Red
Dice
We begin to set up the board for a game of Risk. I had received the game as a gift as a child but had not played it for quite a few
years. I nearly always won. I was
used to winning. Losing was never something I ever consciously considered.
The
colored game board is a bit faded, and the edges are tattered in several places, yet the pieces are relatively all intact
and the countries lie in plain view. As we go around the table, die in hand,
each person takes their turn rolling to see who will go first. Being first to
lay down your army is very important and can potentially decide your strategy for the entirety of the game. Whether one is able to lay down their army on Brazil or North Africa, Siam or Indonesia, the Ukraine or
Middle East, largely determines which opponent will square-off against whom and what choke points will be critical in defending
and eventually expanding into an enemy's position. I go third, not a strong position,
but not necessarily weak, either. It might mean someone else will choose to lay
their initial army down where I plan to place my own, or perhaps not.
My first opponent
goes: Siam. It's a typical strategy. He
is probably trying to secure the entry point to the Australian land mass or perhaps bold enough to attempt to take Asia. The next opponent chooses: Central America.
He is looking to hold the New World continents of North and South America. OK. Now it's my turn. I pick up my game piece,
carefully surveying the remainder of the map. Africa and Europe are vacant,
so I confidently place my piece on the Middle East, a choke point into three continents.
From here, I can survey the intentions of the other players and determine what my next placement should be. Only two enemies remain before the first round of placement is over.
The game has begun.
* *
*
Beginning about ten thousand years ago, some
of the earliest civilizations arose in a narrow area of land in Near and Middle East.
Sumeria, one of the first, emerged about 7,600 years ago in what is now modern-day Iraq. Mathematics, writing, science, law, and art flourished in this region, handed-down, in part, to the rest
of the world over the course of thousands of years of trade, migrations, and conquests.
Some have even called this region of the world the “cradle of civilization,” and its cultural and religious
traditions spread across much of the globe, often by war.
* *
*
Only a handful of armies remain, now, to be set
down upon the board. My eastern opponents have amassed armies in southeast Asia,
while my western opponents have decided to battle it out in central America. I
control parts of Asia and Africa but the majority of my armies lie in Europe and in the Ukraine, where I plan to eventually
stage an invasion of central Asia, North Africa, and North America.
When all of our armies are finally placed, we
take turns positioning reinforcements and choosing where we will attack. I lose
what few armies I have in Africa and Iceland, but when my turn comes, I lay down armies in Scandinavia and Southern Europe
and pick up the red dice, determined to make my push into the enemy hoard.
* *
*
Before the raging hoards of the Huns crossed
the Eurasian steppes and into central Europe, ancient Greek legend described “Amazons” on frescos and pottery,
featuring Sarmatian women warriors on horseback. Located in what is now the Ukraine
north of the Black Sea, these famed, semi-nomadic warriors tribes originated in Iran.
Culturally and linguistically, the Sarmatians were at the crossroad of Indo-European languages, where Baltic, Slavic,
Greek, Italic, Germanic, Celtic, and other languages both living and dead all seem to have arose and divided.
Sarmatian culture dates back 2,700 years and
flourished until the arrival of the Huns into central Europe about 1,700 years ago forced these people to migrate east. The remains of Sarmatian culture were lost to historians until only recently, when
archaeological evidence was excavated verifying the truth behind the myth. In
fact, the direct descendent of a Sarmatian warrior-queen who ruled two millennia
ago was discovered through DNA tests conducted on a blonde nine-year-old girl living in Mongolia today,
evidence of the continuity of groups of people long after their culture, their nation, has faded away. Although civilizations come and go, the genetic heritage of the people persists.
* *
*
Persistence.
If this game is going to be won, it will now take persistence. I have
finally secured Europe and central Asia and am holding my own in North Africa and Egypt.
I have amassed armies in Iceland and am fighting to push into North America thru Greenland. My opponents to the west are fighting pitched battles throughout the Americas, and I suspect little resistance
remains. Only one opponent who has the red pieces survives in Australia, India,
and China. He is isolated but relatively weak.
There is not much in Africa to take with nearly all of us ignoring the southern portion of this continent. I hand the white dice to my opponent, pick up the red dice, and roll.
I roll again. And again. And again, bettering his white dice on nearly
every roll. Steadily, my European armies are gaining a foothold into the New
World.
* *
*
The New World was thought to have been discovered
by Christopher Columbus over five hundred years ago, yet evidence now suggests, with near certainty, that the New World was
discovered, instead, by Europe’s Leif Eriksson about five hundred years before Columbus.
