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The right wingnut 'conservative' ""historian"" (like Ben Stein the scientist) - Victor Davis Hanson writes repeatedly on this subject. He's at the Hoover Institution (yep, on winger welfare). I've read some of his 'books' - they are great entertainment, but extremely racist. His hypothesis (conveniently forgetting the Mongols, Huns, etc.) seems to focus on the superiority of western warmaking and its 'fight to the ultimate conclusion' which devolves from Clauswitzian 'politics from other means' - but Hanson deftly (he's a good writer, just starts from assumptions that are wrong) inserts little digs about how the Persians quit their war against the Athenians and their alliance after Salamis, because the Persians weren't 'fight to the ultimate conclusion' or finish or whatever. Since anyone who understands the context (geography, weather, etc.) knows that without their fleet to keep resupplied, the huge (for the time) Persian army would have melted away in the stripped environment of Greece in the winter (not enough forage for the army), the only sensible alternative for Xerxes was to retreat and try again. According to VDH, the Persians simply lacked the 'guts' (why didn't VDH serve his country in Viet Nam? - I'm practicing my digs at these slimeball rw war cheerleaders who won't fight themselves - I'm a vet) to stick to their last and finish off the Greeks on land.
But, the land wouldn't have supported the army, and with a hostile populace, food and water would have been severely diminished. Guerrilla warface would have sapped the main strength of the army, forcing it into defensive postures and alienated further the locals - and any idiot knows that. Occupation only really works when the local area is depopulated, or if enough other populations are imported or enabled to immigrate to swamp out the local ethnicities. The Assyrians used to completely transfer the leadership elites and most of the other individuals who would rise as leaders, and bring in new populations (Samaritans, anyone?) to completely pacify an area. Or, something like the Mongol solution - completely wipe the population a la northern Iraq during Halugu's regime. Oh, and how does VDH explain the defeat of the Mongols in Palestine later? Guess the Egyptians were 'western' at that particular point in history (ok, I'm being snarky).
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