Neocon Ancient History

[unhappycamper]

Neocon Ancient History
Philip Giraldi
Posted September 4, 2007 | 04:51 PM (EST)


Neoconservatives are characteristically better versed in reading and writing about battles than actually fighting them, though that deficiency has not inhibited their initiation of vast schemes to remake half the world through force of arms. Noted neocons who identify themselves as historians include the Hoover Institute's Victor Davis Hanson and the two Kagan brothers, Frederick and Robert, whose father Donald is himself a Professor of Ancient History at Yale. Neither Hanson nor the Kagans has ever served in the military, so their knowledge of battles consists of precise red and blue lines drawn on a page with nary a drop of blood in sight. Warfare always looks clean and manageable on the neat diagrams produced at the American Enterprise Institute.

~snip~

The only problem with the neocon view of history as a metaphor is that it doesn't quite work. It is true that ignorance of history dooms one to repeat its unfortunate lessons, but it is also true that failure to understand what those lessons actually are can be equally dangerous. The neocon obsession with fitting facts into a framework that supports and justifies a particular world view is their most dangerous delusion. Indeed, the parallels that might reasonably be drawn from classical history are frequently quite the opposite of what the necons would have one conclude.

~snip~

The Roman Empire lasted five hundred years, but its fall is equally illuminating. In 400 AD, Rome had the world's only standing army, numbering more than 300,000 men. It had a huge bureaucracy, a tax system, an economy that spanned the Mediterranean, and an imperial house that was respected. There seemed to be no external threat to its continued existence. Within fifty years, all of that was gone. It fell because it could not control its own borders. Barbarian tribes threatened the borders and, when they could not be driven out by force, they were allowed in as "federates" and provided soldiers for an increasingly barbarized army that had no interest in preserving the system except to maintain its pay and perks. Eventually, the almost completely barbarian and tribal army failed in its principal responsibility to control the borders of empire and instead got into the business of Emperor-making at the new Imperial capital in Ravenna, which paid better than fighting on the frontiers. Paying off the barbarians also proved to be too much for the imperial fisc, leading to economic collapse, the disappearance of Mediterranean trade, and the death of urban classical culture. In 476 AD, the last Roman Emperor Romulus Augustulus was dethroned by the German general Odoacer, ending the Western Empire.

~snip~

Is America on the same course? Well, there is the example of the Roman Republic in the destruction of our constitutional checks and balances in order to create a so-called unitary executive designed to fight a war against the entire world, much like Pompey's imperium to wage war against the pirates wherever they might be found. The global war on terror is, among other things, designed to go on "for as long as it takes," something like Pompey's imperial command that eventually led to the constant wars that brought about the end of the Roman Republic. It might be noted in passing that Pompey defeated the pirates in only two years, a record of military success that is somewhat better that that of the Great Decider in Washington.

And then there is the Bush Administration's embrace of democracy promotion, which has had only negative results, just as it did for the Athenians. Ask any Palestinian or Iraqi who bothered to vote. And then there is the Iraq debacle as an "Expedition to Syracuse." Will American soldiers wind up as missing-in-actions laboring in some Mesopotamian quarry, just as young men of Athens did at Syracuse? Will Tom Cruise star in a future movie leading a daring attempt to rescue them from their cruel Asiatic captors? Stay tuned.


Rest of article at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-giraldi/neocon-ancient-history_b_63065.html