The ancient Grecians knew all about scoundrels like Shrub instigating unjust wars

[UTUSN]

This book is written by a protege of Victor Davis HANSON, who was CHEENEE's Classics Department guru in the run-up to the Iraq Attack. It predates our dilemma yet certainly dissects it. The protege says he submitted his book to HANSON for corrections before publishing.

So many nuggets: "careerist army officers" (PATRAEUS. Dutch origen, but name looks Greek to me.) "secret organizations" (NeoCons, and who knows what others we don't even know about)


*******QUOTE*******

from "Greek Ways: How the Greeks created Western Civilization" by Bruce THORNTON, MJF Books, copyright 2000



p. 93: We should not expect to find anti-war sentiment in Greek thought. Pacifism is the transitory luxury of a people whose security has been earned by the bravery and militarism of earlier generations. ….

The ubiquity of war …. Did not, however, lead to a wholesale idealization or florification of killing, much less any sort of glossing over of the brutality of war, whose god, Ares, is “most-hateful of all gods who hold Olympus.”

p. 95: Warfare among the Greeks is seldom mentioned without some implicit or explicit recognition of its terrible human cost, the brutality it brings, the suffering it leaves in its wake. …. …the uniqueness of the Greeks in this regard… ….

p. 96: Homer’s numerous wound descriptions are accompanied not just with the victim’s name and lineage, but often with some brief biographical detail that personalizes him and reminds us that a human being, a unique individual with a family and a history, has passed from the earth.

…humanize the enemy, reminding us of all that is lost when someone dies. …. …Hector is shown interacting with his whole family and fellow citizens, which emphasizes what is at risk every time he goes into the fighting. ….

p. 97: …Hector’s infant son… …. Only suffering to come to his father’s arms when the warrior has removed the helmet. …. …the warrior must discard his humanity when he puts on his armor to go and kill …. And that he regains it when he takes his armor off.

p. 100: In Athenian tragedy and comedy of the fifth century we find the most significant and searching examination of war and its human costs. …. The Greeks even examined the suffering borne by their foes in war. ….

p. 101: …Euripides produced during the brutal Peloponnesian War …. The most searching criticism of violent conflict and a recognition of the senseless suffering, moral corruption, and dehumanizing passions that war unleashes. …. …the senselessness of war and its dangers in a democracy that makes decisions based on emotion… ….

p. 103: …brutality and the dehumanization of both conqueror and conquered. ….the psychological torture afflicting good but weak men who are ordered to commit evil in an unjust or worthless cause. ….

p. 104: …the waste of war, particularly one waged for base or selfish reasons. …. …Euripides in his tragedies never forgets the “individual victim,” never glosses over the sacrifice… ….

On the comic stage, war is typically the bitter fruit of the lust for power and pelf that drives corrupt politicians.

p.105: …greed for profit and sexual appetite are the causes of war, not lofty and noble sentiments, or policies intended to benefit the city. …. …the lust and greed of crookend politicians, informers, arms manufacturers, ambassadors with bloated per diems, and careerist army officers. …. Once started, the war was kept blazing by crooked orators and the bribes of foreigners. …. …each side begrudged the other any advantage, no matter how trivial. …. …the politicians and generals willing and eager to continue fighting to futher their own ambitions.

p. 106: …ambitious and greedy… …. …greed and ambition… …eliminating the scheming, self-interested politicians and secret political organizations… would solve the city’s problems.

Aristophanes was no pacifist. …. Yet his comedies are highly critical of unjust wars, wars instigated and fought to enrich the purses and further the ambitions of corrupt leaders.

p. 107: (The Greeks’ attitudes toward war) Particularly important is the analysis of motive, the recognition that military violence is often the instrument of the venal and ambitious, and sometimes merely the reflection of a destructive human nature and passions.

…Greek analysis of war, …we have to be clear of the rightness of our motives before we unleash the terrible destructives of Ares, “lover of blood and death,” who dances “in the dance that knows no music.”

********UNQUOTE*******

[HereSince1628]

1. Is a Grecian a person who accepted Hellenistic culture but it not Greek?

It's a term I'm unfamiliar with, but it seems it may be important to comparative history.

