Friday Hurrahpertif - Open Thread

By Meteor Blades

The History News Network has reprinted from the Austin American-Statesman a provocative essay by Thomas G. Palaima - a professor of Classics at the University of Texas - on why we need a new Iliad:

Ironically, prominent historians of classical Greek warfare such as Victor Davis Hanson and Donald Kagan have argued for preemptive warfare and unilateral assertion of power, in direct contradiction to the lessons that most thinking human beings derive from the fate of classical Athens in the second half of the fifth century B.C.E. And they, like us, have not addressed what damage an all-volunteer army - something tantamount to a mercenary force and rightly unimaginable in the ancient Greek city-states - will eventually do to our country's social and political fabric.

We really do need an "Iliad" to bring us back to reality. The movie "Troy" held promise, but its director thought that the key to understanding the meaning of the quintessential Western story of war was that Achilles is Superman and Hector is Batman. So "Troy" gave us entertaining costume epic and soap-opera emotions and special effects. …

"The Iliad" gives an honest picture of all aspects of warfare: betrayal of "what is right;" egotistical high command foul ups and their consequences for the common troops; a wide range of behaviors, from cowardice to courage; the tragedy of war for civilians in a city under siege and ordained to be taken and destroyed; "berserker" rage; fellow feeling for the enemy, most famously in the private "truce" between the Trojan ally Glaucus and the great Greek warrior Diomedes; the truly human affections of a king named Priam and a queen named Hecuba for their son Hector, affections that are publicly displayed in gut-wrenching personal terms with no thought for political delicacy or spin; the love of Hector, whose very name means "holder" or "preserver" of his city, for his son Astyanax and his wife Andromache - and her fierce attachment to Hector; the gory, clinically accurate violence of over 200 detailed combat deaths; war for less than noble purposes; betrayal by the gods and the ineffectuality of piety; the joyful pleasure battle can give some men; the role of blind luck in combat; and even what von Clausewitz, more than two millennia later, called the "fog of war."

"Superman" and "Batman" had some great sword fights in Troy, the only good thing about that movie.

Think Progress takes note of some unraveling in Tom Delay’s effort to spin Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle as a partisan hack. On Fox News, DeLay picked the example of Earle’s indictment of former Texas attorney general Jim Mattox as proof that Earle is a “liberal political fanatic.”

But that isn’t how Mattox sees it:

I don’t think he’s overly political. I think he’s been, frankly, very tenacious about this and more tenacious than what most of us would have thought possible because Delay and his friends have spent probably $2 or $3 million on legal fees in an effort to try to hide the facts of this particular matter. I think that the facts in this particular case were so egregious that any district attorney should have taken a look at the matter.

And then there’s this stunning little bit from the Times (of London):

HE CLAIMS to hate everything the West stands for. But yesterday it emerged that Osama bin Laden sought asylum in Britain even as he was planning the September 11 attacks on the US.

The al-Qaeda leader wanted to abandon his base in Sudan at the end of 1995 and asked some of his followers in London to sound out whether he would be able to move to Britain.

Michael Howard, who was then Home Secretary, recalls how his aides told him of the asylum request from the Saudi-born militant of whom the world knew little of ten years ago. A number of his brothers and other relatives, all members of the wealthy bin Laden construction empire, owned properties in London by the mid-1990s.

Presumably, if they had let him in, the Tube would have been safer.

Comments

[emptywheel]

I've long been curious to read Kagan's Peloponnesian War. I figure it's got to be the rosetta stone for the NeoCon movement. I mean, did these guys read Thucydides and deliberately decide to copy the expedition to Syracuse?

Only I'd have to go to the library to get the book out. No way he's getting my hard earned cash.

I will, however, attest to the continued pertinence of the Iliad (and Thucydides). I was teaching the former on 9/11 and the latter during the 2000 election. And even my cute little 18-year olds got it. Blanched when they read the descriptions of war slaughter.

So maybe we just need to teach more kids to read.

[greyhair]

Hey Meteor...

