History Written By the Victors

The government of Iran, it seems, disputes this maintaining that "no Greek king dared to stand up to the Persian Empire or the Emperor Xerxes" and King Leonidas "lost his head and Iranian fighters threw his head before Emperor Xerxes's feet and told him that he had attempted a suicide attack to Persian Army."

They probably got their history from the same Iranian historians that think the holocaust was made up.

Which goes to show how misleading it is to frame US-Iranian disputes as part of an apocalyptic struggle with "Islamofascism" rather than a sort of banal (but not unimportant!) situation issue where the government of Iran is seeking to assert its interests in the neighborhood where governments of Iran have traditionally sought to assert themselves.

It's not an either/or situation, but rather an and/both situation. That doesn't make the former false, even if the latter is true.

The Persians have been down for about 2500 years, but not out, yet. We are going to do the honors of putting on the coup de gras. Iran really doesn't have any friends. There will be mumbling when the bombs start dropping, and that's about it.

the government of Iran is seeking to assert its interests in the neighborhood where governments of Iran have traditionally sought to assert themselves.

It's a bit misleading to say Iran is seeking to "assert" its interests. I mean, if their foreign policy were our foreign policy, the right wing would HOWL about how we were being too supine and not "forward-leaning" or some such.

We are going to do the honors of putting on the coup de gras

The "fat cut"?

"no Greek king dared to stand up to the Persian Empire or the Emperor Xerxes"

Jeez, did the Iranians hire some Bush adminstrtion speachwriters, or something?

I mean, this is almost technically true--Athens and most of the other Greek city states who opposed Xerxes didn't have kings. Even Leonidas wasn't a "king" in the sense the word is normally used--Sparta had two "kings," and they didn't have much political power. And Alexander--who really was a king--came later, dealing with Darius rather than Xerxes.

The most artisitc spin job I've seen since we were told that Saddam had connections to al Qaeda . . .

"It's not an either/or situation, but rather an and/both situation. That doesn't make the former false, even if the latter is true."

No, but it does show there are more divisions in the Middle East worth considering than the Sunni-Shia divide. Iranians do harbor strong feelings of nationalism, and it was apparently nationalism, not religiosity, that propelled Ahmadinejad to electoral success. Logical fallacies aside, Iranians feel it is their right to have nukes. It's a nationalist sentiment and not an unreasonable one. No, I don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons, but nothing about Persian nationalism should get the U.S. worked up over destabilization (we shot ourselves in the foot when we invaded Iraq) or Israel fear for its existence.

coup de gras

What? We're going to hit them where they're flabby?

The following may be relevant to this discussion:

'The Persian Version'

Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon
The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon.
As for the Greek theatrical tradition
Which represents that summer's expedition
Not as a mere reconnaisance in force
By three brigades of foot and one of horse
(Their left flank covered by some obsolete
Light craft detached from the main Persian fleet)
But as a grandiose, ill-starred attempt
To conquer Greece - they treat it with contempt;
And only incidentally refute
Major Greek claims, by stressing what repute
The Persian monarch and the Persian nation
Won by this salutary demonstration:
Despite a strong defence and adverse weather
All arms combined magnificently together.

-- Robert Graves

Not surprised that the Iranians see the movie as a dig at the glories of old Persia. I was a bit suprised, though, back in the day, that they didn't complain about the naming of Operation Phantom Fury -- remember, way back at the start of the Iraq War? That phrase came from a poem about when "Persia fell at a Marathon". Always seemed like an odd, but perhaps also telling, choice by the Pentagon, seeing as at that point the U.S.'s ostensible enemy was Iraq.

Operation "Phantom Fury"?

We named a military operation after a *vacuum cleaner*???

Yep, pretty funny. It's also the name of a obscure, defunct heavy metal band. But the Robinson poem (of course) came first.

MY:

Your observation reminds me of a good book Ryszard Kapuscinski wrote on the Shah's Iran, "Shachin-Shah".