Images of ravaging, marauding hoards of horn-helmed Viking barbarians have persisted since the invasion of Christian
zealots in northern Europe over a thousand years ago, and few of these cultural portraits paint an honest picture. From the Near East came science, technology, and letters, merging and morphing into new forms that still
mark our cultures today, including religion in the form of Christianity. From
there, it spread across Eurasia and Europe and into the Nordic culture by the turn of the first millennia, making its way
by both land and sea into North America and beyond.
* *
*
My route into North America is rather easy. With only a few armies, I sail my way across the North Atlantic and begin eliminating
enemies in my trek westward across the continent. My opponents, the remaining
inhabitants of the Americas, have beaten one another into submission and are hardly a match for my armies. Rivals in south Asia are growing steadily, but my relentless march into Africa makes up for my opponent’s
gains, and soon I will be poised to strike into South America by way of Africa, my conquest all but complete.
* *
*
The first slaves brought over to South and Central
America were primarily from west and central Africa. Catholic missionaries had
urged European kings to forbid the enslavement of the native peoples of the New World, believing that they actually had souls. It was thought, however, that Africans lacked such a spiritual prerequisite and, therefore,
could make no claim to a shared humanity. Thus began the justified enslavement
of tens of millions of Africans from their homes into the Americas, over half of whom may have died in transit. And for those who did make it “safely” overseas, the worst was yet to come as beatings, rape,
and even murder knew no bound.
* *
*
There is bound, of course, to be some glitches
in my plan for world conquest. Nothing can be won without taking a risk. Although my opponents in the Americas prove challenging, their desperate struggle
ends on the plains of the Western United States, as army after army hunts down and kills the enemy, forcing them to retreat
until nothing remains. It is, I know, my destiny.
* *
*
It was called “Manifest Destiny.” God had allegedly ordained white Europeans to conquer America and to settle the land
that once belonged to native tribes. Pushed back from one territory to another,
the Indian peoples had to choose resistance or capitulation, but whatever their choice, the result was the same everywhere:
deceit, treachery, and forced relocation. The successive discovery of one valuable
resource or another led the invaders to take increasingly more land, while exaggerated, one-sided stories of the ruthlessness
of “savage Injuns” fueled the resolve of the people and the government of this new nation to force the native
into assimilation or death.
* *
*
Dead. Every
last one of them, dead. It is now just one opponent and I remaining on the board. In taking the Americas, I have to dedicate most of my reinforcements for securing
my flanks in Alaska and Iceland. However, my enemy is swarming across all of
Asia, building-up his reserves in China and India. We fight in Afghanistan and
the Middle East, spilling over into much of Africa and, now, Southern Europe. I
have a lot of reinforcements due on my next turn, but as long as he continues to roll the red dice, continues to stay on the
offensive, I must fight to regain all that I am steadily losing.
* *
*
We are not losing the war in Iraq, the administration
informs us. Just the opposite: we are winning.
It’s been five years since we began our “just war” against Islam, and already we have lost more Americans
than on 9/11. And the cost to the Iraqi people?
Conservative estimates say it may well be 400,000 while others say the number dead exceeds 800,000. That’s half a million wives, half a million husbands, half a million sons, half a million daughters
who will never see the sun rise again, whose unborn children will never even know what the sun is. And still, the killing goes on . . .
In just four years, the United States fought
and won a global war on three continents. The bombing of Dresden, Germany during
World War II just three months before the unconditional surrender of the Nazis yielded approximately 30,000 civilian deaths
in just three days. And individual soldiers trained as assassins scoured the
countryside, killing high-level renegade Nazi officials, something the history books rarely discuss. It’s difficult to conduct a fanatical insurgency when the enemy is willing to stop at nothing –
regardless of how immoral – to end resistance.
* *
*
Resistance is fast becoming futile. Most of South America has fallen from my grip, and Mexico is in the hands of the enemy, too. Alaska and Greenland remain strong, but the entirety of the board – except for Great Britain and
Iceland – is now the red enemy’s territory. My opponent’s Indian
and Chinese masses, once considered isolated and inconsequential, spread across the game board while I wasted armies fighting
in places I could never hold. And while I sit feeling secure with my pyrrhic
victories in one hemisphere, my opponent builds armies in the Ukraine that sweep across lands once considered allies.
Now I sit, isolated from the rest of the world,
contemplating my next move. So few allies, so many enemies. And the red dice are in my hands . . .
