Springtime and the Iraq war
It’s finally spring here in Cambridge, in a chilly New England kind of way. There’s a nor’easter blowing through now, bringing a cold, hard rain, making the future marathoners miserable in anticipation of tomorrow. The real sign of the coming season was the delicate pink blossoms of the ornamental magnolia on my street. They are a grateful reminder that I’ve survived another winter, and a chance to muse on all that has passed since the last time these flowers bloomed.
Through the whole last year, the Iraq War continued. The build up to the war and its aftermath have now gone on longer than the entire process of falling in love, getting engaged, getting married, and celebrating my second wedding anniversary. Food for thought, that is. The war doesn’t seem likely to end until after January 2009, when a new president is sworn in.
I’ve been reading recently Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, and it seems to have special relevance now. All historical analogies are inexact and dangerous, but I think the American body politic could learn something from the ancient Athenians. If the theatrical speeches of Thucydides are to be believed, at least Athenian politicians would talk openly of the paradox between their internal democracy, at the time one of the most open in the world, and their empire. One quote in particular stood out, describing how the wars in defense of their empire subverted democratic discourse:
“To fit in with the change of events, words, too, had to change their usual meanings. What used to be described as a thoughtless act of aggression was now regarded as the courage one would expect to find in a party member; to think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one’s unmanly character; ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action.”
These meditations have left me in a melancholy mood. The magnolia tree, it now appears, will have to bloom twice more before our troops are withdrawn from Iraq. And then, if history is any guide, there will be another war somewhere else rather soon.
I hold out hope though that someday a set of institutions will make outright was between nations as unthinkable as an attack between Maryland and Virginia within the United States, or indeed as an attack between France and Germany within the European Union. This dream was the subject of a sparsely attend seminar this week at the Sheraton Commander hotel, entitled “Democracy and the Future.” George Soros gave a rambling keynote address, which was nicely summarized in Amartya Sen’s response. If democracy is participation in power, in the discussion within a society of what should be and shall be, then while Athens was democratic internally it ended significant democracy for many of the citizens of other states. The same is of course true, although Dr. Sen was too polite to mention it, for the United States today: unless we strive for something greater, history will also remember us for our grand democratic experiment at home and our profound failure of imagination abroad.