Similary, the Lebanese, at least the Christians, view themselves as heirs to the Phoenicians.

"Coup de gras" would better be translated "the fat slam".

Coup de grace, for those ignorant of French!

It is not misleading to characterize the struggle as fighting Islamofascism.

Islamic fascism is not Islam, and, yes, most Muslims practice Islam peacefully.

But the Jihadi movement of al-Queda and the Mullahs of Iran do have the characteristics of fascist ideology: Autocratic rule lionizing a mythologized past of great world-straddling power in the service of militarist expansion. Delusions of grandeur. Denial of individual freedom, one-party rule, ruthless suppression of criticism, and a rather paranoid police state. The comparison is quite good, almost exact. The Islamists are differently religious, and that's why it's called "Islamofascism" rather than plain "Fascism".

Do they have to strut exactly like Mussolini to deserve the label?

What else could they do to be more like the fascists that isn't a comical imitation like growing a funny little mustache? That is, what objectively separates them from Fascists?

A discussion of Iran's current government without mention of Mohammed Mossadegh is like a discussion of US gov't omitting JFK. Sure, we're being run by pea-brained fascists now, but there is a heritage of democracy and progress that can't be overlooked. Too bad the CIA had to kill these leaders to make the world safe for theofascism...

Actually, there's some element of truth in the Iranian claims...

Basically, the defeat of Xerxes meant that the Persians failed to conquer Greece, and Athens later freed (but eventually herself subjugated/enslaved) most of the Ionian Greek cities on the Asia Minor Coast. However, the Persian Empire retained nearly all of its gigantic territory, and remained the world superpower for another century or two.

Later, Sparta and Athens fought decades of wars, with Persian gold supporting one side then the other, eventually leading to the exhaustion/destruction of both. Afterward, large numbers of Greek mercenaries became a staple of Persian armies in dynastic struggles and such.

Finally, the Philip/Alexander's Macedonians---who were most certainly *not* regarded as Greeks by anyone at the time--- conquered both Greece and Persia, with the bulk of the Greeks actually fighting on the Persian side.

Incidentally, the Spartiates/Greeks were hoplite infantry, going into battle wearing very heavy armor, rather than being near-naked with long capes. Maybe a future movie will show the medieval knights of Europe riding into battle naked on their horses.

The Robert Graves poem, admirably quoted by Tony, refers to the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC. The movie 300 is roughly based on the the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. Different battle, different decade, different invasion.

Marathon:

The Athenians had aided an unsuccessful rebellion of some Greek city-states in what is now Turkey, then part of the Persian empire. So the Persians sent a small expeditionary force to punish Athens. The Athenians defeated the expeditionary force at Marathon.

Thermopylae:

Ten years later another Persian king sent a huge army to actually conquer Greece. Three hundred Spartans at the pass of Thermopylae held off the invasion force for several days.

Whither this conflation of Al Quaeda and the Shia Mullahs of Iran?
I thought it was the Bathist Sunni's and Al Quaeda we feared.
Has AIPAC changed the dance card, again?
This is exactly the bullshit that Cheney and the Neocons and Zionists pulled before the Iraq war.
Fuck 'em!

RKU, the filmmakers knew what the real Spartans wore. It was a stylistic choice, like having 5th Century Britons wear shiny plate armor in Excalibur. Being the eight millionth person to point that out just makes you look pedantic and silly.

...one-party rule, ruthless suppression of criticism, and a rather paranoid police state.

It's true. al-Qaeda is the only political party in...er...ok, forget that one. But al-Qaeda's implementation of the police state in...er...ok, forget that one too.

The problem isn't necessarily the invocation of "fascism" per se, though there are good reasons to avoid it. The bigger issue comes from lumping al-Qaeda and Iran together under the same umbrella. They don't fit. They have divergent goals, divergent means, divergent milieus and deep underlying religious/philosophical schisms.

Each may share some things in common with fascism and each other, but nowhere near enough to say the comparison is "almost exact."

