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Julie’s Thoughts on War and the Price of Hubris Juliana Paradise Hunt March 6, 2003 As these final days of peace pass too quickly, one gets the feeling that we Americans, too used to being ‘winners’ in the overall scheme of things, have not really considered (except perhaps in the pit of our stomachs) the true worst case scenario we may be setting up for. But since there may still be time for us to recognize, if not set aright, the potentially tragic dimensions of the error we are about to undertake, it would seem wise to put ourselves in mind of the parting thoughts of our late President John F. Kennedy. In the speech he was to deliver on the day that he died, this great democratic leader cautioned us to remember that: “We are watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask…that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility—that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint—and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of peace on earth, good will toward men. That must always be our goal—and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength.”1 Given JFK’s logic—that it is the righteousness of our cause which underlies our strength—it’s no wonder then that Osama Bin Laden can assure his followers that they can be confident of victory in the upcoming conflict, for their enemies cause is less than just, and what’s more, he says, our soldiers know it! Twenty-four centuries ago, the ancient Athenians, who had given life to the first great democracy, learned the hard way that might does not make right when they too forgot the critical distinction between protective and imperial empire. Apparently ‘Old Europe’ understands this better than modern Americans do—but then we barely remember the Golden Age of Clinton (and relatively speaking, it was!) so it’s little surprise that we don’t remember the Golden Age of Athens! But there will be time for remembering…after. When this last chance to preserve our beloved democracy has passed, we may have many long years to recall nostalgically the ideal that gave rise to the greatest country the world has ever known. It is an ideal that some democratic leaders pursued with heart and wisdom. We may recall with fond sadness, like the memory of a long lost love, the vision of our once free and open society engaged in energetic dialogue in which every voice was counted and dissent was cherished as the only impediment to tyranny. We may think back with tender irony on the once healthy and prosperous community whose strength was grounded in the un-coerced adherence of reason to justice. We will no doubt grow sad of heart to recall how, once upon a time, rather than squander precious resources and young lives, some democratic leaders addressed the problems of excess capital and labor by putting their populations to work in ways that uplifted the entire community to its highest potentials. Not unlike FDR’s New Deal, Pericles drew on the untapped genius and talents of the Athenian people to undertake a building program that would produce all the great monuments of antiquity in the course of his single administration. While no one will remember our enemies when we are gone, he assured them, these testaments to our excellence will make Athenian democracy immortal for all time. Perhaps then we will understand, albeit too late, why the only legitimate power is the kind that great vision and intelligence wields. True democracy requires leaders of the highest order with a vision of the peoples’ true potentials and the skills of great educators to help them see what could be—for it’s impossible to hit a target we don’t aim at. And then perhaps we will recognize the fine line we are now overstepping—that between power as responsibility and power as license. This understanding is a critical component of a truly democratic vision, one which compelled Pericles to scold his population when, in response to ‘terrorist attacks’ from their Spartan rivals, their hunger for glory and revenge ran high. To moderate their expansive ambitions, Pericles reminded the Athenians that they had acquired their empire, not by conquest, but by defending the rights of free people against those who would obliterate those rights. Protective empire may sometimes be necessary, he argued, on the grounds that it is the responsibility of those who can to protect those who cannot defend themselves. But do not be fooled or confused, he warned, by those who would exploit this opportunity and use the same words—'the rights of free people'—to defend lesser motives. A populace open to persuasion is always vulnerable to the rhetoric of the few who would use power for nothing better than the pursuit of more power. The oligarchs of ancient Athens, seething at the success of Pericles’ building program and the general prosperity brought about by his administration, practically drowned their population in rhetoric and double-speak. The so-called ‘Party of the Good and True’ turned up scandal after scandal, prosecuting him for everything from embezzlement to squandering public funds to sexual indiscretion—a familiar scenario to Americans. Scrambling to win back public favor, they promised themselves (behind closed doors) that, if they ever got their hands on power again, they would simply never give it up. And so it came as little surprise when, unable to replace the great Pericles after his death, those who stepped in to take his place saw to it first thing that democratic rights and freedoms were quickly and steadily obliterated—not unlike the process underway in the United States as we read our morning