« By Request: Density and Intercity Rail | Main | Long Way Down » In a Fashion Reminiscent of Genghis Khan24 Jun 2008 03:58 pm On the advice of some readers I picked up Jack Weatherford's Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World where I learned that Genghis Khan banned torture in his empire. So, yes, under George W. Bush the United States of America is regressing to an understanding of humane treatment of people that doesn't reflect the enlightened views of Genghis Khan. That's your feel-good thought of the day. Comments (58)
Genghis Khan did not have to deal with the transcendent threat from Islamofascism. 
Genghis Khan did not have to deal with the transcendent threat from Islamofascism. khwarezm unlike the USA the mongols "cleaned up," so to speak....
Genghis Khan did not have to deal with the transcendent threat from Islamofascism. I really don't think we want to go down this road...
Well let's see, they annihilated Khwarezm of course, but then when they all went back to elect Mongke (I think it was Mongke) they got beaten by the Mamluks (elite Turkish horsemen from Egypt) despite allying with the Crusaders and made a serious effort at the middle-east only once more because the Il-Khans (the Middle-Eastern regions) began to fight with the Golden Horde who had converted to Islam. Later the Il-Khans also converted to Islam. So in effect, if you are to go down that road you could say that Islam destroyed the Mongols as an empire. (I disagree, but you can certainly SAY it.)
Also, the Assassin sect was a problem until it was wiped out by Genghis's grandson Hulegu.
Genghis Khan did not have to deal with the transcendent threat from Islamofascism. I know the comment was in jest but in the time of Genghis Khan, Islam actually existed as a unified Caliphate that streched from the borders of southern France to India (though to be sure it was past the peak of its prime by then). Genghis never attacked the Caliphate directly but one of his followers did sack Baghdad with casualities up to 1 million civilians (according to Wikipedia)
Genghis Khan did not have to deal with the transcendent threat from Islamofascism. Genghis Khan didn't have to deal with nuclear bombs. Torture doesn't work and I'm hoping that under President Obama they do away with it. I think that the recent Supreme Court ruling was the way it was because the court recognizes the country is moving left and won't tolerate this stuff. If there is a WMD attack on a western country with mass casualties, they will make the post 9-11 stuff look like weak tea. 9-11 will be "the good old days." I'd like to see you try be funny about "Islamofascism" then. There's a much happier thought for the day.
Genghis Khan did not have to deal with the transcendent threat from Islamofascism. Genghis Khan didn't have to deal with nuclear bombs. Torture doesn't work and I'm hoping that under President Obama they do away with it. I think that the recent Supreme Court ruling was the way it was because the court recognizes the country is moving left and won't tolerate this stuff. If there is a WMD attack on a western country with mass casualties, they will make the post 9-11 stuff look like weak tea. 9-11 will be "the good old days." I'd like to see you try be funny about "Islamofascism" then. There's a much happier thought for the day.
Heck, back then Genghis was the transcendent threat.
I believe Hoyer and Pelosi are keen on putting several of their progressive colleagues under the tent so to speak.
This thread borders on the fringes of lunacy. I think that full blown Bush Derangement Syndrome has finally claimed MY. Any favorable comparison of Ghengis Khan to Bush is ludicrous. Sacking of Beijing or Samarkand anyone? How many innocents were murdered by the Mongols? Millions? Tens of millions? Ridiculous!
Islam actually existed as a unified Caliphate that streched from the borders of southern France to India no. it was already symbolic by then. rule of thumb: a caliphate with *real* temporal power from the atlantic to the indus was gone by around 900. there was a revival in the generation of genghis khan, but only as a local mesopotamian power.
Genghis never attacked the Caliphate directly but one of his followers did sack Baghdad with casualities up to 1 million civilians remember that numbers like "1 million" are as valid as the millions of persian soldiers who the greeks beat, or the hundreds of thousands of israelites who trooped through the desert of the sinai. How many innocents were murdered by the Mongols? Millions? Tens of millions? Ridiculous! 1) you have to normalize to the times. genghis khan was not qualitatively different than the khwarazm shah, he was quantitatively so. 2) as i note above, tens of millions is an exaggeration. i bet you millions is too, though perhaps dislocation might have resulted in mass starvation. i think that a lot of the destruction caused by barbarians, from rome down to the mongols, was of bigger effect long term than short term as there was a breakdown of infrastructure which was dependent on particular systems of soocial control. IOW, the decline of persian agriculture was signaled by the emergence of the il-khan, but it played out over generations and took on a life of its own. So in effect, if you are to go down that road you could say that Islam destroyed the Mongols as an empire. only the genghisides. there were subsequent mongol empires up to the 18th century under the aegis of the dzunghars of western mongolia.