I had some fun today. Made me feel a little better even though I doubt it will do much good:

http://greyhairsblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/dig.html

I also busted my ass about that nitwit Bill Bennett in a post here:

http://greyhairsblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/eugenics_30.html

[Mike S]

Right before I went to the Cyclidic islands of Greece I thought about reading the Odyssey. I hadn't read it in decades. Then I got lucky. NBC was about to run a mini series based on it. Unfortunately it sucked.

The trip rocked though. There's an island called Delos that is just jam packed with ruins. It was also at the time of the Summer Solstice which is no doubt the best time to meet Scandanavian women.

[firedoglake]

"Superman" and "Batman" had some great sword fights in Troy, the only good thing about that movie.

I liked that big flaming ball of whatever. After that it put me to sleep. The same thing happens with Victor Davis Hanson

[Kagro X]

Open Thread? Great! I have a flaming bag of dog poop to drop on your doorsteps:

For all the folks who busied themselves with the "there are no more John Robertses" arguments over the past few days, allow me to toss into the mix the lady they're calling "the female John Roberts:" Maureen Mahoney.

One Senate Republican aide described her as "another John Roberts."

Legal historian David Garrow calls her "the female John Roberts"

It may be that the female John Roberts is out there. Like Roberts, Maureen Mahoney is a leading Supreme Court litigator...:

a leading Supreme Court litigator; she's been arguing before the court since 1988. Like Roberts, she's from the Midwest (born in South Bend, Ind.). Like Roberts, she clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Like Roberts, she was one of Kenneth Starr's deputies when he was solicitor general for Bush I. Mahoney's problem: She has argued in favor of affirmative action--on the winning side for the University of Michigan Law School in the 2003 Supreme Court case Grutter v. Bollinger. But that shouldn't disqualify her if defending development restrictions around Lake Tahoe--a bad loss for the property-rights movement--didn't disqualify Roberts. Also, Mahoney isn't a judge. In 1992, George H.W. Bush nominated her for a federal trial bench seat in Virginia, but Bill Clinton became president before confirmation. So, she's still a lawyer at the Washington, D.C., firm Latham & Watkins.

So, is she really the "female John Roberts?" I don't know. But I've got three cites all in the last ten days that say she is.

Will it matter whether she really is or not? We're witnessing the birth of a meme here. A meme that might -- if Red State is to be believed (thanks, DemFromCT) -- be all that's necessary to grease the skids:

The jury is still out on the nominee. Says one from a phone call this morning, "The White House has gone into second guess mode. They want another Roberts, an enigma who will slip through and turn out to be a conservative.

Although the Red State author concludes that this is more likely to mean that Thompson or Gonzales get the nod, the repetition of the "another John Roberts" language, particularly the "female John Roberts" formulation, should be a red flag for observers.

Between Technorati and Google Blog Search, I've already got seven hits on the phrase.

[Kagro X]

Why didn't I save that for tomorrow's open thread? I would've gotten all kinds of links and stuff. Oh well.

This must be why we don't have ads.

[Mimikatz]

Funny, I started rereading The Peloponnesian Wars in 2002, but didn't finish it. The Syracuse campaign I remember from college classes. Democracies that try to have empires lose their souls. For the effects of war, I always liked Euripides' "The Trojan Women." I saw a performance during the Vietnam War. And sometimes during the flame wars at Kos I think about Antigone. She insists on burying her brother as a matter of principle while Creon has decreed no burying of the dead in an effort to bring an end to the war and save lives. Who is right?

Camus' "The Plague" seems like another classic and timely read.

[Meteor Blades]

I should have put that bin Laden bit from the Times at the top of the thread. Frankly, I can't figure out whether bin Laden was just sick of Sudan and keen on the possibilities of London night life, felt the dialysis would be better there was some other more sinister purpose to a change of venue. I sure know I would rather live in Brixton than Tora Bora, no matter what my politics.

[YK]

Shirley Jackson's The Lottery is another good one. It says some interesting things about how a society maintains cohesion, and how people do--and do not--stick together. I've always found it to be eerily realistic, even though it's fiction.

[Frankeynstain]

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