RE: US Defence Budget
December 6, 2011 at 5:10 pm
(This post was last modified: December 6, 2011 at 5:18 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(December 6, 2011 at 4:36 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Interesting. My understanding of the battles of Adrianople and their equally devastating loss against the Huns (I forget the name of that battle), is that their enemies at both battles had a decisive edge on cavalry.
Actually, in Adrianople was primarily an infantry battle. Roman cavalry was actually stronger than Gothic cavalry. It is Roman overconfidence and poor tactical deployment that allowed a relatively small Goth cavalry contingent to become the decisive factor.
The key point here isn't the Romans were beaten by well deployed cavalry. Cavalry had been decisive in several Roman defeats in its earlier history. Battle of Cannae, for example. In any case, by this time Roman army has adopted drastically since Trajan or Hadrian. It is now a cavalry heavy force, with infantry legions reduced to 1/6-1/10 the size seen under Caeser. The point is how weak the empire had become such that the loss of mere 20,000 troops at Adrianople had such an large and long lasting impact on the fate of the western empire. During its Republican heydays, Rome could lose 20,000 troops several times in the same year and still carry on to victory.
(December 6, 2011 at 4:36 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: America didn't have a siege mentality until 9/11 and then it seems we went batshit crazy.
I think the mentality that existed after 9/11 is nothing more than a opportunistic but virulent resurgence of the same siege mentality that was assiduously stoked all throughout the cold war, in no small part by invoking Pearl Harbor.
