If The Very Best part of Professor Willett’s piece was his concluding paragraph of:
"Thus ended the 27-year conflict that constituted the slow suicide of Greece. IN ENDLESS WARS ARE WE NOT WITNESSING TODAY THE SLOW SUICIDE OF THE UNITED STATES?" [EMPHASIS added.] ... ;
then The Next Best part was the series of “Lessons for America” that he interjected at various parts of his analysis of Archidamuss’s speech.
As an introduction to and summation of the speech before the Lessons, he wrote:
“It provides an object lesson in the rational approach to making decisions about war, an approach that the United States would do well to emulate (BUT HASN’T).” [EMPHASIS added. And it still hasn’t, 8 years after this was written in 2017.]
Here are the Lessons. Note particularly the current relevance of the last one:
Lesson for America: A good example of hubris in the Greek sense is the behavior of the United States after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991: we declared ourselves the ‘winners’ in the Cold War, the USSR the ‘losers,’ and rubbed the defeat constantly in their faces. Under President Clinton we began to push NATO into the old Warsaw Pact countries in violation of promises to Gorbachev, to impoverish the Russian people by sending economic advisors to mount a massive deregulation of state enterprises and finally to exploit and ultimately partition Russia during the Yeltsin regime. In short, we ran riot. I was a student in St. Petersburg during the 1990s and saw the misery we unleashed up front and close: the homeless sleeping in bundles beneath famous statues, impoverished Afghan veterans selling war relics and even their own clothing on Nevsky Prospect and proud, old naval captains quietly and politely asking for some rubles in their soft, broken English.
Lesson for America: Now that the (expired) Obama administration has initiated Cold War II, we have Members of Congress calling for wars with Iran, continuing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, and even advocating policies that could lead to war with Russia. There doesn’t seem to be the slightest sense of the terrible consequences of such clamorous policies.
Lesson for America: Haste makes waste, especially in war, whether in ill-judged attacks on the Taliban in Afghanistan, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime and the disbandment of the military in Iraq, or the elimination of Qaddafi in Libya, all done overconfidently and with inadequate intelligence.
Lesson for America: Your enemies are not novices who are terrified by war. With the Afghan war in its 16th year and the Iraq war in its 14th year, America’s interventions in the Greater Middle East are becoming generational wars, soon to be fought by the children and grandchildren of soldiers who fought in Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom. You wage war long, you wage war wrong; the Greeks discovered this as they weakened themselves in generational internecine warfare.
I think my humble contribution was the "wage war long, wage it wrong" line, which I heard from a friend and fellow AF officer back in 1991 or thereabouts.
Long wars are the death of democracy. We saw it with Athens and we're seeing it now with the USA. Nothing is more corrosive to liberty than a state of persistent and seemingly perpetual war. Which may be why, of course, the powers that be prefer it.
The simple, brutal fact is that America has been at War of one form and sort or another someplace for the last 80 years, since the end of WW II. It started when we armed, bankrolled, and advised the French in their quest to retake Indochina. And hasn't stopped since.
Those "Powers That Be" do not have their Wars to Win them; whatever "Win" might mean at the time.
They have Wars to HAVE them. All the while laying the foundation for the Next War to be waged against somebody else someplace else after the current one is lost.
Nor do those PTBs give one iota of a damn about "Liberty." Especially the Liberty of the Citizens of this Nation.
The history of US involvement in modern wars is that our so-called leaders have no interest in the culture, history, and values of other countries. Witness the moronic Ted Cruz's inability to demonstrate any knowledge of Iran when questioned by Tucker Carlson.
A word whose roots lie in Ancient Greece applies - hubris. And as the Greeks believed, it often led to punishment by the gods.
Having only scanned the article, i would say that the very best part of Professor Willett's piece was the last paragraph before Appendix 1:
"Thus ended the 27-year conflict that constituted the slow suicide of Greece. IN ENDLESS WARS ARE WE NOT WITNESSING TODAY THE SLOW SUICIDE OF THE UNITED STATES?" [EMPHASIS added.]
Tulsi Gabbard is a warmongering asshole, and a liar. She is helping to deceive the world into yet another horrible middle eastern war, and if she and her fellow warmongers succeed her words will go down in history as among the most depraved lies ever told.
This is the same person who tweeted back in March, “President Trump IS the President of Peace. He is ending bloodshed across the world and will deliver lasting peace in the Middle East.”
"This is also the person who attacked Trump’s hawkishness on Iran constantly while campaigning for president as a Democrat in the 2020 primary race.
