300

Sheesh. Leave it to Owen to come pee on the fire in the interest of "balance!" 8^) So, Owen, think the world would be a better place if Xerxes had triumphed? Where you been, boyo?

ry: while Salamis put paid to the question of logistics, without the tactical "victory in defeat" at Thermopylae, the Persian would have never considered that he could be defeated. Thermopylae was the triumph of citizenship over servitude. Go tell the Spartans!

Oh, I've been keeping busy, what with the baby and all. Truth is, I've been chatting on the web rather less lately. It was more fun when I was a beleaguered minority. Practically everyone seems to share my opinions these days. Ry: Xerxes went home after Salamis, which certainly was the most decisive battle, but he left his best forces in Greece under his general Mardonius. These then fought a land battle against an Athenian-Spartan-Plataean force at Plataea, and were beaten. Then the Athenians and Spartans decided to press their advantage by crossing the Aegean to free the Greek cities of Ionia. The entire western Turkish coast was then Greek but under Persian rule. So really the war went on. The Athenians' "liberations" in the Aegean and Ionia later became known as the Athenian empire. They frequently rebelled against Athens and connived with their old masters the Persians. Even the hero of Salamis, Themistocles, eventually fled Greece over a scandal and ended up working for the Persians. Naturally I don’t wish the Persians had conquered Greece. But I do have a soft spot for the Persians. They were tolerant, decent rulers by the standards of the day, and much more magnanimous in victory than most ancient Near Eastern peoples, including the Greeks. The first Persian emperor, Cyrus, was a hero in the Old Testament for ending the Babylonian Captivity of the Jews. I often draw a parallel between Athens after the Persian invasion and the US after the Cold War. Both were democracies that got carried away by military ambition after their main enemy was perceived to have fled the field. Both overreached, became domineering themselves, and ended up throwing away the credit they had earned in taking their original, justified stand. Ultimately, their hubris succeeded only in driving away former allies. Athens eventually fell under the spell of a pampered aristocratic demagogue, Alcibiades, whose only qualification for power was his family connections. He then led them into the disastrous Syracuse expedition, where they became bogged down and frittered away their power. Sound familiar? I doubt anyone will read this, since it’s several days old now.

PS I'm sure MajMike won't see this, but if you do, I think you have a very rosy view of the Spartans: "Thermopylae was the triumph of citizenship over servitude." Spartan citizenship was even more limited than Athenian. Even in the city of Sparta itself, only a small minority of adult males were Spartiates, or full citizens. The rest were Perioikoi, with military duties but no vote. And the vast majority of the population of the country, Lacedaemon, weren't Lacedaemonians (Spartans) at all, but Helots, a captive nation of slaves. Sparta's Helot wars, both the original conquest and the suppression of later slave revolts, were incredibly brutal and vicious, and even other Greeks spoke of them in hushed, shocked tones. I would ten thousand times rather be an Ionian Greek living in one of Persia's tributary cities than a Helot under Sparta. Those Greek cities could even revolt unsuccessfully and be spared the sack. Even their leaders were sometimes spared. But if a Helot so much as looked at a Spartan sideways, it was an excuse for genocide. Spartans were considered weird and fanatical by other Greeks. They had no freedom, no private lives. They exposed their kids in hillsides at birth to weed out the weak. They then took boys from their families and brought them up in boarding schools were they were underfed so they had to steal food. If caught, they were beaten. It was supposed to make them tough. It mostly just made them corrupt. Spartan kings and generals were notoriously susceptible to bribes by Persians and others. Leonides died at Thermopylae, but his predecessor Kleomenes and his successor Latychidas both ended their days in prison for corruption. Kleomenes' predecessor Damaratos, whose throne he had usurped, accompanied Xerxes' army as an advisor during his invasion of Greece. The Spartans actually had to withdraw from the overseas war against Persia because they couldn't find honest, incorruptible commanders. Married Spartans had to live in barracks, away from their wives and kids. New trainees were attached to older men in a bizarre apprenticeship in which homosexuality and child abuse was expected, even encouraged. Sparta was once famous in Greece for overthrowing tyrants. But this wasn't done out of a love of freedom, it was because tyrants represented the lower classes and Sparta stood for aristocratic rule. Sparta later became notorious in Greece for suppressing democracy. Kleomenes tried to install an oligarchy in Athens just a few years before Xerxes invasion. They worshipped bravery, but other military virtues meant nothing to them. When Kleomenes crushed the Argives in the field in about 497BC, their men escaped to a sacred grove just outside Argos and hid there. Kleomenes got their names from people in the city, then called them out one by one, saying their ransom had been paid by relatives. As they came out, they were killed. Eventually the Argive soldiers got wind of the trick, and stopped coming out. So Kleomenes set fire to the sacred grove. Not very honourable. Plataea, a genuinely gallant little city with a real citizen army that had played an outsize part in repelling the Persians, was later cruelly destroyed by the Spartans themselves in the Peloponnesian Wars, an act which shocked other Greeks. The Spartans never had any guiding principle but naked military power and an insatiable desire to lord it over other Greeks. When their power was broken by Epaminondas of Thebes at Leuctra and at Charonaea in 371-362BC, their fall was mourned by no-one.

