Terrorist Incident in Ancient Rome - Pirates of the Mediterranean

[muriel_volestrangler]

The author, Robert Harris (ex-reporter, now book author of 'Fatherland', 'Enigma', and 'Imperium' - about Cicero) is not left wing. But he sounds very worried.

IN the autumn of 68 B.C. the world’s only military superpower was dealt a profound psychological blow by a daring terrorist attack on its very heart. Rome’s port at Ostia was set on fire, the consular war fleet destroyed, and two prominent senators, together with their bodyguards and staff, kidnapped.

The incident, dramatic though it was, has not attracted much attention from modern historians. But history is mutable. An event that was merely a footnote five years ago has now, in our post-9/11 world, assumed a fresh and ominous significance. For in the panicky aftermath of the attack, the Roman people made decisions that set them on the path to the destruction of their Constitution, their democracy and their liberty. One cannot help wondering if history is repeating itself.
...
“Pompey was to be given not only the supreme naval command but what amounted in fact to an absolute authority and uncontrolled power over everyone,” the Greek historian Plutarch wrote. “There were not many places in the Roman world that were not included within these limits.”
...
Those of us who are not Americans can only look on in wonder at the similar ease with which the ancient rights and liberties of the individual are being surrendered in the United States in the wake of 9/11. The vote by the Senate on Thursday to suspend the right of habeas corpus for terrorism detainees, denying them their right to challenge their detention in court; the careful wording about torture, which forbids only the inducement of “serious” physical and mental suffering to obtain information; the admissibility of evidence obtained in the United States without a search warrant; the licensing of the president to declare a legal resident of the United States an enemy combatant — all this represents an historic shift in the balance of power between the citizen and the executive.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/30/opinion/30harris.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

[tocqueville]

1. we still have pirates in the Mediterranean

they hit the coast every summer mostly in form of drunk turists. Notice how much the words turist and terrorist sound alike.

[livvy]

2. I just finished reading this right before I logged in here. Rec. reading!

The parallels are interesting. It is amazing the effects a single incident and the response can have.

[xchrom]

3. you have to wonder if the country isn't in decline.

once granted these powers -- the ''government'' will find it hard to give it up.

what i hated about reagan -- one of the things -- was created this image that the ''government'' was an alien enitity -- The Other -- and the republick party has been capitalising on that ever since.

[brokensymmetry]

4. K+R:n/t

.

[POAS]

5. The light from the "shining city on the hill" is

coming from the fires burning her to the ground.

[bklyncowgirl]

6. Excellent analogy. With one quibble.

My only problem with it was that the men who seized power in Republican Rome were Pompey & Caesar--both supremely competent military men and politicians. Pompey cleared out the pirates in less than a year. Caesar conquered half of Europe.

Contrast that with the record of the Bush administration.

I cannot recall any historical episode where a free people handed over their rights to a gang of supremely incompetent, corrupt, greedy screwups.

Hell even Hitler and Mussolini got the trains to run on time.

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. True, but those seizing power are good at politics

in terms of manipulation of opinion and so on - people like Rove and Cheney. And Hitler was pretty incompetent when he tried to direct military operations, in most historians' opinion, and the Italian military had a far worse reputation under Mussolini than previously.

[intaglio]

7. I had forgotten this but have long believed in the Rome/America parallel

eom