“Intel officials & politicians led us into Iraq war,” Gabbard tweeted in 2019. “Now Trump’s using the same playbook to lead our country into war with Iran. The cost in lives & treasure will be infinitely greater than the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, & Syria, and will undermine our ntnl security.”
“The main responsibility of the president is to keep Americans safe. Trump has failed — undermining our national security by tearing up the Iran nuclear deal, threatening military action, bringing us closer to war with Iran that will be far worse than war in Iraq,” reads another 2019 tweet.
“They are setting the stage for a war with Iran that would prove to be far more costly, far more devastating and dangerous than anything that we saw in the Iraq War,” Gabbard said of the Trump administration during a 2019 interview on ABC.
This fraudster has built an entire political career out of pretending to oppose war and militarism in order to win the support of Americans who are sick of pouring blood and treasure into the US slaughter machine, opportunistically drifting to whatever corner of the political spectrum would offer her the most power, and then when she got as high as she can go she sold all her stated principles to the furthest extent possible at the earliest opportunity.
Pee fetish porn stars have more dignity and integrity.
I feel so stupid for having bought into Gabbard’s antiwar schtick early on. Fuck this asshole, fuck Trump, fuck Israel, and fuck the US empire.
Thank you for superb Ancient Greek and History lessons! I'll print and study it in proportion to its value and my admiration.
Who will follow the model of Thucydides and write the definitive History of America's Global Wars on Terror? Assuming that anyone will survive, are you up to it, Bill?
Hello Chris.... One of the Salient Reasons that the Spartans were Slow to Anger, is that all non-Slave Families were required to send a Male Member to War... So they chose their Words, and Wars Carefully... If they went to War, they went to War as a Nation... The Trumps are definitely not Spartans...
If The Very Best part of Professor Willett’s piece was his concluding paragraph of:
"Thus ended the 27-year conflict that constituted the slow suicide of Greece. IN ENDLESS WARS ARE WE NOT WITNESSING TODAY THE SLOW SUICIDE OF THE UNITED STATES?" [EMPHASIS added.] ... ;
then The Next Best part was the series of “Lessons for America” that he interjected at various parts of his analysis of Archidamuss’s speech.
As an introduction to and summation of the speech before the Lessons, he wrote:
“It provides an object lesson in the rational approach to making decisions about war, an approach that the United States would do well to emulate (BUT HASN’T).” [EMPHASIS added. And it still hasn’t, 8 years after this was written in 2017.]
Here are the Lessons. Note particularly the current relevance of the last one:
Lesson for America: A good example of hubris in the Greek sense is the behavior of the United States after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991: we declared ourselves the ‘winners’ in the Cold War, the USSR the ‘losers,’ and rubbed the defeat constantly in their faces. Under President Clinton we began to push NATO into the old Warsaw Pact countries in violation of promises to Gorbachev, to impoverish the Russian people by sending economic advisors to mount a massive deregulation of state enterprises and finally to exploit and ultimately partition Russia during the Yeltsin regime. In short, we ran riot. I was a student in St. Petersburg during the 1990s and saw the misery we unleashed up front and close: the homeless sleeping in bundles beneath famous statues, impoverished Afghan veterans selling war relics and even their own clothing on Nevsky Prospect and proud, old naval captains quietly and politely asking for some rubles in their soft, broken English.
Lesson for America: Now that the (expired) Obama administration has initiated Cold War II, we have Members of Congress calling for wars with Iran, continuing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, and even advocating policies that could lead to war with Russia. There doesn’t seem to be the slightest sense of the terrible consequences of such clamorous policies.
Lesson for America: Haste makes waste, especially in war, whether in ill-judged attacks on the Taliban in Afghanistan, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime and the disbandment of the military in Iraq, or the elimination of Qaddafi in Libya, all done overconfidently and with inadequate intelligence.
Lesson for America: Your enemies are not novices who are terrified by war. With the Afghan war in its 16th year and the Iraq war in its 14th year, America’s interventions in the Greater Middle East are becoming generational wars, soon to be fought by the children and grandchildren of soldiers who fought in Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom. You wage war long, you wage war wrong; the Greeks discovered this as they weakened themselves in generational internecine warfare.
I think my humble contribution was the "wage war long, wage it wrong" line, which I heard from a friend and fellow AF officer back in 1991 or thereabouts.
Long wars are the death of democracy. We saw it with Athens and we're seeing it now with the USA. Nothing is more corrosive to liberty than a state of persistent and seemingly perpetual war. Which may be why, of course, the powers that be prefer it.
Great line and Great thought.
The simple, brutal fact is that America has been at War of one form and sort or another someplace for the last 80 years, since the end of WW II. It started when we armed, bankrolled, and advised the French in their quest to retake Indochina. And hasn't stopped since.