So I guess that would include an SS Sonderkommando who jumped on a grenade thrown by a resisting Jew? If any military force ever came closest to the spirit of the Spartan army, it was the SS. The same ethic of togetherness, comradeship, patriotism and self-sacrifice. What about all those Germans who made the ultimate sacrifice to keep Hitler in power? Should we seek to emulate their example, removed from politics? What about Saddam? Should I admire him for going to his death in a brave, dignified manner? The Spartans weren't better people, or even braver people. They were people who came from a society in which men were trained to fear disgrace more than death. The Spartan's bravery was mostly terror at the thought of being ostracised by his club. What's more, I'm specifically opposed to the idea of Thermopylae being held up as an example for today. I can see where this is going - brave Westerners defend civilisation against vast dark forces from the East. If there is a parallel with today, America is in the role of the Persians, not the Spartans. They are the side with the vast military machine. They are the invading, alien force. To Xerxes and his superpower empire, Leonidas was an insurgent.

Let me ask you something...do you really think that the SS commando that threw himself on the grenade was imagining that he was saving the Reich, keeping the machine alive one more day to kill jews or screaming allegiance to his fatherland at the last moment? You imagine the act of sacrifice and its virtues can only be defined by one thousand extrenuous circumstances and historical context? Or, can you imagine that somewhere in Germany today an old man still remembers with awe, pride and humility that one day, in a trench with four other guys, a grenade came flying in and his best friend saved them all by jumping on the grenade. The old man, now beyond the politics of his youth, may not recall the Reich with fondness, but he probably thanks his lucky stars every day that his friend sacrificed himself so that he could live. You see, you are still trying to define virtuous acts by everything else under the sun instead of the act of self sacrifice in the service of others (ie, protecting your friends) as a virtue. What you are saying is that because I disagree with you and vis-a-versa and I think that your way is wrong, even dangerous, if we were standing in a trench, a grenade flew in and I saw it first, instead of jumping on it to save you I should jump out of the trench and let you eat metal since sacrificing myself would have no meaning due to my political beliefs, past misdeeds or current. Or, if I jumped on the grenade, you would not honor my sacrifice because I was obviously worthless and thus so was the act of saving your life. Are you seriously telling me that you do not see the virtue and heroism, regardless of their political allegiances, in 300 men standing against 1 million? Or understand, at the last minute, regardless of leonides speeches, the last men sacrificed themselves, not for Sparta but for the 10 remaining beside them? To live one more minute so another might live. You don't see the virtue in that? Then again, you probably imagine that it was a product of their dispicable, brainwashing upbringing, void of any individual conscience thought, therefore, void of virtue.

