With President Obama's decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan, I thought it a good idea to look at another war that took place a long time ago.  Perhaps there are lessons to be learned.

One summer day 995 years ago, the Byzantine forces of Emperor Basil II surrounded and destroyed the Bulgarian army of King Samuel.  The battle took place in a mountainous Macedonian valley near the Struma River.  A Hunnic people from the Central Asian steppes, the Bulgars began settling in the Balkan Peninsula nearly 400 years earlier.  By the end of the first millennium they were challenging the old Byzantine Empire’s hegemony in the Balkans.

I have no idea if our modern lives would be any different today if the outcome of the battle had been different.  One could make a persuasive argument that medieval history would have developed much differently than it did with a Byzantine defeat.  Had the Bulgarians won, for instance, the Crusades might never have happened, since there might not have been a Byzantine emperor to request Western aid to fight the Seljuk Turks 85 years later.  Without the impetus of the Crusades, the Renaissance might have developed much differently than it did, or perhaps not at all, as Western Europe might have remained isolated much longer from the far more advanced empires and caliphates of the Near East.  But really, who knows?

Here’s what we do know.  During the battle, King Samuel remained in his castle a hundred miles away.  Facing total annihilation, Samuel’s army, numbering somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 men, laid down their arms and surrendered to the mercy of Emperor Basil.  But Basil was not a merciful man.  The entire Bulgarian army was blinded by their Byzantine captors.  One man out of every one-hundred prisoners was left with a single eye to lead the pathetic remnant back to their king.  When Samuel saw the defeated, blind army, he was overcome with grief and collapsed.  Two days later he was dead.  Thus was the fate of an upstart nation that would dare to challenge the East Roman Empire!

What does this have to do with our world today?  What lesson could this obscure battle have for 21st century America?   Only this: War begets atrocity.  Not just some obscure war vaguely recalled from the mists of medieval history.  Every war does.  When we debate whether or not America should continue fighting in Afghanistan, remember that fact.  War begets atrocity.  When we hear American politicians and commentators casually toss numbers like 30,000 or 50,000 additional troops, remember that fact.  War begets atrocity.  It always has, and it always will. 

“War is hell,” said General Sherman.  And it still is.