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Living in Los Angeles, I can always manage to catch a movie before it is released. Thus, no commercials or previews before it starts. I caught 300 on Tuesday night. Even though there is no overt political messages here, I saw the foreshadow of history.
300 is based on Frank Miller's Graphic novel, which, in turn, is based on the Battle of Thermopylae. When you read the story of the 300 Spartans who fought against Xerxes' armies at the Hot Gates, you feel as if these men, who lived history, didn't feel the need to become history. Instead they became Legends.
[SPOILER ALERT -- HERE THERE BE DRAGONS]
Before the battle, Leonides went to the Oracle for advice about going to war with the Persians. Since the Oracle was paid in Persian gold, their advice was to wait. After Leonides goes with his 300 men, his wife, the Queen must convince the Spartan Council to send reinforcements. Theron, a legislator, carries power within the council and uses that against the Queen. After the first betrayal, he betrays her again on the Council floor. Being Spartan, she kills him with his sword and Persian Gold pieces fall out of his toga.
[END SPOILER ALERT]
Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said, "You go to war with the army you have..." A Spartan statement, if there ever was. So, where is the modern Hot Gates against a growing Non-Governmental Organization that wishes to franchise?Like the Athenians, most of our European allies have no stomach to fight an enemy that fights in the dark. And our modern academicians try to be America's Delphi, but have already sold out their intellect to the Democratic Party. And the Democrats have also sold out to the Council on American relations [CAIR] as part of the Red-Green-Brown alliance.
Yet, most Democratic websites (and legislators) see President Bush as the enemy and not Islamofacism. The modern Democrats would rather sell our only Democratic ally, Israel, down the river to Iran, then to stand and support our friends. They would rather a Bill Maher hope for Vice President Cheney's death, (along with the HuffPos), then support the Long War.
The Democratic Party and it's allies in the media are today's Therons.
Our Hot Gate is Iraq. It is easy to stand for an issue when it is easy, which Democrat will stand with a Republican President now that it is hard?
Thursday, March 08, 2007
6 comments:
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After this criminal administration is jailed, I wonder how much jail time your kind will get. Time never runs out on felonies.
ReplyDeleteThere's a lot of bad logic in your comparison, but that aside, Rumsfeld was wrong.
ReplyDeleteWe live in a democracy. We have a Commander-In-Chief.
Bush could have re-instituted the draft, gotten a war-tax, etc.
There are two comments regarding this post that show a range of maturity between an American and a rich European. Kurt, the American, disagrees with my post and gives solutions. The other, EuroYank, thinks those of a Republican and Jewish persuasion should be shot (Hey, I've been to his Blog). It must be nice for EuroYank to live in a bubble world. Enjoy the Valley! Comment away.
ReplyDeleteI saw 300 last night, and thought much the same thing. I saw direct parallels between what the Greeks were facing before Thermopylae and what we face now, in the modern incarnation of cultural warfare.
ReplyDeleteThere is, to me, no question that our very way of life is at stake just as it was then for the Greeks.
But there is an incredibly important distinction to make: the Persians did not loathe the Greeks. The Persian people did not have reason to want to defeat and slaughter every last Greek.
They were merely following the will of one man, Xerxes.
When the Greeks at Thermopylae, and then at Salamis and Plataea, defeated the army that Xerxes thought could not be beaten, his will was broken. He knew he could not conquer Greece, and he retreated.
The enemy that we are facing today is not dominated by one man, nor can it be defeated by strength of will. Had the Greeks killed every last one of Xerxes soldiers, the war would have been over. Had they killed Xerxes, the war would have been over. Instead, they broke his will, and the war was over.
We have no Xerxes. We do not have a single army to defeat—and even if we kill every man standing against us today, more will rise in their places. There is no man that we can kill to end it all—killing Bin Laden, for example, merely creates a martyr to inspire more to rise against us. And those who oppose our way of life do not have a will that can be broken—they are fanatical, and will oppose us to their dying breath.
I'm not saying that I have a solution for this, and I am certainly not saying that there's no point in fighting because the enemy cannot be defeated. I am saying that drawing too many parallels between our current situation and 300 is dangerous because it oversimplifies the problem in ways that will eventually hurt our efforts.
If people are led to believe that all we are asking is for then to "hang in there" until the enemy is disheartened (as in 300), then when the enemy is not disheartening a month, a year, five years from now, we will lose the support of those people.
People need to be made to understand that if we do not fight, we will lose our way of life. If we do fight, lacking a better solution, all we can do is hold off that loss; we may never eliminate its threat entirely.
But if the parallel is to an unending battle at the Hot Gates, with an army infinite in number, and all we can do is hold them at that point, then hold we must.
I wonder if we ever can defeat the Islamist threat, and I'm not sure that we can. But that is no reason not to fight to preserve our freedom from it.
(I apologize if I rambled in the above—it was entirely stream of consciousness.)
RFTR, the Islamists that preach hatred and death can be defeated. However, the current administration is noy willing to take one of the prequisite steps to acomplishing this goal.
ReplyDeleteIn order to become successful the administration must give its support to the fledging Secularist movement and to its leaders such as Dr. Shaker Al-Nabulsi, Nonie Darwish, Dr. Wafa Sultan, and Irshad Manji to name just a few key participants.
ChessNovice--I should have specified that I meant I don't know if they can be defeated through military means, implying that I highly doubt it.
ReplyDelete