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.
Thanks for posting this article. I’ve been having similar thoughts about the comparison between the US and Rome ever since teaching World History several years back.
For starters, if we ARE the modern Rome, this means 2,000 years of continued existence, if we start from Romulus and Remus and conclude with the fall of Constantinople. I think folks tend to forget that history teaches lessons through metaphor, not direct correspondence. We can view things like the Corn Laws and the chaos of the late Republic and draw lessons from them, certainly, but, strictly speaking, each moment in history is unique, in the same way the lives of individuals are unique. We can learn lessons, but our circumstances will not be the same as our ancestors.
My other observation is that there are people who are eager for the apocalypse, too. They love to think about the end of the world (I’ve listened to my fair share of “Coast to Coast”). The idea of America’s death fits a romantic ideal of someplace that was once great and is now lost, sort of like Atlantis. As far as I can see, these folks have been present in many cultures, not just American culture, and maybe they’re just a personality type which shows up in any group of people.
Well, we have Caligula reincarnated as a female presidential candidate. I think most people like to compare the US to Rome as far as “rotting” from the inside out.
ping
Excellent.
A high school teacher of mine opined that the Renaissance stifled the development of arts and culture in Europe because it encouraged slavish imitation of antiquity rather than continued innovation along the lines of the High Middle Ages.
Clearly an overstatement of the case, but it has some merit. I wonder how many Renaissance poets could have written decent and memorable Italian or French verse rather than the substandard and wholly unmemorable Latin hexameters they left behind.
Good Info.
Saw a recent DVD on the subject of England and it NOT being
in the Dark, but after Rome left their shores, became a beacon. An island of culture in a sea of Dark. A flourishing of religion and education.
Caligula was Emperor BEFORE Rome peaked, and Rome lasted over 400 years after Caligula's reign.
The stupidest analogies I see are Social Cons trying to compare the moral decay of Rome to the US.
They forget that Rome rose and peaked as a pagan empire rife with various forms of immorality, and Rome only fell after it converted to Christianity (not that that was necessarily the cause). People have vague and fuzzy notions of decadence and immorality in Rome, and the timing of such, and people think that things only got immoral and crazy as Rome declined, which is not true.
Infanticide was rampant and routine for the entire rise and peak of Rome.
Have you ever read "The Waning of the Middle Ages?" It is available for free online.
"It does not matter that the people love me, it matters more that they FEAR me!"
Gibbon is the most famous person to claim that the adoption of Christianity led to the fall of the empire, as it effectively put a line, if not a wall, between throne and altar. Not very plausible IMHO. In reality, it was a declining population, inability to raise large armies, and the increasingly difficult task of collecting taxes from subjugated peoples that caused Rome's ultimate dissolution.
I agree and the Caligula comparison was based more on character rather than timing. Also, most fail to realize when the Empire split the Byzantines prospered for ~1000 years.
Good point. Before Ezra Pound underwent his transformation from Interesting Crazy Poet to World's Worst Economist, he was obsessed with the troubadours and the duecento poets too - and look at the dedication of The Wasteland.
Rome didn’t fall. It moved. Also, it is still here.
And, unlike Rome, Medieval Europe was able to build a prosperous society without Rome's heavy reliance on slavery.
“The tired analogy of imperial decline and fall”
Amen!
“The US is indeed in the middle of another gloomy ride around the
“America as Rome” theme park of half-understood history lessons. “
Too bad this recent book (see below) didn’t get some mention/discussion in the column.
As the answer to the question “Are We (USA) Rome?” seems to be “partially”.
The author of the book linked below did a nice presentation on his
book on BookTV (C-Span2; weekends) about a month ago).
Are We Rome?: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America
by Cullen Murphy
a life of decadence is short lived - whether it be corporate or individual
| The frequent comparison of the United States and Rome is quite unwarranted or undeserved flattery. Rome's actual control of much of the Mediterranean (Middle Earth) world for around 500 years (or more) beats out the United States' global 'hegemony' of some 50 years by a long shot. Rome forcibly and coercively held together many cultures while successfully assimilating many of those cultures to a more Roman one. From Spanish dinero to the Iraqi dinar, from Romania's Constanta to Algeria's Constantine, Roman influence permeates much of the world, West or otherwise, today (-ia is a Latin designation of land/country). The closest the United States has is the ascendancy of English to the main international language. But whether this would have been done without the British is debatable. Even if the United States provided the incentive for the uptake of English, the British Empire laid down the framework and infrastructure for it. Furthermore, English, along with most Western languages, is written using the Roman/Latin alphabet. Two thousand years from now--if the world lasts that long--will the the United States have nearly the lasting impact and influence on the world that Rome has had? Highly questionable. Besides, it is also debatable whether the United States even should try to make such an impression on world history. Being isolationist has its advantages, too. |
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