[UTUSN]

3. My use is supposed to be a JAB at Shrub's use of it instead of "Greek" n/t

[HereSince1628]

8. Hahahahahah! Missed that! But shoulda known...

Bush is the Great Mastecator of the English language. :rofl:

[rzemanfl]

10. To George it is "Grecian" because that's what his friends put on

their hair and "Greek" is how he and his friends have sex.

[aquart]

4. Well, there was that Ode to a Grecian Urn.

Seems to an adjective. Greek is a proper noun?

[UTUSN]

5. Shrub was roundly ridiculed at the time. I still ridicule him any chance I get. n/t

[UTUSN]

2. Background on Victor Davis HANSON

A week or two before the illegal Iraq attack, CHEENEE paraded HANSON in front of the press corps as his "guru" with a high profile lunch. The reporting at the time described his role for the Mal-administration PNACers as being providing examples from history on use of military force in itself and preemption in order to keep "vitality" for the nation, avoid stagnation, and spread its own model abroad.

Here's HANSON giving marching orders for the Iraq attack:

********QUOTE*******

Full HANSON archive: http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson-archive.asp

Nat'l Cathedral: (History or Hysteria?)

http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson032803.asp

.... In disgust at the hysteria, I took a drive to Washington to the National Cathedral on Sunday. Big mistake. All except one of the entrances were closed due to security concerns. I walked in under the wonderful sculptures of Frederick Hart, an authentic American genius who almost single-handedly restored classical realism to American sculpture. A small statue of a kneeling Lincoln, who sent thousands into battle to eradicate slavery, was in the corner. A plaque of quotations from Churchill, about the need for sacrifice in war, was on the wall. So I was feeling somewhat good again — until I heard the pious sermon on “shock and awe.” In pompous tones the minister was deprecating the war effort, calling down calumnies upon the administration, and alleging the immoral nature of our nation at war.

Such a strange man at such a strange time, I thought. His entire congregation, by its own admission, is in danger from foreign terrorists (why else bar the gates?). His church is itself a monument to the utility of force for moral purposes. His own existence as a free-speaking, freely worshiping man of God is possible only thanks to the United States military — whose present mission he was openly deriding at the country’s national shrine. ....

*************UNQUOTE********

**********QUOTE********

Mexifornia

http://www.city-journal.org/html/12_2_do_we_want.html

Thousands arrive illegally from Mexico into California each year—and the state is now home to fully 40 percent of America’s immigrants, legal and illegal. They come in such numbers because a tacit alliance of Right and Left has created an open-borders policy, aimed at keeping wage labor cheap and social problems ever fresh, so that the ministrations of Chicano studies professors, La Raza activists, and all the other self-appointed defenders of group causes will never be unneeded. ....

And while the Democrats think the illegals will eventually turn into liberal voters, the actual Hispanic vote so far remains just a small fraction of the eligible Mexican-American pool: of the 14,173 residents of the central California town of Hanford who identified themselves as Latino (34 percent of the town’s population), for example, only 770 are registered to vote.

My sleepy hometown of Selma, California, is in the dead center of all this. ....It is a schizophrenic existence, living at illegal immigration’s intersection. Each week I pick up trash, dirty diapers, even sofas and old beds dumped in our orchard by illegal aliens—only to call a Mexican-American sheriff who empathizes when I show him the evidence of Spanish names and addresses on bills and letters scattered among the trash. ....

Yet I also walk through vineyards at 7 AM in the fog and see whole families from Mexico, hard at work in the cold—while the native-born unemployed of all races will not—and cannot—prune a single vine. By natural selection, we are getting some of the most intelligent and industrious people in the world, people who have the courage to cross the border, the tenacity to stay—and, if not assimilated, the potential to cost the state far, far more than they can contribute. ....

Our elites do not understand just how rare consensual government is in the history of civilization, and therefore they wrongly think that they can instill confidence by praising the other, less successful, cultures that aliens are escaping from rather than explaining the dynamism and morality of the civilization that they have voted for with their feet. ....

