Jack Weatherford: commitment

Transcript context

…Creative destruction, it certainly works in some aspects of life, even with ourselves. For example, if we can creatively destroy some of our habits and build new ones, it sometimes works or we can destroy relationships that we’re in order to create new ones, it can work. When you start applying it to world history, it does become a little bit more difficult. I certainly think that these episodes create great changes. You can see great changes that happened because of the Mongol Empire. Now, whether or not that’s a good reason for the Mongol Empire having happened, it seems like a bit of a stretch for me. The Mongols helped to unify many countries. You can think Korea had been three, basically kingdoms, push them together. Everything that you see in China today was a part of the Mongol Empire. They put together North China, South China, Tibet, Manchuria. It was a little bit larger under the Mongols. Even Russia with so many little kingdoms and Duchies and Dukedoms, and the center had been in the Ukraine and Kiev, and they shifted the focus out of Ukraine and more towards into what we call Russia now. And they began the process of the unification and had a great impact on the country. So in a way, it’s a new creation. Yes, it does arrive out of the destruction, but also I think we need to look where does the destruction come from? And it often comes because the powers around them have been so debilitated and so corrupted, and so decayed of their own lack of moral fiber, that it was easy to conquer them. Kublai Khan finally conquered all of China. He was conquering a decayed dynasty. When the Mongols conquered Baghdad and overthrew the Caliph, they were conquering a very decayed institution. No one likes war, and I certainly don’t like war, but I’m not 100% against it. I think that there are times that people are going to do it for their own protection, if nothing else, or of their family, and it’s justified in that sense to themselves. It may not be justified in a world sense. I just make the case for being tolerant of what the Mongols did if we can tolerate what the Americans did. And I am American through and through, there’s no question about that, but we overlook all of our things that we did. That’s interesting, for example, in Afghanistan. We were there for some 20 years. We had made the Taliban stronger before when they were fighting against the Russians, and then we kicked them out, and then they kicked us out. But some of the Taliban leaders are from the Jadran clan, the descended from Jamukha family, from his clan. This is what I mean when I say that The ramifications from that time are still with us, and we don’t even see it. an leaders are from the Jadran clan, the descended from Jamukha family, from his clan. This is what I mean when I say that The ramifications from that time are still with us, and we don’t even see it. And when Saddam Hussein went on television for the last time in Iraq to plead with his people, he said, “The Mongols,” meaning America, “The Mongols have returned. The Mongols have returned.” And he said, “The Americans are just the new…” I can see it. I don’t accept it, but I can see how people think. If we can be honest with ourselves and strip away our own lies about ourselves, then perhaps we will be more ethical in our dealings with other people. And there’s effects that you could talk about. I mean, the unification of China, Mongols or otherwise, is a very important step in the history of China that permeates to today. And then there’s a lot of stuff that we’ll talk about, the ideas of religious freedom, the postal network, the trade routes, all of this. There’s a lot of progressive consequences of the Mongol conquest and the Mongol Empire. We’ll talk about that. But let’s linger on the heavier topic for a little bit longer. We were talking about Dan Carlin, he was critical of your work a little bit, showing it respect, but also a little bit critical, as being a bit too… Emphasizing and focusing a lot on the positive impacts correctly and accurately, but not giving enough air time or describing the brutality of the killing, the hell that is war. Can you understand his criticism?…

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