Why Obama Will be Worse Than Bush

Tag : Kings Fabric

The columnist Chris Deliso notes in Antiwar.com that "sinceSeptember 11th especially, the country has suffered draconianrestrictions on civil liberties and the rapid erosion of judicialand governmental transparency. At the same time, the increasingexpenditure of taxpayer dollars has been conducted at variance withtraditional ideals of free market competition and avoidance ofembedded government cronyism. Now, with the invasion of Iraq, thenadir has been reached: long-suppressed desires for empire havecome out into the open."

Deliso ascribes these worrisome trends to "three toxic substances.The first is relentless paranoia of the outside world. According tothis, all kinds of civilian restrictions and pre-emptive foreignwars become justified for the sake of 'national security'. Secondis the all-pervasive cronyism between government oligarchs andcorporations, which retard the practice of a free market economy.Finally, there is a belief in the ineluctable nature of 'progress',i.e., a teleological narrative that describes America's politicalsystem as supreme, and destined to supercede and convert those ofall other nations."

As others have noted, America's transition from republic to empireis remarkably reminiscent of Rome's. The irony is that as theUnited States inevitably becomes less democratic - it will alsobecome less elitist. The mediocre and inapt peripateticrepresentatives of the popular will be replaced not bydisinterested technocrats and expert civil servants but byusurpers, power brokers, interest groups, and criminal-politicians.

The Founding Fathers looked to Rome as a model. It is oftenforgotten that Rome has been a republic (509-27 BC) for as long asit has been an empire (27 BC - 476 AD). Hence the Senate, thebicameral legislature, the institutions of jury and professionaljudges, the interlocking system of checks and balances and otherfixtures of American life.

Rome, like the USA, was a multicultural, multiethnic and inclusivemelting pot. The family and religion - the mainstays of theAmerican value system - were also the pivots of Roman society.Their work ethic was "Protestant" and their conduct "Calvinistic":frugality, self-reliance, steadfastness, seriousness, "fides" (goodfaith and reliability) were considered virtues.

From 287 BC, Rome was a full-fledged democracy and meritocracy -one's acquired wealth rather than one's arbitrary birth determinedone's place in life.

The Roman takeover of Italy is reminiscent of the expansion of theUnited States during the 19th century. Later, Rome claimed to be"liberating" Greek cities (from Macedonian domination and otherMiddle Eastern tyrants) - but then proceeded to establish a seriesof protectorates throughout Asia Minor, Greece and today's Israel,Palestine, Syria, Egypt and North Africa.

As Rome's sphere of interests and orbit of alliances widened toinclude ever growing segments of the world, conflicts becameinevitable. Still, early Roman historians, patriotic to a fault,always describe Roman wars as "just" (i.e., in "self-defense").Rome was very concerned with international public opinion and oftenformed coalitions to attack its foes and adversaries. It thentypically turned on its erstwhile allies and either conquered orotherwise absorbed them into its body politic.

Roman commanders and procurators meddled in the internal affairs ofthese territories. Opposition - in Carthage, Corinth and elsewhere- was crushed by overwhelming force. Lesser powers - such asPergamum - learned the lesson and succumbed to Roman hegemony.Roman culture - constructed on Greek foundations - permeated thenascent empire and Latin became the Lingua Franca.

But, as Cato the Elder forewarned, foreign possessions and theabsence of any martial threat corrupted Rome. Tax extortion,bribery, political machinations, personality cults, and morallaxity abounded. Income equality led to ostentatious consumption ofthe few, contrasted with the rural and urban destitution of themany. A growing share of gross domestic product was appropriatedfor the state by the political class. Rome's trade deficitballooned as its farmers proved unable to compete with cheapimports from the provinces.

A whole class of businessmen - the equites, later known as theequesterian order (the equivalent of today's "oligarchs") -lucratively transacted with the administration. When erstwhilestate functions - such as tax collection - were privatized, theymoved in and benefited mightily. The equites manipulated thecommodities markets, lent money at usurious rates, and colludedwith Senators and office holders.

Sallust, the Roman historian, blamed the civil wars that followedon this wealth disparity. Cato the Elder attributed them to moraldecadence. Cicero thought that the emergence of the armed forcesand the "mob" (the masses) as political players spelt doom forSenatorial, republican Rome.