Worse still, the wielders of the Islamofascism misnomer tend to include people like Saddam and Arafat (neither overly religious any more so than Christian fascists), and groups like Hezbollah and Hamas (nationalistic area of focus, not expansionist or messianic). When you lump such diverse actors into one group, and give it a label with pre-defined characteristics, chances are you're missing more than you're hitting. The present case included.

The nerd in me is impressed that a substantive point about current foreign affairs can be sustained with evidence about a propagandist's spin on events over 2000 years old.

It's true. al-Qaeda is the only political party in...er...ok, forget that one. But al-Qaeda's implementation of the police state in...er...ok, forget that one too.

Well, when al Qaeda ruled Afghanistan (through the Taliban), those were true. I doubt they've changed their theory of governance in the past 5 year.

It is not misleading to characterize the struggle as fighting Islamofascism.

Yes it is!

Where to start with this. How about: You do realize Al Qaeda and the Iranian leadership hate each other, right? And yet you conflate them into one threat.

Second: The "militarist expansion" you cite, Fred, is simply not there. The Islamic regime has been in power in Iran for approaching three decades and has *not invaded anyone*. Saddam Hussein invaded Iran, not the other way around. At most Iran has engaged in the same limited regional power plays that have occupied its region for centuries. Doesn't mean its leaders are nice people. But they're not running around conquering their neighbors. That, you may recall, was the distinguishing feature of Fascist foreign policy.

As for Al Qaeda -- it's nothing like Mussolini's Italy or any other Fascist state because *it's not a state*. The State was everything to fascists. The state as expression and instrument of the nation. Al Qaeda has no nation either. Its ideology is explicitly supranational -- even when it ruled Afghanistan that was true. You say "the Islamists are differently religious". The fact that they're religious *at all* distinguishes them from Fascists, who has little use for any traditional religion except, occasionally, when they needed figleaves of legitimacy for their rule. Normally they were aggressively secular. The State was everything.

I'm not saying there aren't *some* similarities, and we can argue forever about how different is different enough to disqualify the analogy. But the basic reason I object to the 'Islamofascism' canard is that it's such a transparent attempt to gin up fears by invoking a set of enemies from the past who were much, much more powerful than are the ones we face today.

Well, when al Qaeda ruled Afghanistan (through the Taliban), those were true. I doubt they've changed their theory of governance in the past 5 year.

al-Qaeda never ruled Afghanistan Al. The Taliban ruled Afghanistan, and al-Qaeda was there at the Taliban's invitation. Your mixed up here my good man. The point being that al-Qaeda is a stateless actor, while the Iranian leadership presides over a state. That's kind of a big difference - at least it should be taken as such in terms of tailoring our interactions and responses to each.

But the ability to differentiate and parse is impaired when using imprecise umbrella terms. That's part of the problem. We should be looking at these groups, movements, ideologies, religious beliefs, etc., separately in order to customize our responses and work on ad hoc solutions. We need different strategies to fit different contexts.

But the "Islamofascism" boosters don't want that. They want one, undifferentiated response - mostly militaristic and ruthless. And they want to cash in on the emotional impact of invoking "fascism."

For them, Saddam and al-Qaeda are the same. Just as Arafat and Ahmadinejad are the same. Each with each other, and the next.

Al Quaeda ruled Afghanistan (through the Taliban) Al? A big bit of an overstatement but typical of the neo grasp falling shy of the ring.
Why do Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran and Hussein's Iraq and Syria and Fatah five years ago all get lumped together by the neos despite their many and obvious differences?
Hmmmmm, oh I know!
Israel!

As to the argument over the 300's fag wear, the film makers are simply accommodating the heterosexual male's almost total obsession with cock, their own and every other guys.
And how nice that AIRPLANE is topical again.

