Posted on 09/14/2007 10:53:26 AM PDT by neverdem
The ethnic origins of General David Petraeus are apparently Dutch, which is a shame because there’s something sonorously classical about the family name of the commander of the US forces in Iraq. When you discover that his father was christened Sixtus, the fantasy really takes flight. Somewhere in the recesses of the brain, where memory mingles hazily with imagination, I fancy I can recall toiling through a schoolboy Latin textbook that documented the progress of one Petraeus Sixtus as he triumphantly extended the imperium romanum across some dusty plain in Asia Minor.
The fantasy is not wholly inapt, of course. General Petraeus was the star turn in Washington this week, testifying before Congress about the progress of the surge by US forces in Iraq. Some evidently see America’s wearying detention in the quagmire of Mesopotamia as a classic example of imperial overreach of the kind that is thought to have doomed Rome. Who knows? Perhaps 1,500 years ago one of the forebears of General Petraeus was hauled before the Senate to explain the progress of some surge of Roman forces to defeat the insurgents in Germania.
The US is indeed in the middle of another gloomy ride around the “America as Rome” theme park of half-understood history lessons. The pessimists, equipped with their Fodor’s guidebooks, their summer school diplomas, and their DVD collection of Cecil B. DeMille movies, are convinced it’s all up for the people who march today under the standard of the eagle, just as it was for their predecessors. They see military defeat abroad and political decay at home; they watch as far-flung peoples chafe at the dictates of imperial rule and as the plebs at home grow metaphorically hungry from misgovernment. The only real uncertainty in their minds is who will play the Vandals and lay waste to Washington?
It’s a familiar and very tired analogy, of course. From the moment that America became top nation in the middle of the last century, people have been racing to be contemporary Gibbons, chronicling the decline and fall even as it was supposedly happening. Not the least of the objections to their efforts is that Rome’s domination of the known world lasted about 500 years, and survived more than the odd thrashing or two at the hands of barbarian tribes. In modern America, it’s always the same. Every lost battle or turbulent day on the foreign exchanges and the obituary writers are sharpening their pencils.
The bigger objection is that America is not much of an empire after all. No one pays tribute, no one declares allegiance to Caesar, and what kind of empire is it that owes its foreign subjects a couple of trillion dollars? Still, as Gibbon himself noted in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: “There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times.” Which brings us back neatly to General Petraeus and the Iraq war.
The antiwar crowd’s efforts to depreciate America’s efforts in the Middle East hit a new low on the first day of the long-awaited congressional testimony, when MoveOn.org, the self-appointed leftwing base of the Democratic Party, took out a full-page advertisement in The New York Times that called the commander “General Betray Us” and accused him of lying about the progress of the surge. As stunts go, it was as startlingly offensive as it was politically self-defeating.
Not many Americans – not even those who oppose the war – like the idea of calling their generals traitors. They have a vaguely disconcerting sense that they know where that leads – and it’s not Rome but a rather shorter-lived empire of the 20th century that springs to mind. And so it had the signal effect this week of forcing Democrats to distance themselves from the antiwar movement. Most of them – especially those who harbour presidential ambitions – had to go out of their way during the hearings to emphasise their admiration for the general and his soldiers.
This is good. You can argue about the surge. The evidence is encouraging that the increased US military effort, together with a change in tactics, has reduced the violence in Iraq. On the other hand there are legitimate questions about the long-term viability of the strategy. But if America is to emerge from Iraq with a renewed sense of its global role, you shouldn’t really debase the motives of those who lead US forces there. Because in the end what they are doing is deeply honourable – fighting to destroy an enemy that delights in killing women and children; rebuilding a nation ruined by rapine and savagery; trying to bridge sectarian divides that have caused more misery in the world than the US could manage if it lasted a thousand years.
It is helpful to think about Iraq this way. Imagine if the US had never been there; and that this sectarian strife had broken out in any case – as, one day it surely would, given the hatreds engendered by a thousand years of Muslim history and the efforts of Saddam Hussein.
What would we in the West think about it? What would we think of as our responsibilities? There would be some who would want to wash their hands of it. There would be others who would think that UN resolutions and diplomatic initiatives would be enough to salve our consciences if not to stop the slaughter.
But many of us surely would think we should do something about it – as we did in the Balkans more than a decade ago – and as, infamously, we failed to do in Africa at the same time. And we would know that, for all our high ideals and our soaring rhetoric, there would be only one country with the historical commitment to make massive sacrifices in the defence of the lives and liberty of others, the leadership to mobilise efforts to relieve the suffering and, above all, the economic and military wherewithal to make it happen.
That’s the only really workable analogy between the US and Rome. When Rome fell, the world went dark for the best part of a millennium. America may not be an empire. But whatever it is, for the sake of humanity, pray it lasts at least as long as Rome.
>>This personality type thrives where there is a substantial part of the population that is parasitical, that does not have to produce anything in order to live comfortably, the idle rich, as it were.>>
Powerful insight. Thanks for making me think a little about it.
nice post thanks....I love history
IMHO, Coast to Coast is one of the most insanest radio shows there is. That is what I call talkradio for those who cannot sleep and for the tinfoil crowd.
Hiliary is nothing so interesting as Caligula. Until recently Dallas had a mayor named Laura Miller. My son once described her as the type of suburban houswife who wakes up in the morning and says to herself, “Now what shall I do today? I know, I will become mayor.” I watched her confront Petraeas, read off her brief, anf then ask about the lamest of questions in a day of lame questions. I said to myself: “THIS is our next president?” She reminds me also of Newt. But of instead of the brightest kid in class, she is the grind who always has an answer but never says anything that is not conventional. The totally conventional mind, the kind that the Seven Sisters crank our by the millions and whose total contribution to human wisdom is something below zero.