Some are comparing the relentlessly increasing weight of thePentagon since 1941 to the rise to prominence of the military inrepublican Rome. Yet, this is misleading. The role of the army inthe Roman republic was enshrined in the centuriate assembly (thearmy as a voting collective) and the consuls, magistrates in chiefwere, invariably, former army generals. Though many Americanpresidents, starting with George Washington, were former generals -the ethos of the United States is individualistic, not military.

Thus, when the tribune Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (133 BC)embarked on a land reform, he was opposed by the entrenchedinterests of the nobility (the optimi). Undeterred, through aseries of piecemeal, utterly legal steps, Tiberius Gracchus soughtto transform himself into a despot and neutralize the carefullyconstructed system of checks and balances that sustained republicanRome. The Senators themselves headed the mob that assassinated him.This was the fate of his no less radical brother, Gaius, ten yearslater.

These upheavals gave rise to the populares - self-appointedpopulist spokesmen for the disenfranchised "common man" in theSenate. They were vehemently confronted by the nobility-backedSenators, the optimates. To add instability to earthquake, Romangenerals began recruiting property-less volunteers to serve asmercenaries in essentially private armies. Lucius Cornelius Sulla,an impoverished aristocrat turned army commander, actually attackedRome itself twice.

The turning point may have been the passage of the Lex Gabiniafollowing an attack of Mediterranean pirates on the port of Ostiain 68 BC. It granted Pompey command of the republic's navy as wellas untrammeled access to its treasury. It was the first time thatthe republic relinquished control of its armed forces - but not thelast. A decade later, Julius Caesar was granted the same power forhis military expedition in Gaul.

To secure popular support, Roman politicians doled out tax cuts,free entertainment, and free food. Ambitious Romans - such asJulius Caesar - spent most of their time electioneering and raisingcampaign finance, often in the form of 'loans" to be repaid withlucrative contracts and sinecures once the sponsored candidateattained office. Long-established, prominent families - politicaldynasties - increased their hold on power from one generation tothe next.

Partisanship was rampant. Even Cicero - a much-admired orator andlawyer - failed to unite the Senators and equites against assortedfanatics and demagogues. The Senate kept repeatedly anddeliberately undermining the interests of both the soldiery and theequites, Rome's non-Senatorial businessmen.

This clash of vested interests and ulterior motives gave rise toGaius Julius Caesar, a driven and talented populist. Caesar crossedthe Rubicon, the river that separated Gaul from Italy, and subdueda rebellious and obstructive Senate. He was offered by anintimidated establishment, the position of dictator for life whichhe accepted. The republic was over.

Life in Rome improved dramatically with the introduction ofautocracy. Roman administration was streamlined and became lesscorrupt. Food security was achieved. Social divisions healed. Therepublic was mourned only by the discarded ancien regime and byintellectuals. Rome the city-state was no more. It has matured intoan Empire.

And now, to Rome's crippled successor, Byzantium.

The modus operandi of the United States involves ad-hoc allianceswith indigenous warlords, drug czars, terrorists, guerrilleros,freedom fighters, and armed opposition groups aimed at oustingunfriendly incumbent regimes, imposing political settlements ormilitary solutions, countering other foreign influences, attainingcommercial goals, or securing long-term presence and say in localaffairs.

America's "exploit and discard" or "drain and dump" policiesconsistently boomerang to haunt it.

Both Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Manuel Noriega in Panama were aidedand abetted by the CIA and the US military. Later, America had toinvade Panama to depose the latter and conquer Iraq for the secondtime to force the removal of the former.

The Kosovo Liberation Army, an American anti-Milosevic pet,provoked, to great European consternation, a civil war in Macedoniatwo years ago. Osama bin-Laden, another CIA golem, "restored" tothe USA, on September 11, 2001 some of the materiel it sogenerously bestowed on his anti-Russian outfit - before he wasdumped unceremoniously once the Soviets retreated from Afghanistan.

Normally the outcomes of expedience, the Ugly American's alliancesand allegiances shift kaleidoscopically. Pakistan and Libya weretransmuted from foes to allies in the fortnight prior to the Afghancampaign. Milosevic has metamorphosed from staunch ally to rabidfoe in days.

This capricious inconsistency casts in grave doubt America'ssincerity - and in sharp relief its unreliability and disloyalty,its short term thinking, truncated attention span, soundbitementality, and dangerous, "black and white", simplism. It is also asign of short-sightedness and historical ignorance. All majorempires fell prey to rampant mercenaries, erstwhile "allies" turnedbitter enemies.

