marky33: * isn’t there any sense at all within the countries that are withdrawing that they are letting the side down - they are not fulfilling their promises of help?*
But what exactly are the conditions of “their promises of help”? It seems pretty clear that prior to the invasion, the US Administration was lowballing estimates of the required cost, duration, and troop strength for the war and rebuilding in Iraq:
Even after the end of the war, official estimates of the time and resources required for rebuilding were fairly optimistic:
To what extent did the commitment of coalition nations depend on official US estimates of a relatively quick and cheap operation in Iraq? To what extent was the US “spinning” these numbers to reduce opposition to the invasion? If coalition countries were persuaded into the war effort partly by unrealistic reassurances on the part of the war’s chief architects, is it their duty to eat the extra costs and sacrifices?
I agree that it’s not nice to “let the side down” by refusing to do your bit as part of a team. However, that cuts both ways: if the captain wants you to work for the team, he has to be honest with you about what the team is up against. No fair painting rosy pictures of an easy two-hour match when he knows that it’s really much more likely to turn out a multi-day challenge competition.
If people don’t know Roman history, and anyone who doesn’t know the scale of JC’s Gallic wars by definition does not, then they should not be even commenting, let alone asking for cites on the basis of ‘that don’t feel right’. What next? Cites for water being wet?
Herodotus said Xerxes Persian army was a million man strong, where 100,000 – 150,000, is more realistic. Ancient historians are notorious for wildly exaggerating the numbers. If you want to make a case for millions killed, you’ll have to come up with a cite from a more recent historian.
Anyway it really doesn’t behove one to belittle the historical knowledge of others when oneself gets wrong such a central concept as the Pax Romana.
Oh please. If the Gauls had put 3 million men in the field they would have swamped Caesar. Use your head man…do you even know how many troops Ceasar commanded in the field in Gaul? Its pretty widely acknowledged that Caesar inflated his figures wildly…which was a common practice in those times. A good rule of thumb is to subtract from such totals by an order of magnitude…and then work down from there. I’m not saying that Caesar was gentle with the Gauls, but had he killed 3 million or even 1 million SOLDIERS (which was his claim btw…he had higher figures for civilians) he would have completely and utterly depopulated the entire region. I doubt there were 1 million persons in ROME at for ogs sake…how many people do you figure lived in Gaul at this time?
Its pretty obvious by this statement that you don’t have a clue what Pax Romana was if you think this is MY definition of it. Its also pretty obvious that you don’t really have a good grasp of Roman history if you think they ‘slaughtered everybody’, so its kind of pointless to go on with this hijack. Suffice it to say that the Pax Americana and the Pax Romana are two completely different beasts (as defined by historians), so you really can’t compare them. They derive from completely different sources of ‘power’, were acheived in different ways, and ‘maintained’ in different ways. The only superficial similarity, which you have appearently latched onto is that they both have ‘Pax’ in their name and both describe a period of quasi-peace…one internal (Pax Romana), one external (Pax Americana).
One million people would be 166 legions, if you’re going with the initial size of 6000 men. That number seems outrageously high, so I’d consider the question for a cite to be justified.