Of all his five years schooling they don’t remember much
Except the not retreating, the step and keeping touch.
—Rudyard Kipling, “The ‘Eathen”

The first step backward in any conflict, whether military or political, is often fatal. Legislation to withdraw from Iraq endangers our Armed Forces, while Israel’s “land for peace” territorial concessions have probably gotten thousands of Israelis killed during the past few decades.

The instant you back away from an enemy, whether a physical or political one, you convey the unmistakeable message that he is stronger and can do whatever he wants. During the horse-and-musket era of warfare, cavalry commanders probably learned to sense whether enemy infantry would stand its ground against a charge. A charge against unbroken infantry was suicidal because the horses would not enter the hedge of bayonets no matter how couragrous, hotblooded, or drunk their riders were. Poland’s winged hussars were the only exception to this rule; their long lances outreached even infantry pikes so they could simply ride over Swedish pike-and-musket formations. “Never fired, dropped only once” is not a phrase to be applied to Swedish muskets because Swedes were not known for dropping their weapons but “Fired at Polish cavalry and therefore fired only once” often stated the case.

If, however, a few men stepped out of their places, any cavalry could ride into the infantry square and cut it to pieces. Frederick the Great, in fact, ordered his officers and noncommissioned officers to kill any man who stepped out of his position, probably because such an action could easily get everyone chopped up.

The concept is actually illustrated in the movie The Return of the King, in which the Riders of Rohan charge the Orcs who are besieging the city of Gondor. When one Orc takes one step backward, you know it is all over for them even if you have not read the story. The scriptwriter probably knew plenty of military history, noting the presence of Macedonian Orcs (the ones with the long pikes) and Roman Orcs (with the tower shields) at Helm’s Deep in The Two Towers. (There was also a Palestinian Orc who blew himself up with the explosive charges under the fortress, instead of laying a fuze as most military engineers and sappers did.) In any event, the scriptwriter may in fact have been very familiar with the concept under discussion: the first backward step by anyone gets everybody killed.

Frederick the Great also vowed to cashier (fire) any cavalry officer who stood still and allowed himself to be charged by the enemy; the Prussian cavalry was always to attack or meet an enemy charge with a countercharge– a principle echoed by von Moltke a hundred years later. The Russian marshal Suvorov forbade his men to retreat, to the extent of reprimanding and humiliating an officer who ordered his men to take a step backward to make room for Suvorov on a parade ground. He was delighted, however, when he asked an officer what a retreat was and the officer said, “I don’t know; the word is unknown in this regiment.”

This did not mean that Suvorov would fight a hopeless battle the way Hitler and Stalin both ordered their men to fight (with “blocking units” positioned to shoot anyone who tried to withdraw). He did in fact make a strategic retreat through the Alps to save his army, while cutting up a couple of French units that tried to block his path and make him surrender. An infantry line that was threatened from its side or rear would obviously reposition itself even if it had to give ground. One did not, however, back away from or run from iminent contact with the enemy. To do so was in fact suicidal; the sight of an enemy’s back triggers an instinctive killing reaction in humans and fleeing soldiers might not even be given the chance to surrender.

Suvorov also introduced the tactic known as the attack through. Charging soldiers were not to stop and trade blows with their opponents, as is usually shown in movies; they were to strike with the lance, sabre, or bayonet and keep going. The second and third lines then did the same, with the result that the formation on the receiving end was usually wiped off the face of the earth. Men were sometimes killed practicing this maneuver (even with safety rules in place, due to accidental collisions between men and horses) and it was far too dangerous to attempt to portray in a movie until the advent of computer animation. The cavalry charges in Lord of the Rings may in fact be the first movie portrayal of Suvorov’s tactic. The “attack through” underscores the aggressive nature of successful military or even political tactics: hit through the enemy and keep going.

Never take a backward step

We once encountered an aggressive dog that apparently wanted to show who was boss. When we took a backward step under the mistaken assumption that the dog was growling with its ears laid back because we were “in its space,” it lunged forward immediately. Fortunately it didn’t actually bite but the lesson was obvious– a lesson that we can now apply to the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA). See also http://israpundit.com/2006/?p=1337 for some of the problems this organization seems to be having.

