When one is driven to extreme measures to have his way, should one not question the wisdom of his way?

Is the suggestion that we should become like the Romans?

I can think of considerably worse things..

Or the US could get out of Afghanistan, Iraq and so on and hope, pray, rub rabbits feet – whatever’s your bag, really – that that display of weakness won’t get the bombs raining in by the gross.

And some of those bombs will be nuclear.

Tacitus was actually quoting a Caledonian chieftain called Calgacus in Agricola.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calgacus

And at least the Romans didn’t worship foreigners. Insofar as they put Rome first, we should strive to be more like them.

>>> ….Development, economists … assured the CIA in 1954, could create “an environment in which societies which directly or indirectly menace ours will not evolve.” … To replace the need for winter pastures, the United Nations brought in SWISS EXPERTS to teach nomads to use long handled scythes to cut forage for sheep from high plateaus…. it proved difficult to entice Ghilzai Pashtun to become ordinary farmers…. The burden of American loans for the project, and the absence of tangible returns was creating … a dangerous strain on the both the Afghan economy and the nation’s morale”… mosques and houses were crumbling into the growing bog. … A 1965 study revealed that crop yields per acre had actually dropped since the dams were built… For reasons of prestige alone the United States kept pouring money in, even though by 1965 it was clear the project was failing… farmers “met the bulldozers with rifles,”… Wheat yields were among the lowest in the world… farm incomes in the valley were below average for Afghanistan and declining….. The Taliban movement began here, and the valley provided one of its chief sources of revenue. The opium poppy grows well in dry climates and alkaline and saline soils…. The disastrous effects of dam-building were visible in 1949 and only became more obvious as the project grew…. <<<

“They (the Romans) make a desert, and they call it peace.” Publius Cornelius Tacitus

Is the suggestion that we should become like the Romans?

Bring the troops home. Mind our own business. Get our own house in order. Lead by example. Not only would it make for a more peaceful existence, we might even avoid turning our country into a bankrupt banana republic.

Kagan wrote a book about this very fact entitled,’The Mask of Command’. He likened the ideal modern leader to a cool, calculating, computer, geek. (somebody very similar in demeanor and thinking to a neo-con mouthpiece) The Afghanis have other more ancient and demanding notions of leadership and so far thay have been more effective in leading resistance in their countries than the neo-cons have been in leading ours.