The Greeks and the Persians went at it for over 1000 years, from the start of the Persian Empire (wrested from the Medes) to the Arab conquest of Persia. The Persians didn't lose all the time either, Crassus's Parthian expedition (the Romans being sort of Greeks and the Parthians being Persians) ended in disaster. One might think the Iranians might might bring that up. The Arabs came out of the desert right after a 25 year knock down drag out war between the Byzantines (Greeks) and the Sassanids (what the Persians were then called, after the interlude of being called the Parthians), which enabled the Arabs to conquer Persia (the Persians lost the that war with the Greeks, but only just barely) and to conquer a good chunk of the Byzantine empire. There are many bright spots in a Persian military prowess sort of way for them to dwell on if they would.

It seems odd that the Iranians to care about a movie made by 'the Great Satan' though, doesn't it, especially given what ethnic group is widely known to be overrepresented in the Great Satan's film industry.

If it's not so odd, here's a few more film projects for Hollywood. The Athenians at Marathon under Miltaides, the Athenians at Salamis (very dramatic, they had to temporarily abandon Athens for a time during which they watched the Persians burn Athens to the ground while they were staying across the strait of Salamis on the island of Aegina) under Themostocles, the Spartans at Platea, and a biopic about the career of Cimon. Then a movie about Alexander that's more about Alexander kicking Persian butt rather than speculating on his taste in indoor sports.

And, most subversively of all, a sympathetic life of the Persian Great King Darius I, concentrating on his ending of the Babylonian captivity of the Jews and his restoring Jerusalem, Israel and the Temple Mount to them.

I hear MY has connections in showbiz. Get on it MY!

rather an and/both situation

when al Qaeda ruled Afghanistan ...

Al, why not just admit it, you don't know anything about Al Quaeda, Iran or Afghanistan, you're just making sh#t up as you go along. God this is annoying.

"It is not misleading to characterize the struggle as fighting Islamofascism."

What's with this lumping? Why can't the so-called "war on terror" be separate from a contention with Iran? How a nation governs itself does not characterize the conflict. World War II happened because of German expansionism, not fascism. Nazism was merely a justification for German imperialism. World War II was a struggle against the Axis Powers because of their actions, not because of the ideology.

In fact, it can be argued that ideology played a minimal role in Germany's imperialism. I don't necessarily adhere to this viewpoint, but because of repressive arms control and humiliation after World War I, perhaps Germany, seeing its military disadvantage while immersed in depression, would have gone into panid mode, rebuild its forces, and expand no matter who came to power. Once again, I don't necessarily adhere to that view, but I do think that it's silly to suggest ideological characters are essential to conflict.

Persians have been down for about 2500 years ...

Someone is not up on his Near-East history. At a minimum, the Parthians and the Sassinids fall in that timeframe, and they could hardly be described as "down."

You do realize Al Qaeda and the Iranian leadership hate each other, right? And yet you conflate them into one threat.

Someone always points this out, but I'm not sure it entirely makes sense. Seems to me that if we antogonize the Iranians enough, they could potentially start working with Al-Qaeda, at least in an informal way. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right? Or at least someone I can stomach working with when it hurts a third enemy we have in common.

Historical examples of bitter enemies uniting against a common threat are so numerous and well-known to be hardly worth enumerating. Athens and Sparta, to take the example under discussion, uniting to fight the Persians. Or for that matter bin Laden getting US aid to fight the Soviets (who in turn had been our temporary allies 40 years before against the axis). It happens all the time.

I agree that it's a little different because Al-Qaeda is a terrorist group, not a state, so there's potentially more risk of blow-back to Iran, but they've got a lot of experience working with terrorist groups.

Not saying they are working with Al-Qaeda or necessarily ever would, I just don't see that it's completely out of the question.

It's important to know how similar Islamofascism is to the previous fascisms. By the way, Mussolini was more politically Catholic than Hitler, who was practically the God himself. There was real worship there. Remember those films of the Nuremberg rallies?`

That the Mullahs and al-Queda/Taliban are deeply in hate makes neither of them non-fascist.

Yes, Eric, I should have said Taliban, not just al-Queda. The point applies, though, when corrected.

