It was funny hearing Americans cheer for the Spartans in the movie 300.
If this were a modern analogy, one could say the Spartans were the backward third world country still sticking to its orthodox way of life.
Persia, the ancestor of Iran, was on the cutting edge of methods, tactics and equipment; the advanced nation of the day.
Persia sought to bring people into a system by which its aristocracy could use the labor and resources of a third world nation toward its achievement and glory. And still the U.S. cheered for the Spartans.
Thucydides says the poor tactics and methods of Persia are more likely what caused the loss to the 300 Spartans.
Like the U.S., Persia was known to have never remembered the failures of the past policy. People would have their own sequence of Korea, Vietnam and Iraq. And still they would cheer the war on.
Sun Tzu says to know the heavens and the earth before you enter a war, referring to the land and the weather.
Any 300 knuckleheads could have held that position for any amount of time. All the Persians could have done was grab the high ground, but by then, the holdouts back home would have reinforced their own.
This means that those Spartans we cheered on were more like the ones some call terrorists, and others call freedom fighters.
And so, as the U.S. has and will continue to do, the Persians would soon exhaust their treasury and run a deficit. Small rebellions would then form, etc. and ad nauseum.
This is not to say that the future is inevitable, but countries do rise and fall quite a bit.
In history, nations have established themselves and become quite strong before faltering. Even to this day, many nations have family homes that are more aged than our the U.S. Constitution.
Spartan tactics resembled American guerrilla tactics in the war for independence, or Soviet tactics in the Second Great War when Hitler overextended himself trying to kill Communists.
Hitler hated the Commies and Democrats so much, he gave up the idea of fighting strategically to the west to quench a thirst for Communist blood. Now, is Shiner’s beer brewed near Fredericksburg?
The reason one tends towards liberalism is because to ignore history is to repeat it. A true liberal should seek to conserve his nation and not fritter it away in war.
Rather, true liberals seek to learn from others’ mistakes and successes to help lead their nation in a better way.
Progress is made when the thinkers are given grants and the military plays craps and war games at home with their family, defending our homeland.
When one views everything as a threat, there is a tendency towards imperialism because everyone not on board is considered a threat.
Imperialism breeds patriotism because one has to give up a lot of personal time to produce goods that are going to be destroyed.
How many men worked to build one of those Patriot missiles? How many worked to deploy it? How many worked to rebuild the damage? What else could those men have done with their time?
Abdul Khan is a history senior and may be reached at [email protected]
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