We\u2019ve got this war thing all wrong. History has taught us zilch. Interestingly, GW has much in common with a visionary warrior of some repute \u2014 one Caesar. By all accounts, Gaius Julius Caesar was a child prodigy. Heroic, charming and beloved by his legions and the people, he also was pragmatic, arrogant, relentless, envied and hated by his rivals. By his own admission, he was God\u2013inspired and consumed by his legacy. JC, like GW, was excoriated as a warmonger. The comparison is striking. In 58 B.C., the most powerful, envied and feared civilization on earth was the Roman Republic, sustained by an invincible military machine. But, you see, Caesar wasn\u2019t willing to keep his troops home on the assumption that barbarians would never march on Rome and use their weapons of mass destruction. His inspectors, spies if you will, reported military build-ups all across Italia, Germania and Gaul (that\u2019s right behind the bladder). Caesar\u2019s strategy was simple and decisive. He traveled north and west and eliminated real and implied threats to Rome with preemptive military action. To his credit, he sent emissaries to certain fortress towns and offered to negotiate peace. And there, any comparison with GW ends. When dictators (Kings) refused to abide by the rule of Roman law, their kingdoms literally were obliterated, wiped squeaky clean. The kingdom\u2019s wealth was confiscated, some of it divvied among the troops and some of it to Caesar\u2019s private stash. The rest went to the Roman Treasury. Get the picture? In barbaric times, war was lucrative. To the victor went the spoils, including slaves, livestock, land, gold and natural resources. Sounds reasonable enough. Get rid of the enemy; take their wealth to reimburse the victor\u2019s human and material loss and cost. My, my, how times have changed. America, by contrast, is the nation of do\u2013gooders. We wage war to protect, not only our own liberty, but also the liberty of peoples the world over. We routinely send our sons and daughters to their deaths, rebuild the lands we conquer, spread the message of freedom and protect the sanctity of native cultures. All the while, we tax our own citizens to care for the vanquished and restore their infrastructures. Of course, that\u2019s what do-gooders do. America helped liberate China so that China one day could kill American troops in Vietnam so that China one day could suck the life out of American manufacturing. America suffered the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor, eventually retaliated with the A\u2013Bomb and now the Japanese own half our country. America left thousands of its dead under European soil, liberated millions, created The Marshall Plan to help bring hope, peace and prosperity to the ravaged land and \u201ctore down that Wall,\u201d only to have the French and Germans sneer and jeer at American \u201caggression\u201d in Iraq. If JC had been here to run the show in Iraq, there would be no Abugrab, no Gitmo and no hearings, because nothing would be living there except vultures \u2014 to clean up after the party. Makes a lot of sense, because nobody, but nobody, likes a do\u2013gooder. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We\u2019ve got this war thing all wrong. History has taught us zilch. Interestingly, GW has much in common with a visionary warrior of some repute \u2014 one Caesar. By all accounts, Gaius Julius Caesar was a child prodigy. Heroic, charming and beloved by his legions and the people, he also was pragmatic, arrogant, relentless, envied … Continue reading Nobody Likes A Do-Gooder.<\/span>