Iran hasn't invaded anybody because they can't yet. What do you think they are doing, though, supporting Hezbollah, Hamas and Syria? What they are doing is analogous to what Hitler did by supporting Franco in the Spanish Civil War -- learning how and spreading influence. Do you think they want nuclear weapons for defensive purposes?

"We need different strategies for different contexts". Yes, because al-Queada is not in an alliance with Iran the way Fascist Italy was allied with Nazi Germany. But understanding world trends require we recognize the similarities in their outlook, origin, and ideology. Otherwise we will have no understanding at all.

I realize it can look like an attempt to shoehorn round pegs into square holes for the sole purpose of attaching hate words like fascism. But the truth is that there is commonality and that is insight. Restricting ourselves to pieces and parts atomizes our understanding.

And what are these "deep underlying religious/philosophical schisms" between Iran and the Taliban/al-Queda, anyway? I don't see them. Show me how these "Schisms" make either of them less fascist. They both have an attachment to suicide bombing, Sharia, Religious Police, State Religion, One-party rule, return of the Caliphate, and so on. Being Shiite or Sunni doesn't make you non-fascist.

"The Persians didn't lose all the time either, Crassus's Parthian expedition (the Romans being sort of Greeks and the Parthians being Persians) ended in disaster."

Greek sympathies were rather on the Parthian side in that instance . . . see Plutarch's life of Crassus, in which the dead Roman general's head is used as a stage prop by a group of Greek actors . . .

And both the Taliban and the Mullahs share a hatred of non-Muslims, and a fascist conception of Woman's role in society, including severe control of female autonomy and sexuality.

The list of common elements, that these Islamofascists share with Hezbollah and Hamas, and that are not part of current thinking elsewhere, is long. Too long to be a coincidence.

What if you just really hate the movie, like me?

Thought for the day: read more Robert Graves. His poetry is very good until the end of the 40s or so. His fiction gets better with time. And his autobiography "Goodbye to All That" can be re-read as often as the mood takes you.

And both the Taliban and the Mullahs share a hatred of non-Muslims, and a fascist conception of Woman's role in society, including severe control of female autonomy and sexuality.

Wow. Sounds like fundamentalist Christianity too, if you just substitute non-Christians for non-Muslims. Are the fundamentalist Christians Islamofascists too?

The list of common elements, that these Islamofascists share with Hezbollah and Hamas, and that are not part of current thinking elsewhere, is long. Too long to be a coincidence

Sigh. Yes, yes, such rare elements as tribalism, backwards views of women and a quick resort to violence to solve problems. Unique to the "Islamofascists" indeed. Can't find 'em anywhere else.

You are making my point for me Fred.

The real unifying factor here is Islam. These groups are all groups of Muslims that we don't like. And by "we" I mean certain domestic and foreign factions (though some groups such as al-Qaeda deserve and encounter a more ubiquitous revulsion).

Thought for the day:which is the less accurate rendition of Greek history, 300 or The Warriors

Ever since WWII, the U.S. has viewed our enemies in terms of some monolithic "evil" ideology (communism, now so-called "islamofacism") and this has tended to blind us to the particular forces of nationalist self-assertion that are usually behind conflict. So stopping communism in Vietnam was critical to limit Chinese communist influence in Indonesia, but the Vietnamese communists promptly went to war with China, just as the Vietnamese had been doing for centuries.

OK Fred, you've clearly got a reasonably sophisticated understanding of the regimes in question (then and now) and their similarities and differences. For academic purposes it's an interesting discussion. But the most basic problem with using the term is that it has been popularized by ignorami (shock jock Michael Savage claims he invented it, though he didn't) only interested in attaching familiar hate words to unfamiliar phenomena and in suppressing dissent by summoning up all the mythical Brokavian feelings of unity and shared purpose associated with an earlier struggle. Even if I grant that all the commonalities you list among the different Islamic groups are too many "to be a coincidence" (and I still think you blur the distinctions too much), whatever similarities exist with 1930s-era Fascist doctrine and practice are *definitely* a coincidence. There's just no actual, meaningful historical connection, except in the broadest sense that -- suprise! -- megalomaniac sociopaths of all eras have often come up with similar ideas about how to organize society. It's not like Osama bin Laden cut his teeth on Mein Kampf. You might as well call it Islamocommunism or IslamoShinto or Islamoapartheid or something. So let's call it Islamic radicalism or Islamic extremism or something, and stop pretending we're all refighting my grandfather's war.

al-Qaeda never ruled Afghanistan Al. The Taliban ruled Afghanistan, and al-Qaeda was there at the Taliban's invitation.

