One of the reasons you think that the film isn't bloody enough is because we like to think of the Mongols as bloodthirsty murderers for a good reason - they aren't 'us'.

Because we are (generically, stereotypically) white anglo-saxons from a judaeo-christian background we typically construct a number of myths designed to propagate the myth of our own superiority.

Thus, for instance, when George Bush thinks of crusaders he is thinking of some blonde-haired, blue-eyed WASP who saves damsels in distress, rather than the bloodthirsty bunch of murders from the first crusade who ransacked Jerusalem after butchering every human living in it.

And when Mel Gibson does a film on the Mayans, he portrays them as a bunch of bloodthirsty savages, rather than looking at the awful, mind-bending atrocities visited on the whole of Latin America by the very same church that he (Mel) chooses to believe in, in his brief periods of sobriety.

Terrorism, and people who do terror, are not us, are they? We after all are a free, democratic market-based society which only operates by the principles of law and universal human rights....

Except we're not. So if you want a Genghis Khan-type who lives up to your ideals of bloodthirstiness, then go take a look in the mirror sometime.

You are, of course, correct about the Crusaders. But Mel Gibson was right about Latin America -- the blood-thirsty cruelty of the Aztec and other empires was probably one of the reasons the native Central and South American empires could not inspire a united front against this handful of almost equally primitive Spaniards. Instead, they could not rely on the loyalty of conquered peoples who were tired of sending their children to be sacrificed en masse to cruel gods and eaten in cannibalistic ceremonies.

And the movie is probably right about Ghengis Kahn, too. He was no more bloodthirsty than the Muslim invaders they united against. (A few generations later, however, they themselves adopted Islam -- under the influence of their kidnapped Muslim wives.)

No, the moral superiority of the Anglo-American culture is, on historical time scale, a fairly recent phenomenon, and its development, understandably, was quite uneven (i.e. with occasional returns to Third World style savagery)..

Copito, the words Anglo-Saxon and Judeo do not belong anywhere near each other. An Anglo-Saxon can not be a Jew and a Jew cannot be an anglo-saxon.

Wow is that shibboleth or what!

" the moral superiority of the Anglo-American culture is"

Anglo-American culture is not morally superior, it is not now and it was not in the past.

Why would you think that ? Until the late '60s both the UK and the US had no problems using murder and torture to impose their rule. Into the '80s they still supported regimes, that used violence to govern. More recently, the US has supported regimes that gained power due to coups against democratically elected governments.

I fail to see the moral superiority. The UK has many laws that in many "savage Third World" countries would be considered discriminatory and illegal. Particularly concerning women and religious minorities (Catholics). And only recently the US decided it was illegal to execute children and the mentally handicapped. Again quite a few of us "savages", have seen fit to move past the "eye for an eye" approach to justice.

My advice, a bit less time basking in your moral superiority and more effort in acting morally.

Peace

True, there may exist, very generally speaking, a "superiority" bias in the West, but make no mistake, Ghengis Kahn was a brutal mama jama!

Some gems of Mongol rule:

According to National Geographic:

"Khan's eldest son, Tushi, is reported to have had 40 sons. Documents written during or just after Khan's reign say that after a conquest, looting, pillaging, and rape were the spoils of war for all soldiers, but that Khan got first pick of the beautiful women. His grandson, Kubilai Khan, who established the Yuan Dynasty in China, had 22 legitimate sons, and was reported to have added 30 virgins to his harem each year. "

2006 Washington post article:

"A DNA-analysis company in Britiain has made headlines in recent years by theorizing that many modern Caucasian males probably carry Genghis genes, because it was the warlord's practice to massacre the men in the territories he conquered and then impregnate the women."

Steve Dutch (about the destruction of Baghdad at the hands of one of Temudgin's sons) :

"Iraq in 1258 was very different from present day Iraq. Its agriculture was supported by canal networks thousands of years old. Baghdad was one of the most brilliant intellectual centers in the world. The Mongol destruction of Baghdad was a psychological blow from which Islam never recovered. Already Islam was turning inward, becoming more suspicious of conflicts between faith and reason and more conservative. With the sack of Baghdad, the intellectual flowering of Islam was snuffed out. Imagining the Athens of Pericles and Aristotle obliterated by a nuclear weapon begins to suggest the enormity of the blow. The Mongols filled in the irrigation canals and left Iraq too depopulated to restore them."

So Genghis is a "mean mama jama" because he took many wives? Every royal house in Europe and countries all over the world through time immemorial have taken women from conquered foes. Having multiple children from several wives is a past, universal phenomenon more indicative of the institutional and societal norms of the times which have changed with evolved ideas of statehood and individual rights.

Vestiges of these past practices remain today albeit limited in many countries by laws against polygamy. It's called "marrying up."

What's interesting about these examples you've chosen is that they portray Genghis as some saliva drooling, rapacious sex maniac whose behavior was not governed by a higher logic. To the contrary, I find this practice quite similar to the intermarrying of royalty to secure political stability among nations. The most beautiful women of the conquered peoples were those probably with higher socio-economic status. Anyone watching the myriad of reality-tv make over shows today can attest that with money and the ability to lead a certain lifestyle, many unattractive women can be made to look hot.

Right or wrong, I'm just saying this phenomenon was not limited to Genghis and just goes to show how little the Western world knew about this man and his people which has been perpetuated for centuries.

Except that Temudgin did not try to create a stable empire at all, and had no interest in it. And he was a bloodthirsty conqueror. If there was a movie about Hernan Cortes that didn't show his brutality, or a movie about the Crusades that tried to portray them as Anglo-Saxon heroes, the movie would be faulted for it. Why should the Mogols be held to a different standard?

blakdogg:

" the moral superiority of the Anglo-American culture is"

Why would you think that ? Until the late '60s both the UK and the US had no problems using murder and torture to impose their rule. Into the '80s they still supported regimes, that used violence to govern. More recently, the US has supported regimes that gained power due to coups against democratically elected governments.

Moral superiority does not require moral perfection, nor even moral goodness. Superiority is relative, determined by comparing to the behavior of other conquerors. I don't think you can name a single large empire in world history that whose acts merit still greater moral criticism.

Yes, it is true of Temudgin. The article states that Genghis Khan was loved by the conquered people. The only people who loved him were his people...his conquered people left behind lots of records to record his cruelty and the death and destruction that he brought. The Mongol conquest of the Muslim world was the worst disaster that befall the Muslims up till that time. Whole cities like Merv where the entire population of a million and more (depending on which source one reads) were slaughtered. The same fate befell Samarkand and other cities along the silk road. Yes, he was a brilliant military commander on par or even better than Alexander The Great or Napoleon. But the difference is Alexander The Great and Napoleon are looked at with a tinge of romance (whether rightly or wrongly) and Alexander was held in high esteem by some of the conquered people and legends about him abound. The same can't be said of Genghis. Muslim scholars writing years after the invasion tried to find a reason why it had happened and many felt that God had punished the Muslim for wandering off the path of true faith and as a result, the Muslim culture which was once the most forward looking and open to outside learning and culture became inward looking.