Bret Devereaux

Jonathan V. Last on Victor Davis Hanson: "Oh, come on, that guy's been a clown for 20 years." "VDH is the least serious serious person in all of intellectual public life." "A fool and a clown when he was cheering the Iraq War from his vineyard."

*when he wasn’t writing lauded academic and popular books or teaching relatively underprivileged students at a state school.

Hoplites is well regarded. His Western Way of War stuff is seen as interesting but wrong.

Just a point of clarification: Western Way of War is his hoplite book, and though the title is unfortunate, still represents the 'orthodox' position on hoplite battle (in contrast to H. van Wees' Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities, the heterodox position).

Ah, ok - it's the "western way of war" school that's controversial.

It’s only controversial because many are too chicken to admit the obvious in our PC age: Western civilization since the time of the Greeks has consistently produced military forces which are invariably superior to non-Western forces.

This was very much not true in the period c. 500 A.D. to c. 1500 A.D...about 1,000 of the c. 2,500 years 'since the time of the Greeks.' A general characterization which is wrong 40% of the time is hardly a good one.

1099 was during the time frame and yet the West managed to move an army 2,000 miles and win. Nothing compares with the West’s ability to form an army and send it off to fight. Even elite non-West forces like the Jannisaries were pretty low quality.