"Any favorable comparison of Ghengis Khan to Bush is ludicrous. Sacking of Beijing or Samarkand anyone? How many innocents were murdered by the Mongols? Millions? Tens of millions? Ridiculous!" That's kind of the point. Awful as Genghis Khan was, there seems to have been one key area in which he was more humane than our president.
there seems to have been one key area in which he was more humane than our president. but is this really right??? look at bill clinton who "looked the other way" re: rwanda. that being said, you can say that he was a *pragmatic* execute who didn't get carried away by short-term considerations.
The Great Khan gets a lot of bad press in the West. It's hard too say if he was really much worse than any other garden-variety war criminal back then. Certainly, loads of Westerners today are able to contemplate the Crusades without thinking only of the slaughter of Jerusalem, or Caesar's wars without dwelling on the enslavement of an entire civilization...but, with Genghis, it's all about the atrocities. In swaths of Asia, he's regarded more as we tend to regard Alexander the Great, for similar reasons, and with about as much justification.
Genghis Khan banned torture in his empire. Whoa, this is really astounding. But I should point out, the Mongols committed a lot of atrocities on the road to acquiring that empire, including things like wiping out the population of an entire village just to terrorize (and thereby make easier to conquer) other villages that were on their list to take over. As for the first comment by Razib, I think it may be unfair. Ghenghis and his Mongol contemporaries were human beings just like us. It's natural for human beings to have or cevelop a sense of compassion-- only psychotics, aberrant individuals, don't. Perhaps Ghengis had a change of heart about some things after his conquests were over, and the practical benefits were just happy conicidences? We don't know. But the argument that it was practical is certainly doable: on the road to conquest, you need terror, but once you have power, you need stability to maintain it. Doing things like raping or torturing people that your subjects like doesn't exactly motivate them to not try to kill you or to revolt against your rule.
dances - Accurate body counts for the Mongol conquests are somewhat hard to come by. For one thing, the Mongols themselves had reason to inflate the count. Part of their strategy of conquering an area was to frighten the outlying villages so badly that they would flee, choking the cities and making them more vulnerable to siege. (More people to feed means the stored food and water doesn't last as long). For another, the conquests were waged over the course of 100 years or so. That said, the body count for the whole conquest is usually listed from 30-60 million - and average of 300,000 to 600,000 per year, over 100 years. To match that pace, there would have to be, at the very least, 1,500,000 casualties so far in the Iraq war. From what I've been able to glean from the internet, there have only been about 92,000 confirmed casualties, with the upper estimates in the 600,000 range. So this war is only between 1/20 and 1/3 as bad as the Mongol invasion, on average.
The Great Khan gets a lot of bad press in the West. much of what the west knows about the early mongols via documentary sources is from *muslim* and *chinese* ones. so of course they'll get bad press, and blame the decline or ills of their society on the mongol period. despite the raids into poland and hungary, do note that some of the mongol groups (il-khanate) and western monarchies saw themselves as allies, if ineffectual and nominal ones, against the muslim polities. anyone who wants to experience the pride with which ancient warlords took in their genocidal activities should look to caesar's diaries of the gallic wars. again, there are no doubt gross exaggerations in terms of numbers, but even if only a germ of validity exists that's enough to warrant him war criminal status extraordinaire.
look at bill clinton who "looked the other way" re: rwanda. Do you really think there is a moral equivalence between (1)committing mass murder and (2) failing to figure out a practical means of preventing mass murder committed by someone else?
Perhaps Ghengis had a change of heart about some things after his conquests were over, and the practical benefits were just happy conicidences? We don't know. well, a lot of his life and events in them are legend. but a) americans until recently went to hangings for entertainment. i really am not going to underestimate the brutal norms of the past :-) b) you're making him sound like ashoka! c) but, in any case, many of the acts which seem honorable to us were actually just practical. he invaded the khwarezm shah because they executed ambassadors, who were sacred and all that. but they might have also been spies. when you're a powerful entity the life of the ambassador is important because you want to communicate effectively. this is just like the geneva conventions being more important for americans because we have soldiers all over who might be exposed. From what I've been able to glean from the internet, there have only been about 92,000 confirmed casualties, with the upper estimates in the 600,000 range. So this war is only between 1/20 and 1/3 as bad as the Mongol invasion, on average. not so bad comparatively in a per-unit-area sense though!
"Certainly, loads of Westerners today are able to contemplate the Crusades without thinking only of the slaughter of Jerusalem, or Caesar's wars without dwelling on the enslavement of an entire civilization...but, with Genghis, it's all about the atrocities."