At its peak, the Ottoman Empire ruled most of the Balkan, up to thevery gates of Vienna, Hungary, Serbia, Bosnia, Romania, Greece,Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, Israel, Egypt, North Africa includingAlgeria, and most of the Arab Peninsula. It lasted 600 years.

The Ottomans invaded Europe while still serving as a proxy army ofmercenaries and guerilla fighters. When not at war with Byzantium,they were often used by this contemporary superpower (Byzantium) tofurther its geopolitical goals against its enemies - very much asthe Afghan Mujaheedin or the Albanian KLA collaborated with the USAand its sidekick, the EU, during the last two decades of thetwentieth century.

Not unlike the Moslem Afghani warriors of 1989, the Ottomans, too,turned on their benefactors and brought on the demise of Byzantiumafter 1000 years of uninterrupted existence as a superpower.

The Ottomans were named after Osman I, the Oguz (Turkmen) triballeader, the off spring of a noble Kayi family. They were ghazis(Islamic Turkish warriors). Fleeing from the Mongols of GenghisKhan, they invaded Anatolia in the second half of the 11th century.They immediately and inevitably clashed with Byzantium anddelivered to it the first of a string of humiliating anddebilitating defeats in the battle of Manzikert, in 1071.

They spread inexorably throughout the fertile Anatolia, confrontingin the process the Byzantines and the Mongols. They were no matchto the brute efficacy of the latter, though. They lost most ofAnatolia to the Mongols and maintained a few autonomous pockets ofresistance in its eastern fringes. One of these anti-Mongolprincipalities (in the northwest) was led by Osman I.

Osman's was not the strongest principality. Its neighbour to theeast, the Germiyan principality, was much stronger and moresophisticated culturally. Osman, therefore, drove west, towards theBosporus and the Marble (Marmara) Sea. His desperate strugglesagainst the corrupt and decadent Byzantines, made him the RobinHood, the folk hero of the millions of urban unemployed, nomads,and dislocated peasants turned brigands - from Syria to the Balkan.Osman offered to these desperados war booty, a purposeful life, andIslamic religious fanaticism. They joined his armies in droves.

Byzantium, his avowed enemy, was no longer prosperous and powerful,but it was culturally superior and vital, Christian, and modern.But it was decaying. Its social fabric was disintegrating, corrodedby venality, hubris, paranoia, avarice, inter-generational strife,and lack of clear religious and cultural orientations. Its army,much reduced and humbled by defeats and budget cuts, was unable tosecure the frontier. Economic, religious, and social discontentundermined its consensus.

Gradually, it lost its erstwhile allies. The Ilhanid dynasty inPersia refused to back it against its tormentors. Byzantium, highhanded and conceited, was left to fight the Islamic terrorism onits borders all by itself. Mercenaries imported by the Byzantinesfrom Europe served only to destabilize it further. Osman'ssuccessors tore Byzantium to hemorrhaging shreds, conquering therest of Anatolia and the Balkan. They even employed Christianmercenaries against the Byzantines.

When Orhan, a successor of Osman, secured a territorial continuumand access to the Sea of Marmara, he took on another Turkmenempire, based in Aydin.

The people of Aydin were mercenaries at the service of competingfactions in Byzantium (Thrace versus Constantinople). Orhan wantedto cut into this lucrative business. He started by defeatingemperor Andronicus III and his advisor, John Cantacuzenus in thebattle of Pelekanon in 1329. This unleashed the Ottoman troops uponNicaea (1331) and Nicomedia (1337).

Faced with the loss of the historic heart of their empire, theByzantines accepted a Faustian deal. They made peace with theMoslem Turks and recruited them as allies and mercenaries againstthe Christian enemies of Christian Byzantium - the Serbs, theItalians, and the Bulgarians. Orhan became the principal ally ofthe young and dynamic Byzantine politician (later emperor) John VICantacuzenus, thus gaining entry, for the first time, intoChristian Europe.

Andronicus III died in 1341and another civil war broke out inByzantium. John Cantacuzenus, deprived of the much expectedregency, confronted Alexius Apocaucus, the patriarch John Calecas,and the powerful and cunning empress mother Anne of Savoy.

The Serb king Dusan wavered between support and rejection forCantacuzenus, who was crowned as Emperor John VI in Thrace in 1346.The new emperor, aided by hordes of Turkish troops, demolished thecoalition set against him. A revolution erupted in Thrace andMacedonia. "The Zealots", having seized power In Thessalonica,declared an independent community which lasted till 1350.