MECA was for some time accepting 501(c)(3) tax-exempt money to fund the non-exempt International Solidarity Movement. We noticed during the past month or so, however, that the International Solidarity Movement’s Web page was changed and that checks are no longer to be written to MECA. It is easy to speculate that MECA took notice of discussions in IsraPundit and elsewhere of its redirection of tax-exempt money to the ISM and felt that it might endanger its tax-exempt status by continuing to do so. MECA therefore told the ISM that it could no longer be a conduit for tax-exempt money and that ISM must stop soliciting donations to be sent through MECA. This could be the fatal “one step backward” that shows a very serious vulnerability in the enemy lines and it is one we should press home decisively. It shows what the enemy fears the most and that is exactly the point we should attack.

The enemy does, in fact, have very good cause to be afraid. The anti-Second Amendment Million Mom March, whose mission was apparently to turn out votes for Al Gore and other left-wing Democratic candidates, was destroyed by credible allegations about its misuse of 501(c)(3) tax-exempt money to fund a political campaign. The gigantic National Rifle Association had very little to do with the Million Mom March’s demise. Someone observed that the MMM, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization, was touting political candidates on its Web site and brought this to the attention of pro-Second Amendment columnist J.R. Labbe. Labbe published the information in her column and one could almost see the MMM crumple up during the next month, as shown by its struggles with “damage control” and the desertion of other tax-exempt groups who suddenly felt they were in bad company. (This could in fact have cost Gore the election because an intact MMM might have turned out those few hundred votes he needed in Florida, and we must remember Hillary Clinton’s close association with the MMM scandal should she run in 2008.) This could be the very bleak future that now confronts the Middle East Children’s Alliance.

We also note that the tax-exempt Brecht Forum is the fiscal sponsor of ISM-NYC, although ISM-NYC still brazenly asks for contributions via the Brecht Forum. Maybe they feel that it is better to take their chances with the IRS than to take that fatal step backward by changing their Web site and showing our side that we have hurt them or might hurt them. Nonetheless, MECA’s and ISM’s “retreat” shows that we should hammer away at the relationship between the Brecht Forum and ISM-NYC as well.

Organizations often collapse from the rear and not the front

An organization can even collapse when the people in back, who are in little or no physical danger themselves, run away. The Greeks put their bravest men at both the front and back of their phalanxes, with the less-experienced soldiers in between, because phalanxes often collapsed when the hoplites in back decided to run away. It is quite clear that, when the likes of Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, and John Kerry suggest that the United States cut and run from Iraq, it encourages the enemy while undermining the confidence of our own Armed Forces.

Appeasement (or “land for peace”) is suicide.

Senator Trent Lott made a serious mistake when he kept apologizing for his wish that Strom Thurmond had won the Presidency in 1948 or 1952. Thurmond was, at the time, a segregationist who later changed his position and supported the Civil Rights Act. The Left, of course, jumped all over Lott, called him a racist, and eventually forced him out of his position in the Senate. Lott should not have kept apologizing when the Left kept attacking him after his first apology; this simply encouraged his opponents. What he should have done was say something like the following:

My praise of Senator Thurmond was based on my experience with his current positions on many matters, including his support for civil rights. I forgot that, a long time ago, he held a less-enlightened view as did other long-serving Senators on both sides of the political aisle.

In simple English, this means, “I apologized for an inadvertant remark that was taken the wrong way. Now back off or I will remind everyone that Robert Byrd (D-WV) was once in the Ku Klux Klan and that he once made a remark about ‘race mongrels.’”

Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler underscores the lesson that, when you try to get a vicious animal to go away by feeding it, it keeps coming back for more food. Positive reinforcement of aggressive behavior, whether by giving Hitler the Sudetenland and then Czechoslovakia or by giving the Palestinians territorial concessions in Gaza and the West Bank, simply breeds more aggressive behavior. Punishment, on the other hand, discourages the aggressive behavior and this is obvious to anyone who knows anything about behavioral theory.