papers. Bill Clinton, for his part, was steward to the greatest prosperity the world has ever witnessed. His economic policies held wages, housing, and the market up, while keeping unemployment, poverty, and crime down. His foreign policies made friends of old enemies and even made age-old enemies friends with one another. And not only did he fulfill every campaign promise he ever made, he even fulfilled those promises that administrations before and after him made and failed to keep. He promoted peace on every front, proved himself a friend to the disadvantaged at every turn, and made us all wealthier in myriad ways in the process. Which is, of course, exactly the reason his political enemies hated him so much, as well as the reason why the world misses his intelligence, vision, and leadership more with each passing day. What it does not miss is the venomous persecution our oligarchs put him (and us) through. However, considering that they are the very same who are now taking us into what our ‘enemies’ promise will be World War III, I for one would willingly trade this nightmare for that one. Would that we could rewind… Ah, but are we sure we cannot? Like Scrooge on Christmas morning, we could still awaken to recognize that this nightmare is, as of yet, still only a prophesy! Given this administrations’ will to power, this war would be difficult to avert, to be sure. Difficult, but not impossible! Though the solution may require that we take a lesson from the methods that have so recently been used against us—someone, somewhere, must have the ‘smoking gun’ that will disempower this administration—A chatty friend? A blue dress? Evidence that he inhaled (or in his case, snorted—oh, never mind, we knew that and ‘elected’ him anyway). Maybe he can be embarrassed into an impeachable lie! Did you sabotage the arms inspectors? Did you spy on our allies? Do you have any clue what you are doing? Like tyrants in all times and places, the oligarchs of ancient Athens began as popular leaders who were able to tap into the fear and self-interest of their followers, and to use the trust that their sheep’s clothing had secured to convince the people to give up their rights and freedoms—precious valuables which, little did they realize, could never be recovered. That can’t happen here, you say? Clearly they thought that it couldn’t happen there?! What began in ancient Athens as the diminution of civil liberties quickly grew in the heat generated by war into widespread confiscations and judicial murders—beginning with the leaders of the democracy, then the moderates, then those among their own ranks who complained of these crimes, and even some who did not, but were merely suspected of dissident sentiments. The oligarchs continued their bloody massacre until they had done away with any and all who would challenge them, ending finally with the execution of Socrates, which is widely recognized to have been the death of the Golden Age of Athenian Democracy. The point is that for a short time yet, at least, we do still have time—we do still have democracy—and we do (at least in theory) still have the freedom to say what we think. For freedom is not merely the ability to vote, it is the ability to think for ourselves. Rhetoric is a powerful tool, and an equally powerful weapon, for words can as easily lead to evil as to good. Indeed, the ancient ideal of democracy would have the steadfast endurance of the Parthenon itself were it not for how easily the poison of hubris takes root in the heart when we fail to distinguish between rhetoric and reason. This is why the opposition to this war would never use such methods against this administration as were employed by them against our last ‘liberal’ administration— because we are and wish to remain, quite simply, above it. We believe that right makes might. We believe that good people needn’t wear sheep’s clothing. And we believe that, however much damage the power-hungry among us might do, in the end, they do the most harm to themselves. At times like this, it is a difficult philosophy to live by, especially given how much suffering this administration is about to inflict. But even the swift victory they envision would be Pyrrhic, at best, planting the seeds of their own destruction in the process. There is a high price to be paid for excessive pride and self-regard. Athena herself—the champion of democracy—was also the champion of the universally accepted moral law that, one way or another, ‘hubris should be punished.’2 In the end, we all must live with ourselves. And so, as we enter into this bloody massacre, the question for each of us in George Bush’s America (which, it should not be forgotten, is “544,000 votes smaller than Al Gore’s America”3) should be this—is it happening in my name? We call ourselves ‘conservative’ when we wish to ‘conserve’ our freedom and security. And, in and of itself, pursuit of self-interest is not necessarily a bad thing—for we are each and all responsible for taking care of ourselves. But as Socrates was quick to point out, while everyone does what they think is good for them, not everyone knows what that is! If you must follow someone, he cautioned, at least follow those who have your best interest at heart. If we continue on the course we are currently following, many of us will not live to regret the tragic proportions of this seemingly small error our country is about to undertake. But some among us will have plenty of time after to ponder how much better we might have understood our true interests before the slaughter. And we will have to ask ourselves then, was it the lust for wealth, after all, or merely the fear of poverty, which