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Tuesday, 02 January 2007 13:47 |
 | | Mark West |
It was Tacitus, if I recall correctly, who said that the Roman legions made deserts and called it peace.
The Romans didnët do nation building, at least in the sense that we mean it. They annexed areas into the empire, on the assumption that the grandest thing in the world was the heritage of greater Greece that Rome brought. Civilization and freedom, as the Romans understood it, were the outcomes of their colonial efforts.
The Romans made colonies of foreign lands for the good of the people of those places, as do we; and if people resisted, the Romans had ways of dealing with that, too. As do we.
An
example is given in Josephus, the Jewish historian, in his discussions
of the last days before the Diaspora. The Romans had attempted to allow
the people of Jerusalem and surrounding areas some degree of autonomy,
with a local proxy king named Herod. The terms of Herodës position were
simple; he kept the peace and prevented insurrection against Rome; if
he did not do so, he would be eliminated and reprisals against the
nation would immediately follow.
As Josephus
records, Jerusalem was a hard place to keep pacified in the first
century of the common era. Claimants to Messiahship showed up with some
regularity and riots of various levels of intensity were frequent.
Finally, when a large-scale insurrection began with the claim of Simon
bar-Kochba to be the Messiah, the Romans had had enough and sent in the
Legions.
The outcome was
that the Jews were scattered to the four corners of the earth,
Jerusalem was put to the torch and the remaining Jews who fled to
Masada were put under siege. The final outcome, as Tacitus suggests,
was that the Legions made of Jerusalem a desert and declared a peace.
One must wonder if they strung up a banner somewhere, saying "Mission Accomplished."
I say all this
to make a point that has been troubling me recently. Clearly, the goal
of establishing a Roman-style procuratorship in Iraq has failed; our
proxies cannot maintain peace, or anything like it. And, as history
amply proves, armies are good only at making deserts, not at making
peace.
There is no
honorable way out of Iraq. But, there is a way out that has ample
precedent. We, the United States, could make of the nation a desert and
call it peace. The leaders of our nation ÇƒÓ already roundly despised
throughout the world, already as unpopular domestically as is
conceivably possible ÇƒÓ could follow the model set by the emperor
Vespasian.
They could give
the old Crusader cry of "Deus vult!" and settle all outstanding scores
the hard way. And what would stop them? World opinion? Domestic
public opinion? The Democrats?
The Bush
administration could claim a victory in ëthe war against terrorë by
sending in lots more troops, using nukes in Iran and generally blowing
up everything that appears to resist in the least. The Democrats would
be blamed as appeasers, as weak; the Republicans would be no more
disliked than they already are; and Halliburton, presumably, would get
some big new contracts and oil rights to both nations once the fires
were put out. A win-win, at least to a mind like that of George W. Bush.
This horrifying
scenario is both troubling and possible. And this possibility is the
reason we should move to impeach George W. Bush as soon as possible.
Impeachment might stop this administration from precipitate actions in
Iraq and Iran. Thatës something the feckless Democratic leadership
might consider ÇƒÓ unless they think "Deus vult" is an appropriate
campaign slogan.
ï
Mark West is a professor of mass communications at UNC Asheville.
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