from Austin to Alexandria Eschate and back
The Asian Times has had a rush of blood to the head with historical analogies. In two interesting articles here and here, they set up an analogy between Bush and Alexander the Great and between Afghanistan and Agincourt.

In The war nobody won Henry Liu writes:

In Gaddis acknowledges that these plans depend critically, however, on Americans' being welcomed in Baghdad if they invaded, as they were in Kabul. If they aren't, the whole strategy collapses, because it's premised on the belief that ordinary Iraqis will prefer a US occupation over the current conditions in which they live. There's no evidence that the Bush administration is planning the kind of military commitments the United States made in either of the two world wars, or even in Korea and Vietnam. This strategy relies on getting cheered, not shot at.

The trouble with Agincourts - even those that happen in Afghanistan - is the arrogance they can encourage, along with the illusion that victory itself is enough and that no follow-up is required. It's worth remembering that, despite Henry V, the French never became English. And the war went on for a hundred years.

The United States has already lost the moral high ground by resorting to a coalition of the willing. Gaddis makes a perfect point: A nation that sets itself up as an example to the world in most things will not achieve that purpose by telling the rest of the world, in some things, to shove it.

Terrorists fully anticipated a hardening of reaction from the US to the horrors they perpetrated on September 11, 2001, as embodied in the NSSUSA, for it is this hardening of reaction that will produce more terrorists.

Liu further argues for the safqua story that Baghdad was surrendered, not conquered, in return for bribes and concessions to the RG/SRG high command and to certain regime figures. I do not know what to make of the safqua theory although it is rife in the Arab media and has been quoted elsewhere.

Mark M Miller's piece is much shorter and in ways more interesting.

Alexander's non-Greek empire covered all of the Middle East; from modern Turkey in the northwest, down the Mediterranean coast to Egypt, and everything eastward including Afghanistan and Pakistan. The White House has already conquered Afghanistan, Iraq (ancient Babylon and Mesopotamia) has succumbed, and others have been put on notice that they must adopt the American way (as prescribed by the Bushites) or else.

Consider that Iran (Persia), a member of the "axis-of-evil", lies between the military protectorates of Afghanistan and Iraq, with the brutal dictatorship of the Assads in Syria just to the west. To the Bushite way of thinking, the application of American influence, bribes and threats just may cause a wished for domino-effect, changing all of the region to states of joyous vassals of a benevolent and righteous hegemony. This scenario is unlikely in the extreme; instead of calming and advancing the Islamic societies with Western values, it may start a conflagration that will consume all societies.

Peace, order and good government cannot be imposed on developing nations by unilateral imposition of philosophy or force of arms; it needs to be encouraged and engendered through multilateral organizations and civil discourse. The Afghan conflict was a just cause, deserving and receiving the approval of the world for the ousting of a regime that was directly implicated with the devastating events of September 11, 2001 by harboring and nurturing the group that carried out the heinous acts. Regime change for calculated opportunity and possible imperial expansion should not be conciliated by announced rhetoric of immediate necessity. Many regimes in this world are despotic and tyrannical, with the potential to threaten neighbors and create major weapons of destruction. Who or what should forcibly change them?

Alexander either had a god-king complex, or was deluded by others; let's hope George W does not, and is not, prodded into an un-American imperial stance by the sarissas of the neo-Companions.

I am much too restrained to mutter into my latt� that God must have elected George Bush because the American people certainly did not. So I won't. It is nevertheless deeply disturbing to watch the continued disorder in Iraq, the lack of basic security and basic services, and the total lack of any sense of any duty by the occupation government to provide those services. Baghdad and other cities have now been in US hands for some time. When will the lights be turned back on?

Lastly, since I am as addicted to historical allusion as anyone else, Proconsul Garner should read an incident early in the reign of Gaozu, the first Han emperor. Gaozu emerged from the chaos and warlordism that followed the collapse of the Qin dynasty. The Confucian gentry who advised him told him on one famous occasion: 'You can conquer China from the saddle, but you must govern from the throne.' Bush needs to start governing Iraq, and thus far has shown no sign of understanding that.