Not going to Iraq would lead to a mess? What do we have there now?
Maybe we could have focused on capturing or killing Osama Bin Laden, destroying as much of the al Queda network as possible and attacking the *REAL* leader in state-sponsored terrorism: Saudi Arabia.
How true... their roads are still useable.
Shame.
multilineal cultural evolution which birthed relativism...rubbish
there is no doubt that while the world is different and we are different....more benevolent to be sure, yet there are similarities between us and Rome:
Jared Diamond ...more rubbish...
We are decaying from within and from allowing our borders to be wide open.
There is no doubt that inability to enforce one’s border is paramount and this is where we are quite a bit like Rome though their invasion was from the north mostly and better armed (I hope)
Governmental fiscal irresponsibility....another common theme.
The rise of homosexuality...i know the social libs here will scoff but at least in the west this has been a clear signal repeatedly.
Dissolution of a united belief system or dare I say religion. Nations that lasted the longest had shared views on the almighty. It’s an adhesive folks of course today laugh at since we are so much smarter today.
There are some other comparisons too. For me, if the host culture is willing to kill one in four of it’s offspring for convenience then there is no way in hell that civilization can stave off the “barabarians” period. I believe we are living that right now.
So while unlike Rome in many ways....we are like them in others....though I’m uncertain how they were on abortion. Since they had no birth control as effective as ours, it may have been less an issue.
It's worth repeating. If this country falls, it will be because we sabotaged ourselves. IMHO, political correctness is doing the job. Wasn't Boas the clown at Columbia U. that hated white devils?
Franz Boas was at Columbia about 100 years ago and is sorta the father of anthro-cultural relativism like the sort espoused by some here.
That on a conservative board one would find revisionists spouting nonsense not much different than Ward Churchill or Cornel West is sad....very sad.
How far we have fallen.
I'm afraid that you are wrong on both counts. Rome was sacked by the Visigoths and the Vandals, the Ostrogoths conquered Italy, but didn't sack Rome.
This is the LONDON Times, owned by Rupert Murdock, not the NY (or LA) Times.
For the mystery of lawlessness doth already work: only there is one that restraineth now, until he be taken out of the way.
THIS ONE IS DUBYA....
Are you suggesting here that the men and women serving in our armed forces are not motivated by a desire to serve?
Now, the signing bonuses are at record levels--despite our Active Duty military being only 1/25 the size of WWII's...
LOL! Interesting that you picked as your comparison the historic period when our military forces were the absolute largest they have ever been by a very wide margin and when they were mostly conscripted.
Not exactly apples to apples with today's all-volunteer force.
How big is our military now compared to its size in 1977?
I don't mean to besmirch those who stay in because of these bonuses, but I do think that there's some analogy to resorting to mercenaries rather than sense of duty.
The fact is that unlike in 1941, we do not have rampant unemployment. Unlike 1941, the average working man's wage is not a survival-level pittance. Unlike 1941, there is a lot more to the average recruit's military training than digging latrines and close-order drill.
In 1941, the average volunteer joined up because the army paid as much as the back-breaking civilian work he would be lucky to get and because he wanted to serve his country. And in 1941 a lot of civilian work - like mining and construction - wasn't much less dangerous than serving in many combat assignments.
In 2007, the average military recruit has other employment options that do not entail heavy or dangerous physical labor, jobs are plentiful compared to 1941, and the skills and discipline the armed forces teach make soldiers and marines very attractive to stateside employers.
Very few software companies were offering jobs with 401(k) plans and health packages to grunts home on leave during WWII.
How many WWII volunteers would have reenlisted if there were plum jobs waiting for them at home?
And now, the US law has been changed to allow the military to go out and recruit foreigners... Already, about 100 of the deaths of US service personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan have been non-citizens.
If the immigration laws in 1861 were as restrictive as the immigration laws in 2007, then the Union army would have been chock full of noncitizen soldiers. Thousands and thousands of Germans, Irish and Central Europeans fresh off the boat were immediately Americanized and sent to the front. At that time native-born citizens who had money could avoid conscription by paying immigrants and poor people hard money to fight in their stead.
Are the tens of thousands of Union dead who fought under such arrangements mercenaries?
If the volunteers US armed forces of 2007 are mercenaries, they are much less so than the volunteers of World War II and the volunteers of the Civil War.
In 2007 residents of this country have many more options than were available to US residents in 1941 or 1861.
The US has never fought a foreign war this long or this intensely with an all-volunteer force in its entire history.
Characterizing this war as a war of mercenaries is not only an insult to our forces in the field, it is a laughable error.
Our war effort in Iraq is the work of citizen soldiers such as this country has never seen.
Almost every single volunteer who has reenlisted in this war could have found a higher-paying and safer job back home, but chose to fight.
In World War II and the Civil War, only a much smaller percentage of volunteers could say the same.
You've been watching way too much TV.
What we have is a murderous dictator gone and all suspicions about Iraq and WMD gone with him, both his sons dead, Al-Queda on the run, a democracy which was voted in by about 60% of the people, and violence way down.
Iraq is moving forward. Thank God for President Bush.
“You’ve been watching way too much TV.”
I haven’t had a television set for 4 years.
You must be reading stuff like the New York Times then. Better find some sources that tell you some facts about the progress being made in the Mid-East.
"The World" did NOT "go dark", only parts of Western Europe. The Eastern Roman Empire whose capital was Constantinople did pretty well during Western Europe's "Dark Ages", until it was finally overrun by the Muslim Turks in 1453
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.