The only difference between Genghis Khan and all the other conquerors of history is that he was better at it than they were. (And that he guaranteed freedom of religion in his empire, something else the Westerners who took over the Americas didn't do.)
Do you really think there is a moral equivalence between (1)committing mass murder and (2) failing to figure out a practical means of preventing mass murder committed by someone else? hey, a lot of times he didn't do the murder himself but delegated, and communication being what they were the great leader wouldn't have had a say (the atrocities in central asia in revenge for the death of his grandson being notable exceptions). that being said, point taken. my own bigger point is that i think bush is a humane enough person. but psychopathy isn't really a good predictor of bizarre behavior except on the dictatorial margins. his issues are otherwise i suspect.
Tel - I will agree with many of the posters that exact data is hard to come by. The notion that in some way Ghengis was more humane than Bush is farcical. Keep in mind that we are talking Gitmo "torture" vs N. Korean or N. Vietnamese torture.
Similarly, the Romans tried to make life under the Roman empire appealing to their subjects, and not too humiliating. Obviously, it worked in some places and didn't in others. So rationales like a practical rationale for banning torture have historically been thought up and employed by conquerors. I think Craig's comment about the enslavement of an entire civilization by Caesar may be wrong. Who is Craig talking about? Western European barbarians? Barbarians were competing for Roman approval and Roman citizenship. What the Egyptians did to the Jews was more like enslavement of an entire civilization. What Caesar did to anybody else was, as far as I've ever heard of, just rule that came about through conquest. Certainly in those times prisoners of war still commonly were taken as slaves, but this was a far, far less number of individuals than enslaving an entire civilization. There were more barbarians walking around than the Romans knew what to do with. You may be surprised to learn how heavily populated Europe was even in those times.
How many natives did people of European stock kill in the process of taking over North America? well, over 90% of the casualties were due to disease. just to get that into the record.... (e.g., the western united states was large depopulated because of smallpox and influenza epidemics)
I think Craig's comment about the enslavement of an entire civilization by Caesar may be wrong. Who is Craig talking about? Western European barbarians? Barbarians were competing for Roman approval and Roman citizenship. caesar attacked & conquered gaul for his vanity and glory. he was depressed that he was old and hadn't achieved any great glory (e.g., crying in spain as he thought about his predicament at an age when alexander was always dead). of course, claudius attacked & conquered britain for his vanity and glory as well. *but*, gaul was a particular notable war of attrition. other conquests were more a matter of toppling local elites and replacing them at the head of the system. don't confuse different periods of roman history, nearly a century after caesar romans were squealing that he was allowing in gaulish nobles into the senate (there was an abatement after this for a period before the first non-italian emperor trajan changed things).
he = cladius re: gallic senators.
Jack Weatherford is a professor at my alma mater: Macalester College. He is a great guy!
"Barbarians." Oy. The Roman model of expansion ran on two tracks. Track one was tributary kings--you pay your protection money and do what Rome says, or you get moved onto track two. On track two, Rome goes to war, loots all your valuables, and hauls off as much of your population into slavery as they can manage. With Caesar, I'm thinking specifically of the wars in Gaul that made him rich enough to send the last pieces of the Republic crashing down. I'm not saying the Gauls didn't smell a bit, but they weren't all rampaging hordes, either. I worry that you're using the term "barbarian" the way the Romans did--to disqualify most of the people around them from full standing in the human race.
craig, there were barbarians, and then there were...the germans.... ;)
The First Emperor of China didn't exactly ban torture, but he cautioned against its use. In the law texts recovered from the tomb at Shuihudi, the magistrate is instructed that information gained by beatings is not considered prime quality, since "when there is fear, everything is spoiled." So, there's another ancient tyrant who at the very least had more common sense than George Bullshit.
Of course, Genghis banned tortue. He was more of a "off with their heads, ask questions later" kind of guy. Actually, "off with their heads" was good enough. Why waste time with torture? In the great Khan's empire was there is some "rule of law" thing going on? Was there some court that needed to have "evidence"? He was basically impatient with cowards who were torturing disarmed captives instead of getting behind him... In his next calvary charge.
sunsin, interesting point. the chin state was after all notoriously inhumane and ends oriented in terms of forwarding the interests of the ruler, soi think that that particular pragmatic might confuse those not the know as to the relatively punitive and brutal nature of the chin's regime*; they collapsed almost immediately after the death of the first emperor. the successor han, who set the tone for chinese dynasties ever after, found the appropriate mix of humanism and utilitarianism (ie, the generalization that it was symbolically confucianist but operationally legalist). * though again, we are selection biased in our sources since the enemies of the chin wrote the histories.
