WoT: On history's many coincidental lessons

On our local Virgin Islands Discussion board, one of the resident moonbats who calls himself Sufi was blathering on about General Zinni's recent statements regarding Rumsfeld and the apparent lack of boots on the ground. He/she was answered by someone who posts by the handle of Archimedes.

The Archimedean response to the Sufi spin was:

"The problem with Zinni is that he was wrong militarily. He was against the whole Rumsfeld notion of a small, specialized, tactically-eficient fighting units. Well, it was 22 days from the start of "shock and awe" to the fall of the Saddam statue. Zinni is not the first general to be wrong on force size. Custer comes to mind."

Which of course got me thinking of parallels...And there are parallels across the 2500 year expanse of time previous to our resident twirling mystic's attack.

Being a rather narcissistic descendant of Carib Indians who cherishes western history and happens to blog, I'll cannibalize that thread to illustrate what the exchange brought to mind.

This close to the Olympics in Greece you have me thinking Archimedes.

The Zinni thing reminds me of Datis and Artaphrenes who's army of 25,000 or so Persians was defeated at Marathon by less than a thousand Greeks with better tactics, training, bravery, and equipment...or even Xerxes at Thermopylae Pass a few days later.

Xerxes curiously enough, only succeeded with the help of Ephialtes - a greek traitor who informed Xerxes of a series of paths the Persians could use to outflank the small Greek coalition force holding the pass at Thermopylae.

Even after this rank betrayal (which has apparently become quite acceptable amongst a significant portion of the American polity since Vietnam), Persian commanders had to whip their troops into facing the 900 or so Thespians and Spartans who - though vastly outnumbered and surrounded - stood their ground amidst a hail of Persian arrows whilst still managing to send 20,000 Persians to their makers before falling. In so doing they traded their lives for time enough for the Greeks to set up their ultimate victory at Salamis which forced the surviving Persian forces to withdraw in defeat after this first great naval battle [Salamis] in history.

By the way, this was all going on whilst the Greeks held their Olympics.

...Which leads me to the conclusion that American Soldiers and statesmen are currently doing a considerably better job at securing the freedom of western civilization.