made us so willingly complicit in that alliance of the rich and powerful who took their own side against the poor of our own and other countries alike? And we will have to admit, then, what we have such a hard time seeing now—that when fear is used to motivate a population, it is, by definition, ‘terrorism’? JFK would have us remember, “Of those to whom much is given, much is required”— especially by way of self-restraint. Until this administration, the United States would not have needed reminding that true democracy requires a strictly defensive foreign policy. Great leaders know that true power lies not in external force, but in internal strength. The terrorists of 9/11 will truly have won (to use the rhetoric so over-worked since that event) when they have convinced us to betray our own ideals, and turned us into…well, uh, terrorists. And so, on the eve of the Peloponnesian War, seeing that the rhetoric of hate and revenge had taken root in his people and finding himself unable to restrain the wolves from herding the overzealous population of Athens to slaughter, the sad-hearted Pericles sounded very much like Democratic senator Robert Byrd on the floor of the U.S. Senate last week. In a brief moment of lucidity (rare these days in that chamber), one lone democrat found the courage to protest an oligarchic administration which has “squandered a projected surplus of some $5.6 trillion…fostered policies which have slowed economic growth…ignored urgent (domestic) matters…split traditional alliances, possibly crippling for all time order-keeping entities like the United Nations and Nato…called into question the traditional worldwide perception of the United States as a well-intentioned peacekeeper…(and) turned the patient art of diplomacy into threats, labeling and name-calling.” Byrd’s words (which seem to have gone unnoticed by the US media) bear repeating: “This reckless and arrogant administration has initiated policies which may reap disastrous consequences… The kind of destabilizing foreign policy debacle that the world is currently witnessing is inexcusable. Many of the pronouncements made by this administration are outrageous.” And yet, “on what is possibly the eve of horrific infliction of death and destruction on the population of the nation of Iraq—a population of which over 50% is under age 15—this chamber is silent. On what is possibly only days before we send thousands off to face unimagined horrors of warfare—this chamber is silent. On the eve of what could possibly be a vicious terrorist attack in retaliation for our attack on Iraq, it is business as usual in the Senate. We are truly ‘sleeping walking through history’.” “This war,” Byrd concluded, “is not necessary at this time… Our mistake was to put ourselves in a corner so quickly. Our challenge is to now find a graceful way out of a box of our own making. Perhaps there is still a way if we allow more time.” This was Pericles’ prescription as well: “If you will not be persuaded by me, at least listen to Time—that wisest of all counselors!” For this is no trifle we undertake—it is sure to be, as the king of Sparta forewarned his people, “A war we will leave to our children!” And so, after 30 years of peace and prosperity, and despite the cautions of the only truly democratic leader the first great democracy would ever know, the Athenians flung themselves headlong into the Peloponnesian War—a war which would last nearly three decades, would kill a full third of the Athenian population, and would destroy her military, her empire, and her democracy—insuring that the once great democracy would never know freedom or security again. So much for the self-interest of conservatives… And for his part, Pericles (stricken with plague by now) was said to have fought best of all. And when it was discovered after his death that in all his forty years at the pinnacle of power, he had not increased his own estate by a single drachma, his loss was swiftly appreciated, for another like him was nowhere to be found. For this and many reasons, Pericles would be remembered as having achieved a balance of courage and temperance in his rule that is seldom achieved in any human life, let alone one given to politics. And yet, in an ironic and cruel twist of rhetoric, ‘the great man,’ as he would be remembered, has been credited by history with responsibility for starting the war. Not unlike how the peace movement is today being blamed for empowering Saddam. Go figure. So the lesson of all this would seem to be that the challenge to freedom loving people in America today, as it was in ancient Athens, is to remember, to remind one another, and to require that our leaders understand, that we all—people everywhere—require peace to realize our true potentials. All of which is why Socrates warned that the real challenge for democracy is to keep power out of the hands of those who are in love with it. It is a dictum Americans would do well to remember—now while there may still be time—because the last time democracy was usurped by the forces of oligarchy, it took 2000 years and the discovery of a ‘New World’ for it to find fertile soil again. Juliana Paradise Hunt teaches Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Marathon County. She is currently working on a novel and film adaptation of Plato’s Socratic Dialogues. 1 Speech to have been delivered before the Dallas Citizens Council, Dallas, Texas, November 22, 1963. Vital Speeches of the Day (Vol. XXX, #4. Dec.1, 1963) p. 107. 2 Donald Kagan, Pericles and the Birth of Democracy. 3 I believe this quote came from Robert Fisk’s column in the Guardian; if you need the source, I’ll find it.