Byzantium was reduced to penury by these events and by the BlackDeath of 1347. It fought with Venice against Genoa only to lose taxrevenues hitherto paid by the Genoese. Foreign powers - the Turksincluded - manipulated the hopelessly fractured Byzantine rulingclasses to their advantage.

In the meantime, Orhan was introduced to Europe's modern weaponry,its superior tactics of laying siege, and its internecine politicsby his Byzantine masters. After he helped Cantacuzenus grab theByzantine throne from John V Palaeologus, the new emperor grantedhim the right to ravage both Thrace and his own daughter, Theodora,whom Orhan married.

Ottoman raiding parties between Gallipoli and Thrace became acommon sight. The loot was used to attract all manner of outcastsand dispossessed and to arm them. Byzantium was thus arming andfinancing its own worst enemy, facilitating its own demise.

In 1354, Ottoman mercenaries occupied and fortified the earthquakeshattered Gallipoli. The Ottomans crossed permanently into Europe.When Orhan's son, Suleyman, transformed Gallipoli into an ominousbase from which to overpower Christian Europe - the emperor (andother Christian nations) protested.

The Ottomans ignored them and proceeded with their expansionarypreparations. They raided the Balkan as far as Adrianople.Cantacuzenus was toppled and denounced for his collaboration withthe Turks. Europe woke up to the nightmare on its doorstep. But itwas way too late.

It was the emperor John V Palaeologus who forced Cantacuzenus toabdicate and to retire to a monastery. John V appealed to the Pope,and through him, to the Western world, for help against the Turks.But the Popes were more concerned with the three centuries oldschism between the Roman Church and the Church in Constantinople.John V has begged for help for more than a decade. In 1366, hevisited Hungary and pleaded for assistance, but in vain.

The Ottomans embarked on three centuries of unhindered conquests,arrested only at the gates of Vienna in the 17th century. Recurrentinternational (read European) alliances and crusades failed toconstrain them. The Serbs, the Bulgars, the Hungarians were allrouted in bloody battlefields.

Cut off from its grain supplies and tax base, proud Byzantiumaccepted the suzerainty of the Ottomans, their former mercenaries.When emperor John V united the churches of Constantinople and Romein a vain and impetuous effort to secure the military involvementof the West - he only succeeded to fracture Byzantium further.

Murad, the Ottoman ruler, incorporated large parts of Christiansouth-eastern and central Europe into his burgeoning feudal empire.Local kings and emperors were left to govern as administrators,vassals to the Ottomans. They paid annual tribute and providedcontingents to the Ottoman army. These achievements wereconsolidated by later Ottoman rulers for centuries to come.

In 1449 the sultan Mehmed II prepared to assault Constantinople.The West wringed its hands but provided no material or militaryhelp. The union of the two churches - Rome and Constantinople - wascelebrated in the magnificent church of in Hagia Sophia in 1452.But the people of Byzantium revolted and protested against thisopportunistic move. Many said that they preferred the rule of theTurks to being enslaved by the Latin West. Soon their wish wouldcome true.

On May 29, 1453 Turkish soldiers forced their way into theshattered city. Most of the commanders (among them Venetians andGenoese) were dead or wounded. Constantine, the last emperor,fought, on foot, at one of the gates and was seen no more.

Constantinople was plundered and savaged for three long days andnights by the triumphant Turks.

The Encyclopedia Britannica (2002 edition) sums it up thus:

"The Ottoman Empire had now superseded the Byzantine Empire; andsome Greeks, like the contemporary historian Critobulus of Imbros,recognized the logic of the change by bestowing on the Sultan allthe attributes of the emperor. The material structure of theempire, which had long been crumbling, was now under the managementof the sultan-basileus. But the Orthodox faith was less susceptibleto change. The Sultan acknowledged the fact that the church hadproved to be the most enduring element in the Byzantine world, andhe gave the Patriarch of Constantinople an unprecedented measure oftemporal authority by making him answerable for all Christiansliving under Ottoman rule.

The last scattered pockets of Byzantine resistance were eliminatedwithin a decade after 1453. Athens fell to the Turks in 1456-58,and in 1460 the two despots of Morea surrendered. Thomas fled toItaly, Demetrius to the Sultan's court. In 1461 Trebizond, capitalof the last remnant of Greek empire, which had maintained itsprecarious independence by paying court to Turks and Mongols alike,finally succumbed; the transformation of the Byzantine world intothe Ottoman world was at last complete."