Listening to reports of how a superpower is engaged in flattening a city to prepare it for elections, I drifted into thinking about the agendas of other great powers that once held sway. For a while now, I’ve been musing on the fact that though some of us get very excited about superpower meddling, in the great scheme of human affairs, it actually doesn’t matter at all.
Falluja just happens to be a very few miles from the site of ancient Babylon, and many’s the tyrant that has flattened, burned and spilled blood, around its mud bricks over six thousand years. Bush’s marines and their Islamist (or maybe patriotic, depending on your viewpoint) foes, will not be the last to struggle there for victory. In the end, their struggle for power will not matter any more than did those of Cyrus, or Nebuchadnezzar, or Alexander, or any of the other greats of history. The dust will still blow over their sun bleached battlefields, if not their bones, Americans being more inclined to take away their dead than Alexander was.
Modern Americans are certainly not the first superpower citizens to believe they are invincible, or that their system will prevail a thousand years. All of them were wrong, though probably none so badly as the little Austrian with the cropped moustache, who built his monuments for a thousand year Reich upon a pile of bones. Nevertheless, they couldn’t see the wood for the trees, and looking to the future, others will rise to take the mantle of the empire that bases all on its thirst for oil, and flattening cities in preparation for elections. They’re already on the rise – look East my friends, and in the rising sun you’ll see the next great global players. Paradoxically, they were great, when the bison roamed the plains of North America, and the people of Europe were forest dwellers frightening away spirits with their bonfires and human sacrifice.
What goes around, comes around.
Follow this link for a fascinating site about the rise and fall of civilisations:
http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/History_n2/a.html
4 comments:
Where are you you old git? The blogsphere needs to find you again and you it. We need your stories and coverage!!
If you're just sitting attentively at your computer waiting for suggestions for your blog and that's why you haven't written lately I'd like to hear more about how the Bush regime is recruiting reserve soldiers beyond their contracts and how at least 100 soldiers in Iraq are over 60. Critics say the policy is just a disguised draft. What's happening with the Brits? Is their military spread as thin as the Americans is? What do you think about the defense missile missile defense system that's been proposed? Is the world going to weaponize space?
Hi BC!
Thanks for your interest. I've been a bit tied up and doing other stuff. I know I had some regular readers, and I've probably let them down. I'm not sure if I haven't done enough of ranting against Bush, but I'll think about your suggestions. Thanks for making them. It would be good if the blog was more of a dialogue than it has been. If there's feedback, it makes the effort worthwhile.
I'll have a go tomorrow maybe...
Fred
from Iraq
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