Those "Powers That Be" do not have their Wars to Win them; whatever "Win" might mean at the time.
They have Wars to HAVE them. All the while laying the foundation for the Next War to be waged against somebody else someplace else after the current one is lost.
Nor do those PTBs give one iota of a damn about "Liberty." Especially the Liberty of the Citizens of this Nation.
Always nice to read a student of Thucydides! And how closely his events parallel our own.
The history of US involvement in modern wars is that our so-called leaders have no interest in the culture, history, and values of other countries. Witness the moronic Ted Cruz's inability to demonstrate any knowledge of Iran when questioned by Tucker Carlson.
A word whose roots lie in Ancient Greece applies - hubris. And as the Greeks believed, it often led to punishment by the gods.
Having only scanned the article, i would say that the very best part of Professor Willett's piece was the last paragraph before Appendix 1:
"Thus ended the 27-year conflict that constituted the slow suicide of Greece. IN ENDLESS WARS ARE WE NOT WITNESSING TODAY THE SLOW SUICIDE OF THE UNITED STATES?" [EMPHASIS added.]
And that was 8 years ago... .
Going to war with Iran is in the hands of demented sociopath.
With our Generals blessing who have his ear telling him it's winnable.
How many times have we heard this refrain dear citizens. We send our children while the oligarchs buys Lear jets.
Hello Jazzme... Our Children, and NOT their Children...
Meanwhile, in Other News... :
As always, Caitlin Johnstone expresses it best:
Tulsi Gabbard is a warmongering asshole, and a liar. She is helping to deceive the world into yet another horrible middle eastern war, and if she and her fellow warmongers succeed her words will go down in history as among the most depraved lies ever told.
This is the same person who tweeted back in March, “President Trump IS the President of Peace. He is ending bloodshed across the world and will deliver lasting peace in the Middle East.”
"This is also the person who attacked Trump’s hawkishness on Iran constantly while campaigning for president as a Democrat in the 2020 primary race.
“Intel officials & politicians led us into Iraq war,” Gabbard tweeted in 2019. “Now Trump’s using the same playbook to lead our country into war with Iran. The cost in lives & treasure will be infinitely greater than the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, & Syria, and will undermine our ntnl security.”
“The main responsibility of the president is to keep Americans safe. Trump has failed — undermining our national security by tearing up the Iran nuclear deal, threatening military action, bringing us closer to war with Iran that will be far worse than war in Iraq,” reads another 2019 tweet.
“They are setting the stage for a war with Iran that would prove to be far more costly, far more devastating and dangerous than anything that we saw in the Iraq War,” Gabbard said of the Trump administration during a 2019 interview on ABC.
Full article at https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/tulsi-gabbard-is-a-warmongering-asshole .
Caitlin concludes her rant as follows:
This fraudster has built an entire political career out of pretending to oppose war and militarism in order to win the support of Americans who are sick of pouring blood and treasure into the US slaughter machine, opportunistically drifting to whatever corner of the political spectrum would offer her the most power, and then when she got as high as she can go she sold all her stated principles to the furthest extent possible at the earliest opportunity.
Pee fetish porn stars have more dignity and integrity.
I feel so stupid for having bought into Gabbard’s antiwar schtick early on. Fuck this asshole, fuck Trump, fuck Israel, and fuck the US empire.
For details, see antiwar.com's Kyle Anzalone's "Gabbard Falls in Line, Claims Iran Close to Nukes" at https://news.antiwar.com/2025/06/20/gabbard-iran-could-produce-nuclear-weapon-in-weeks-or-months/ .
I’m playing this piece right now, Bach’s Chaconne from Partita #2 BWV 1004, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRrsmR4Lcyc
as part of the funeral service for Humanity in this lead-in to WW-III
The world did NOT have to end this way.
Our "leaders" don't seem to learn anything. They are too busy getting elected/re-elected.
Thank You Bill... Another Good Post...
Thank you for superb Ancient Greek and History lessons! I'll print and study it in proportion to its value and my admiration.
Who will follow the model of Thucydides and write the definitive History of America's Global Wars on Terror? Assuming that anyone will survive, are you up to it, Bill?
I have enough trouble writing "tomgrams," Chris.
Hello Bill... Do You also Write for 'Smirking Chimp'?....
No, but the site carries many of my articles for TomDispatch. So if you look on Smirking Chimp, you'll find me there, smirking away.
Hello Chris.... One of the Salient Reasons that the Spartans were Slow to Anger, is that all non-Slave Families were required to send a Male Member to War... So they chose their Words, and Wars Carefully... If they went to War, they went to War as a Nation... The Trumps are definitely not Spartans...