The ubiquitous Victor Davis Hanson questions the conventional wisdom that the US needs to send more troops into Iraq to establish order and peace. He draws on a number of historical examples to show that it is perfectly possible to subdue and control with a comparatively small force: “Alexander the Great, who never led an army numbering more than 50,000 men, defeated hordes five times that size in battle, and consolidated his victories with forces that were likewise vastly outnumbered. Julius Caesar conquered and held much of Western Europe with legions that numbered fewer than 40,000. The British defeated both Cetchewayo and the Great Mahdi with a few thousand redcoats, and held Zuzuland and the Sudan under control in the aftermath of victory . . . . Much the same as the story of warfare is the story of occupation. Rome administered an empore of some 50 million people stretching over a million square miles with rarely more than 250,000 legionaries. India’s many millions were occupied by many fewer than a million of the Queen’s soldiers. After World War II, Italy, Japan, Germany, and their territories together represented nearly 200 million occupied peoples; by 1947, the Allied armies exercising control over them amounted to a few hundred thousand. At one time, vast tracts of Sinai, the Golan, and the West Bank were secured by a few thousand Israeli soldiers.”
