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.
Truly, the difference between slavery and serfdom is rather blurry, though chattel slavery of the Roman mold was markedly worse.
Decent piece, though.
People who use them, though, can always say that we won't know how much of a decline we're in until it's too late.
But the thing is that the analogies are used by people who think things are getting out of control.
Democrats pick them up now and we can scoff at them. If they were in office and we weren't it might be different.
Did you go to Harvard? That’s the kind of history they teach. In many respects the Renaissance was a period of decline, as a result of the Black Death. the Muslim invasion of Europe, the decline of papal authority, and the Hundred Years War.
There were peoples living among ruins made with more advanced technology than those then-contemporary peoples had available to themselves. Writing was preserved largely due to the work of: monks and clergy; Byzantine (East Roman Empire) people; and....duh, duh, duh, MUSLIMS in the roughly half of the Roman Empire which fell under Muslim rule. Some things, such as Greek fire, now have only conjectures as to what they were, because so much was lost.
Some technological progress was made (though even things such as cannons and the printing press were imported technologies), but--as you've pointed out--the Renaissance was largely when the European peoples of the former Roman Empire re-learned Roman technology and then advanced from there.
The Vandals certainly did sack Rome in 455.
The Renaissance didn’t bring about a rediscovery of Roman technology. That has been on-going for several hundred years. The foundation of modern sciencve was laid during the Middle Ages. There were more machines in western Europe than in all the Roman Empire of the past. Greek science had been making its way into Europe since the 11th Century, with the beginning of the Crusades and the restoration of the old trade routes.
| You could argue that the United States sent colonist to the territories contiguous with the United States. The Philippines was granted independence after the United States was unwilling to grant the territory statehood and make a bunch of little brown brethren American citizens. The BBC history page has an interesting section on Roman history. And here's an article specifically comparing the Roman Empire and the United States. The piece isn't that great or accurate (the author didn't seem very versed in American history), but it's the closest of the articles to this topic. Other somewhat relevant and interesting ones are about: |
Suspect buwaya has a strong point that Europe did pick up pace before the Renaissance, but that the fall of the Western Roman Empire did lead to an initial collapse--or almost collapse--in European society that took centuries to rebuild.
Where Rome had a heavy reliance on slavery, medieval Europe had a heavy reliance on serfdom (in the case of eastern Europe, lasting up to last century).
So they did.
Decades of the government getting more and more bloated, taxes going higher and higher, regulation on top of regulation, until one day it just all grinds to a halt.
Read the accounts of the parasites in the Bourbon courts and tell me they're any different from our legislators and bureaucrats of today.
“The analogy isn’t based on foreign military exploits, but on the fall of a decadent empire.”
Exactly. Anyone who studies history knows that there is a rise and fall to every nation/civilization. Can it be avoided?
Yes. “If my people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from Heaven and forgive their sin and will heal their land.” 2 Chronicles 7:l4
OMGosh...just had to ask how you can listen to Coast to Coast?? When it comes on the radio I can’t turn it off fast enough. Bleh. I’m sorry, but the people calling in to that program are INSANE!!
True, although the lot of a serf, at least in the West, was better than that of a Roman agrarian slave, IMHO. Plus, serfdom was introduced fairly late in the "Dark Ages" and in the West began to fall apart after the Black Death. Agreed serfdom lasted into the 19th Century in much of Eastern Europe, but that's one reason they were so far behind economically.
Thanks for the link.
Well, I did find out that the BookTV presentation is available over at C-Span;
it uses Real Player.
While the video is just a couple of frames per minute on my dial-up,
the audio is just fine.
Here’s the link.
http://www.booktv.org/program.aspx?ProgramId=8328&SectionName=&PlayMedia=Yes
Right, key the classical music.
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