I wrote this takedown of Victor Davis Hanson's Carnage and Culture (2004) at the Other Platform, but why not bring it over: Here is a not-even-close-to-exhaustive list of serious defects w/ VDH's famous(ly damaging) book, which you shouldn't read (both this thread and the book). 1/

Any chance of you expanding this into a blog post?

1) VDH asserts that the Greek way of war, fighting as close-order infantry with a relatively high degree of discipline, is unique to Greece and thus the West. Both claims are easily refuted. For the first, the Greeks don't even have a monopoly on heavy infantry *in Europe.* 2/

LOL! I'm old enough to remember the glory days of the blogosphere, and in particular, how on any given slow news day, you could find at least three people fisking the latest nonsense from VDH.

I was under the impression that Europe spent 2000 years reinventing the phalanx. What was the Spanish military famous for in the 16th century, if not close order infantry formations with pikes?

He sounds like yet another John Bolton/Donald Rumsfeld clone.

Thanks for cross posting, I enjoyed this. There may be a typo, wasn't Carnage and Culture published in 2001 not 2004?