*****UNQUOTE****



NIEZSCHE is one of a group who are often portrayed as strange, impenetrable, and on some weird and original tangent all their own, when the secret that binds ALL of these seeming mavericks ---NIETZSCHE, STRAUSS, PAGLIA, and Victor Davis HANSON (CHEENEE's guru)--- is the CLASSICS Department, the pre-Christian values they are INDIVIDUALLY steeped in ---and wanted to live by TODAY.

It's not that NIETZSCHE "influenced" the ones after him, it's that EACH of these WENT BACK individually to the Ancients. They want to live by the "strong" pre-Christian values of STRENGH, physical force/domination, PRIDE ("gloating") as opposed to the "weak" values of humility, mercy, turning the other cheek.

And it's NOT that NIEZCHE was a proto-Nazi. Richard WAGNER *was* one and NIETZSCHE broke with him. After he went into his mental helplessness his unintellectual sister took control of his body and dressed him as a prophet, literally, with people visiting to pay obeissance, which would have REPELLED him, and herself courted the proto-Nazis according to her own small understanding of him, or just for her self-interest.

[AntiFascist]

6. Particularly noteworthy is....

"the lust and greed of crookend politicians, informers, arms manufacturers, ambassadors with bloated per diems, and careerist army officers. …. Once started, the war was kept blazing by crooked orators"

and

"we have to be clear of the rightness of our motives before we unleash the terrible destructives of Ares, 'lover of blood and death,' who dances 'in the dance that knows no music.'"

there is such a thing as just wars, but based on comments by several retired military, we are not fighting them.

[UTUSN]

9. I wonder how the protege THORNTON and mentor HANSON are getting along.

HANSON, who has often appeared on C-SPAN, has the personality of a statue, but he would convey FIERCENESS in drumbeating for the Iraq Attack and for key concepts like "perpetual war" (to revitalize the society) that fit right in with the CHEENEE gang (and their little kid on a string, Shrub).

[AntiFascist]

15. It would seem to fit in perfectly with neocon theoretician Michael Ledeen...

who advised Karl Rove. Neocons, thankfully, have been getting a bad rap so now they have been stressing war from the Roman god / Greek mythology perspective? The downfall of Rome should bite them in the ass.

[Cleita]

7. I read all those epics and plays in the past.

The Greeks understood that there had to be a citizen's militia or army of trained warriors with generals, who knew what they were doing, so that their families could live in peace and safety. They knew there was a cost too as you have stated.

My favorite pop fiction, Greek warrior, Xena once said to Gabrielle when they were fighting to protect a peaceful gathering of people listening to a Jesus-like figure preaching love, "People like us make it safe for people like them to live in peace and love."

[UTUSN]

11. Wow, those writers did their research. That's exactly what THORNTON says about pacifists n/t

[CTyankee]

12. Have you read Hanson's "A War Like No Other"? It is a military history

of the Peloponnesian War and is very interesting. I am a big fan of that war and there have been many comparisons between it and our own fiasco in Iraq. The fact of the matter is that Athens lost not only its democracy but its empire to Sparta (the democracy returned somewhat a few years later). The hubris of the Athenians is what is most often compared with our own and their equating of might making right.

To get heartbreaking scenes of the horror and misery of that war you have to read the original, as-it-happened history by Thucydides, entitled "The History of the Peloponnesian War." Methinks Hanson is trying hard to put a somewhat good face on that terrible war and he knows that academia by and large are on the other side of the argument (with the exception of Donald Kagan at Yale who wrote his own massive history of the Peloponnesian War).

Another good reference, albeit brief, is Thomas Cahill's "Sailing the Wine Dark Sea: why the Greeks matter." It is a GREAT read.

[UTUSN]

13. Thanks for the references. No, haven't read the HANSON. I'm torn by him.

If he is a literalist wannabe-Greek, uh, O.K. I love the Greeks. But I feel HANSON should be on "our" side TODAY, not playing NeoCon games.

[CTyankee]

14. This book is not particularly upsetting because of its richness in the history

of that war. It is altogether fascinating. I think you will like it for that reason; I did and I feel the same way you do about war.