"Gitmo "torture" vs N. Korean or N. Vietnamese torture." Umm, the North Vietnamese were pretty humane by our standards. None of their techniques would conflict with the Military Commissions Act. The harshest techniques they used were beatings and stress positions, which we use today. Now the South Vietnamese used much harsher techniques like cutting off fingers when they got bad answers. And that was done with our tacit approval. The Khmer Rouge were really nasty (although they didn't amputate). And their techniques were a subset of ours. In fact, we used the KR as a model when developing our program. We have added extreme cold and noise techniques that the Khmer Rouge could not accomplish due to lack of resources. And our waterboarding technique can bring a person much closer to death because of our superior medical training. The only moral improvement we have made over the KR program is that we don't kill them afterwards. We just jail them for eternity.
And their techniques were a subset of ours. wait, which branch of the gov. is encouraging consumption of body parts? :-)
danceswithgoatssaid... Keep in mind that we are talking Gitmo "torture" vs N. Korean or N. Vietnamese torture. Well now we're just talking about numbers, not techniques. The military admits to over 20 murders of captives held by the U.S., and we know that at least another 80 or so died, but the military wouldn't call them murders. Now they weren't necessarily at Gitmo, but murders are murders.
Heck, back then Genghis was the transcendent threat. But he created Pax Mongolica!
The Latin Christians' wet dream was allying with the Mongols. It never came to pass. The first generations of Mongols came from the Borg school of international diplomacy; later the two sides almost had an agreement but it failed because the pope demanded late in the process that they all convert to Christianity.
I love it! fostert and LFC are making Gitmo out to be worse than the Hanoi Hilton. 20 murders of detainees? 80 more they won't admit to? Buffoonery. For all the sturm and drang about waterboarding there are only three detainees that have been waterboarded. If waterboarding one known terrorist an average of every two + years prevents another 9-11 then I am all for it.
I don't know if you've gotten that far, Matt, but in his discussion of Kublai Khan, Weatherford notes that he was in favor of public education. That's more than we can say for those conservatives who want to privatize every middle school in the country.
Sigh. FWIW, long after the fact ... I said this: "there seems to have been one key area in which he [Genghis Khan] was more humane than our president [George W. Bush]." Razib said this: "but is this really right??? look at bill clinton who 'looked the other way' re: rwanda. that being said, you can say that he was a *pragmatic* execute who didn't get carried away by short-term considerations." And I say that razib is too dizzy to argue with. What Bill Clinton did or didn't do with regard to Rwanda has nothing to do with whether George Bush tortures and Genghis Khan didn't. This is why the Internet gives people headaches.
Sigh. FWIW, long after the fact ... I said this: "there seems to have been one key area in which he [Genghis Khan] was more humane than our president [George W. Bush]." Razib said this: "but is this really right??? look at bill clinton who 'looked the other way' re: rwanda. that being said, you can say that he was a *pragmatic* execute who didn't get carried away by short-term considerations." And I say that razib is too dizzy to argue with. What Bill Clinton did or didn't do with regard to Rwanda has nothing to do with whether George Bush tortures and Genghis Khan didn't. This is why the Internet gives people headaches. So does this site's fucking server, of course.
PeterK - Torture doesn't work and I'm hoping that under President Obama they do away with it. Brainless leftist assertions that torture doesn't work, along with occasional dimbulbs saying it like McCain (despite personally knowing it works) - are like brainless assertions that a mass cavalry and foot soldiers charges can break up and disperse entrenched soldiers backed with machine guns and artillery. A 7 million lives made into casualties mistake where the facts were deliberately suppressed in WWI to comport with "standard wisdom" of the time. I have no doubt that Obamessiah wishes to do away with interrogations of enemy combatants because the Dear Professor doesn't believe there are any enemy combatants - just criminal suspects that wield AK-47s, high explosives, and chop off heads in the name of a deadly religious ideology - who must be given full access to US civilian courts to ensure their "rights" as killers of Americans are best safeguarded. PeterK - I think that the recent Supreme Court ruling was the way it was because the court recognizes the country is moving left and won't tolerate this stuff. Do not mistake a general American disgust with Bush and the Republicans themselves displaying a proven inability to govern well or look after the interests of US citizens past the corporate, the rich --with a growing mass support of Lefty agenda items. IF Obamessiah wins and he and the Democrats govern as Leftists, they get 4 years to have their way, then another 35 years of conservatism or Clintonianism arises as a way to check their excesses and repair their damage.
