair to say that one insidious way Biden's age manifested is he lost the ability to hold his own coalition together, in terms of both messaging and policy dexterity (especially misjudging the extent the entire coalition was shifting on Palestine) with disastrous results.

This is the sort of thing a SecDef should be spending every waking hour worrying about.

Instead we have a preening self-proclaimed "SecWar" who makes fitness influencer reels and picks culture-war fights with the Scouts.

This is why you have Congress declares war! It communicates to other states that the situation has changed.

Notable that the self-proclaimed "SecWar" was minimally involved in war-planning.

Suspect this is because he is a useless ninny even by the low standards of the Trump administration--yesterday seems proof he's been sidelined.

So he fills his ample free time punching down on trans scouts.

A mid-career degree from a prestigious school was always advertised as a perk of service, and a way to retain talented officers.

Stay on CPT, and we'll send you to Harvard!

Most officers retire in their 40s and a high-powered degree helps with the transition to a civilian career.

Insane.

Seems like a lot is about to go wrong.

Hard to think of someone more antithetical to the values of Scouting than Pete Hegseth.

Polybius 10.20 reports that Scipio Africanus made his troops run 30 stades, presumably in armor (5.4 km/ 3.4 miles), and that was their exercise for the day, if you want a shorter and more realistic legionary workout.

Also, all of the weight training at the end is bogus--the hybrid workout takes a miscalculated Roman march, and then adds modern strength training to simulate digging a camp!

US Army standard forced march is 12 miles in 3 hours (4mph).

So the Vegetian march is plenty brisk, but not as brutal as the article suggests.

Vegetius specifies recruits should be able to do 20/24 miles in five hours *in the summer*, when each hour was about 75 minutes long.

So they had six hours and 15 minutes.

The Roman mile is about .92 of an English mile: so 18/22 miles

Averaging about 2.9-3.5 mph.

Gotta love the totally b.s. brain rot AI generated Roman soldier, which probably tells you that you are not getting a genuine Roman workout.

Also, author got paid to not do the reading.

www.thelatinlibrary.com/vegetius1.html

Oh FFS. "I don't know the answer to that."

YES YOU DO, you damned, unpatriotic coward. You are the Senate majority leader!

The Constitution says your house (and the other one) has to vote yes. So if you think the answer should be no, THE ANSWER IS NO.

Yeah, we need to arrest some people on this side of the pond, but belated public humiliation and professional consequences are better than nothing.