But Cahill is pure delight. If you love everything Greek, "wine dark sea" is for you; highly readable, full of history about the sex lives (!!) of Greeks, their music, their poetry, philosophy, mythology. I liked it so much I went and got it out of the library a few months after I read it so I could read it again!

[ellisonz]

16. Victor Davis Hanson is a fool. And he hates Mexicans...

[EFerrari]

17. He hates a lot of people. Hate is his hobby. n/t

[Rockholm]

18. Wouldn't that be Mexicoans?

[UTUSN]

19. Uh, as much as I hate his NeoCon ways, he doesn't hate Mexicans. 1 or 2 of his family are married

to them (or Mexican-Americans?). Like Lou DOBBS, who possibly *does* hate Mexicans, is himself married to one.

HANSON appears to be a social Darwinist without regard for "compassion" against unregulated social and economic forces. He is the one who coined the thingy "Mexifornia" (quoted above), and true racists in and out of The Minutemen adopted it for their own racist purposes. HANSON advocates the 1950s norm of "assimiliation," whereby all immigrants need to do "English Only" and become ("Anglo"?)-Americans, like Hispanic kids in Texas schools in the '50s were told that Davy CROCKETT was their role model. In the sense that assimilation would erradicate multi-culturalism, it might be said that he "hates" those other cultures, at least inside the U.S. of A.

[ellisonz]

20. Ok...

So he just hates poor Mexicans who can't afford to buy into his "ownership society"???

Social Darwinism is racism hidden behind an "upscale" venear!

http://www.ailf.org/ipc/Mexifornia.asp

It is not surprising that Victor Davis Hanson’s latest book, Mexifornia: A State of Becoming, NOTE 1 has transformed him into the new darling of the anti-immigrant movement. Unencumbered by the references, footnotes, facts and figures which clutter most books about immigration, Hanson relies largely upon personal anecdotes and emotional tirades to create a pastiche of fearful imagery: unassimilated Mexican hordes overrunning California, rampantly breeding entire generations of gang bangers and welfare recipients, goaded on by corrupt Mexican elites and U.S. multiculturalists awaiting the rise of a new Chicano nation in the southwestern United States. In general, Hanson’s arguments are wildly inconsistent, informed more by stereotype than substance, and characterized by a remarkable unfamiliarity with Mexican history and culture. Despite his experience as a historian and professor of classics, Hanson’s primary qualifications on the topic of Mexican immigration seem to be that he knows a lot of Mexicans and has worked on a farm. NOTE 2 As a result, Mexifornia is a confused, confusing and often bizarre diatribe by one angry, frightened man rather than a meaningful contribution to the immigration debate.

Victor Davis Hanson is just as bad as Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh.

[UTUSN]

21. Well, I'll also say, "O.K." Because my sense is that you and I are on the same side.

In all my my repetitious (some have said, 'broken record') posts on HANSON I have made the point that a DISTORTION of what he writes is useful to the anti-immigrant, wingnut gang, and that this is the same thing that was done by the proto-Nazis to NIETZSCHE. My guess is that these Classics Department guys (and gals, since PAGLIA is in this group) live and breathe ancient Greek, therefore pre-Xtian, values, which have a harsh tone on the surface: Pride (like "gloating") instead of "humility," physical force instead of "gentleness, or inner strength or moral victory," and so on.

The quote you cite comes from a pro-immigrant source, which *would* find HANSON adversarial. I find him adversarial, too, in the sense of, if he's giving aid and comfort and tools for argument and rationales to our enemies, he's an enemy---sounds like Shrub's "with us or against us."

I certainly detest his NeoConism. And I strongly disagree with his Mexifornia arguments. Since I love reading about the Ancients, I admire his scholarship and his writing and his cogency, and I wish he were on my side.

[ellisonz]

22. I so don't want Hanson on my side...

You detest neoconservatism but you believe their interpretation of history? I confess, I haven't read Hanson's books, and I don't even bother to get a gist of his columns in my newspaper because his right-wing tool-ness is latent. But what I can tell you after 3 semesters of Greek and Roman history and humanities is that VDH is a pariah in academia.