Yes, OD, they did. It was a frontal attack on a superior armed enemy. That may seem crazy and even suicidal (no pun intended), but it was a straight on attack. I hate their politics. I hate their ideas. I would never consent to live under them or agree to believe in them. I would fight them every day. I don't believe anyone else should be forced to live under the virtual and physical slavery of their ideas. And, for whatever you may believe about "imperial America", I do find, without confusion or confliction, that liberalism and democracy is better. Finally, had we not been attacked, our ideas would have won out in the end without a shot being fired. If you read the texts of bin laden's speeches, Zawahiri's books and many sermons from co-religionists, you would know that they knew it too. That is why they chose a physical fight even against our superior military, political and economic power. If you cannot find any virtue, anything to admire or anything to respect about your enemy, then several things will happen: 1) You will consistently underestimate him, his dedication to his cause, his dedication to winning and the lengths to which he will go to win. therefore, you will consistently act in ways detrimental to your cause that will get you killed and possibly lose the war. (Clausewitz and Sun Tzu gave similar advice) I can honestly say, though it may be amusing to imagine bin Laden and his cohorts as "stupid sheep herders" hiding away in a cave, I never give into that image as the defining him, his fellow travellers or his cause. I don't just imagine him to be intelligent and capable at managing resources, I know that he is. Therefore, I do not imagine that Afghanistan nor Iraq will be the final battle or that he will simply drift away to nothing of consequence because we have attrited his physical forces or material resources. I know the only way to defeat him, short of genocidal destruction of every "conservative" Muslim, is to defeat his ideas, reduce his support and finally, kill him, in whatever manner that will take and in whatever order. You also cannot underestimate the idealism that continues to see hundreds if not thousands of men from different countries and different ethnic, educational and economic backgrounds joining the cause or coming to Iraq or Afghanistan. They believe in their own form of "virtue" which we can't take foregranted even for a minute. Had you wished to test my theory, you would have been better off to ask me how I felt about the guy, also believing, that straps a suicide vest on, walks into a crowded market full of civilians, men, women and children and blows them up including himself. I would call him a murderer because I don't see the honor in that. He did not confront an armed enemy superior or not. He acted with stealth and malice afore thought, purposefully attacking the undefended. I don't see the honor in that, whatever his beliefs or cause or imaginations of "sacrifice". I suspect you don't either. Still, the act has meaning and we had better respect that meaning or we will never find the way to defeat him. 2) You may become "desensitized" to his humanity and, in turn, you may become inhumane. If you massacre his wounded, you massacre a piece of your soul. When you slaughter his women and children without compunction, with malicious intent, you have maligned your own soul. You become what you behold. In fact, not only do you destroy yourself, but you undermine or destroy your own cause. 3) When the war is over, you will never reconcile yourself to the war, its reasons or even to your once enemy. You will be forever destined to fight him if he and you cannot reconcile. You may even be induced to destroy him to the last descendent. Still, out of all this, I can say without confliction and with total conviction that I do not have to accept that his grievances are legitimate, that his ideology is "right" or even equal to the idea of democracy and liberty, I don't have to believe he has a right to attack me and mine without suffering the consequences, nor do I have to believe that I should quit the field and leave it to him. There lies the paradox.

Well, Kat, I reopened this thread with some trepidation, because I was sure my Baghdad comparison would raise a storm of indignation. But I can see I underestimated you. I guess you really do apply it consistently. I particularly liked your point about underestimating the enemy. It's so easy for patriots to fall into double standards - one code for us, another for them - but I guess you've resisted that temptation. Yours is a very soldierly attitude. Politics aside, of course you're right that Leonidas and his men earned their place in the military hall of fame. (Though I do still think it's a bit harsh on the Helots and Thespaians who never get a mention.)

Another laconic quote from the same morning, this one attributed by Ephoros to Leonidas: "Eat a good breakfast, men. We shall dine in Hades!"