War on Terror (Roman Style)

[Viggen]

...interesting article by author Robert Harris.... (from 2006 but i believe still relevant)

 

IN the autumn of 68 B.C. the world

[Ursus]

I'm going to ignore the alleged parallels to modern politics.

 

The Lex Gambina suggests to me the old style Republican system of commands was becoming obsolete as Rome became an ever expansive Mediterranean. Once a commander was given the full resources of the state to deal with the threat, the threat was crushed, and Rome's eastern frontiers reorganized more favorably to Rome.

 

If the Senate had allowed itself to reform the process, perhaps it could have found a way to incorporate imperial commanders into a republican constitution without falling completely to a veiled monarchy. But thanks to people like Cato I guess we shall never know.

[caldrail]

That was a bandit/pirate raid. Hardly terrorism, which is a form of blackmail.

[guy]

This is a rather silly and sophomoric rendition of history. Pompey's successful campaign against the pirates, which assured both the grain trade to Rome and the unfettered trade throughout the Republic, had far less to do with the collapse of the Roman Republic than the dictatorial actions of his predecessors Marius and Sulla.

 

Continuing with the analogy, however, perhaps the author is suggesting that Bush so weakened this republic's long held institutions and respect for freedom that it allowed a pernicious demagogic upstart successor to further subvert freedoms by waging class warfare and claiming extra-constitutional powers to deal with crises--both real and fabricated.

 

Wow. Even I wouldn't go that far with my rhetoric.

 

 

guy also known as gaius

[barca]

read the full article at the NY Times

 

The article is dramatic, but not entirely accurate:

 

Pompey stayed in the Middle East for six years, establishing puppet regimes throughout the region, and turning himself into the richest man in the empire.

 

Everyone knows that Crassus was the richest man in Rome, and a better example of the war on terror might be the slave war, i.e. Crassus versus Spartacus ( and Pompey also played a not so insignificant role). They certainly put more fear into the heats of the Romans, defeating several Roman Armies and rampaging up and down the peninsula until finally defeated by Crassus.

[caldrail]

The terror was incidential in the case of the Spartacus War. The famous rebel gladiator was not actually waging war on the Roman state as such (he was not fighting for freedom as usually thought), nor did he set out to terrorise the Roman state by design, but taking advantage of his popularity among the downtrodden classes to pursue a life as a bandit, something he started immediately upon escape as the sources relate that local folk tried to stop him raiding from his camp on Vesuvius and had to call in the military by complaints.

 

In fact, rather than attempting to intimdate the Romans, which terrorism would have entailed, he was rather more preoccupied with staying ahead of the legions sent after him following his initial successes at fending them off. His campaign was therefore initially opportunistic, then evolving into evasion. At no time did he mount anything we would consider a terrorist attack.

[Maty]

read the full article at the NY Times

 

The article is dramatic, but not entirely accurate:

 

 

Everyone knows that Crassus was the richest man in Rome ...

 

That's one of those factoids that 'everyone knows' but is wrong about. The article is right - Pompey was richer than Crassus after his eastern wars.

 

With the article, I think that the point is that the maius imperium (which gave Pompey precedence over provincial governors in the areas where he was operating), and having proconsular power in multiple provinces later became two of the main planks of the principate (tribunican power within Rome was the other).

 

In other words, measures to allow a specific issue to be dealt with were then used as precedent for laws which gave autocracy a constitutional fig-leaf. In the same way, measures which the Americans and Britons are taking to defeat terror (e.g. suspension of certain civil liberties, more intrusive tracking and surveillance of citizens, border controls, Britain's attempt to build a national DNA database)are all measures designed to protect citizens.

 

They probably do it well - though nothing will stop a determined terrorist. However, the same measures would come in very handy for anyone who wanted to build a police state - or indeed for a police state to develop by default. It boils down to how far you trust those running things not to abuse their new powers.

 

And we can trust them. Right?

[Virgil61]

I'm not a great fan of the Patriot Act (amendments) to which I think Harris is alluding to (in 2006). But really most of it wasn't an infringement on any citizen's rights rather just a 'tightening up' or restating of (I think) already existing laws. In short the real 'meat' of the issue are provisions dealing with the quality of evidence--or paucity of it--needed to inquire into a suspect and the ability to monitor incoming calls to the U.S. in a blanket manner. [There's been such scrutiny on this that the FBI had to put into place a fairly narrow set of guidelines to enforce it which is the good thing about the democratic process and a free media; they (the FBI) don't want to give reason to come under anyone's cross-hairs politically or through the media.]

 

To me--an attorney--it seems like a narrow bit of legalese with which Harris hangs his analogous hat on but Maty's answer that it's the larger point of extra-constitutional overreaction that he's reaching for is the crux of it of course.

 

On the other hand I would think Sulla's dictatorship, his march on Rome and abject slaughter of his opponents would register magnitudes above the Pompey issue on the "who shot J.R." scale of blame.

Edited May 23, 2011 by Virgil61

[guy]

Reading the author Robert Harris' Wikipedia article, I found out about the aborted plans of a movie bases on his novel, "Pompeii":

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Harris_(novelist)

 

Harris wrote a screenplay of his novel Pompeii for director Roman Polanski. The film, to be produced by Summit Entertainment, was announced at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007 as potentially the most expensive European film ever made, set to be shot in Spain. Media reports suggested Polanski wanted Orlando Bloom and Scarlett Johansson to play the two leads. The film was canceled as a result of the looming actor's strike that fall.

 

 

Now, that would have been interesting no matter what the political overtones would have been.

 

 

guy also known as gaius