Genghis Khan was certainly way smarter and way more successful than Bush.
Well, when the facts came out about the guy who was chained to the ground in a stress position for over 24 hours in the head, even after he inevitably pissed and shat himself, I thought that counted as torture.
Genghis Khan was a giver of laws. And his book of laws was in its fundamentals used for centuries and adopted by others to some degree.
Well, when the facts came out about the guy who was chained to the ground in a stress position for over 24 hours in the head, even after he inevitably pissed and shat himself, I thought that counted as torture. Neil, aren't you paying attention? It's only torture when people who aren't white do it. Then it's an unforgivable atrocity. If we do it, it's completely justified and not that bad anyway!
dances - the thing is, waterboarding will not prevent another 9/11. It will not accomplish anything except causing pain to the captive. Do you think the reason we haven't been attacked since then, is because we've tortured a bunch of prisoners, whatever the number? A show of force, taking the fight to the enemy, might accomplish that. But no amount of torture will accomplish anything but pain. Genghis Khan/i> understood that. I find it very sad that the son of a goatherder; responsbile for one of the greatest periods of death in the history of Asia; who lived seven hundred years ago; and who never had formal schooling; had that much of a logical advantage over some contemporary Americans.
Good point Swatopluk. Whoever said that the victor gets to write the history books knew what they were talking about. Because Ceasar was the defacto founder of the Roman Empire he has been treated sympathetically by most historians, and by just about every work of fiction covering the period. In truth he was a despicable, bloodthirsty warlord at least as bad as Genghis Khan.
Tel - Wrong! Even according to internal critics, all three terrorists that were waterboarded gave large amounts of actionable intelligence that assisted in unravelling cells/plots around the world. I find it ridiculous for persons to say "It's wrong but it works" when we are dealing with mass murderers. It's not like we are "torturing" every suspect. Speaking of Ghengis Khan and torture; what was his definition of torture? Would a slap have counted? Stress positions? Cold or hot temperature? His ban was probably along the lines of pulling out fingernails and amputations. A far cry from Gitmo.
Shorter danceswithgoats: We don't torture much, and everyone we torture deserves it! CSI, Caesar was also enabled by quite literally being the winner who recorded history-- I remember reading some of his writings on the Gaulish campaign in high school.
Even according to internal critics, all three terrorists that were waterboarded gave large amounts of actionable intelligence that assisted in unravelling cells/plots around the world. No, they did not. If you can provide the names of the terrorists that were stopped, the dates that the cells were disrupted, and the numbers killed/captured as a result, then I might believe it. Until then it's propaganda.
Or, alternatively, let's say that you're correct, and that they did give the intelligence. How many prisoners have been added to Guantanamo Bay as a result of it? I'm under the impression that there are only about 300 housed at Guantanamo at the moment, and that most of these have been there for at least four years. One would expect that this "large amount" of actionable intelligence would lead to an increased number of people incarcerated, but I haven't seen any evidence of that. Did the special ops teams not take any prisoners?
"wait, which branch of the gov. is encouraging consumption of body parts? :-)" Not sure where you are going there. If you are implying that the KR ate humans, you are way off base. They may have been evil, but eating humans was well beyond their ethics. If you are implying that human body parts were used for other purposes, you are still way off base. They didn't have the technology. On the latter issue, we are the ones that do that. We do encourage those that are in jail for life to donate their tissue for medical purposes (it may be the one good thing they do in their life). Not that there's anything wrong with that. In my field of work, we really do need that tissue.
Tel - most of the cells/plots were in other countries who did the door kicking portion themselves. Pakistan and Yemen come to mind. The Western Europeans are too squeamish to publicly admit they use US intel to take down terrorists. My objection to "torture" is not in its effectiveness but rather the price we pay in public opinion/support. I hold much of the world in healthy sceptiscm but acknowledge that we have to be able to work with other countries to achieve our objectives. To those that say "torture" makes us no better than the terrorists, I have to say "get a grip and get out of the country more". The US is one of the best things going.
Tel: No, they did not. If you can provide the names of the terrorists that were stopped, the dates that the cells were disrupted, and the numbers killed/captured as a result, then I might believe it. Until then it's propaganda. True. danceswithgoats is full of shit in many different ways.
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Heads in the Sand
great line, but as a khan i should be let it be known that these sorts of bans were of course based on pragmatism and not humanity. the same sort of arguments that some anti-torture advocates make. and the same utilitarian calculus applied toward the mongol promotion of religious tolerance and ban on the slaughter of clerics.
Posted by razib | June 24, 2008 4:16 PM