I think you are misperceiving who was top dog in that relationship. Bin Laden was the power there, as he had the financing that the Taliban lacked. By 2001, bin Laden wasn't there by "invitation" any more than the Soviets were in Afghanistan by "invitation" in the mid-80s.

How is Fred's understanding of anything here "sophisticated"? The internal governance of Iran is completely different than the internal governance of Afghanistan under the Taliban, not to mention completely different than the internal governance of Syria under Assad, etc. The main thing that unites them is that they are Muslim and not-us (and, of course, Israel doesn't like them). And that is not even getting in to the absurd comparisons with 1930s European states.

Plus, of course, Iran has not been an aggressive state. Hezbollah came into existence to resist an Israeli invasion of Lebanon, after which the Iranians supported their co-religionists against foreign aggression. Plus Iran has not historically supported either Hamas or Syria (???where did that even come from). Of course, Iran is currently giving some funds to the *democratically elected government of the Palestinian authority*, which happens to have a Hamas majority, and has been cut off from funds by Israel. But perhaps that is just support for the principle of Palestinian democracy, no?

Finally: if we keep attacking everybody in the ME long enough, no doubt all these very different and disparate entities will unite against us. But what does that prove besides the fact that if you invest enough money and effort, even your worst prophecies can become self-fulfilling?

Thought for the day:which is the less accurate rendition of Greek history, 300 or The Warriors

The Warriors was a rendition of Greek history? I thought it was New York City history. Who were the Athenians - the Grammercy Riffs? The Turnbull A.C.s? Can you dig it?

Al's right - Taliban probably couldn't have evicted al-Qaeda in 2001, and may have grown financially dependant on them.

I was going to remember back when the Shah's regime tried to prevent the formation of the United Arab Emirates as a colonialist legacy that would interfere with his ultimate ambition of annexing Bahrain and perhaps other Arabian territories.

Man, anything undercutting Persian Gulf III really brings out the wingers, huh?

Fred:And what are these "deep underlying religious/philosophical schisms" between Iran and the Taliban/al-Queda, anyway? I don't see them. Show me how these "Schisms" make either of them less fascist.

The point Matt, I believe, is making is that their motivations are much more complicated than this administration would have one believe. Nationalism is a big part of the Iranian's motivations, including ordinary Iranians, who are not fascists. Al Qaeda too has many Arab nationalistic strains. Then, of course, there is the Shiite-Sunni divide. The ideal world of either the Iranian gov't or Al Qaeda doesn't have any place for the long term existance of the other. These groups are not natural allies.

Even if we made up a cute little matrix that proved that both groups were 80% "fascist," how the hell does that inform our foreign policy? How does that assess their threat? Islamo-fascism label is just a cannard to create hysreria.

Ryan has a point or two. My point was that the term Islamofascism has reality and relevance. Not that it's the Rosetta Stone of Middle East Understanding. Ignorami use the word 'the' too. I won't stop using it because they do. The term 'Islamic Radicalism' makes them sound leftist, which they aren't.

Another reason to use the term 'Islamofascism' is to open the eyes of the Western Left. This is an important cause. I am reminded of the Communists during the period of the Hitler-Stalin pact. They accused Churchill and Roosevelt of provoking aggression against Hitler. The Communists eventually had their eyes opened, but very late and at great cost.

Eric Martin, though, misunderstands. It's the whole list (including Sharia, etc.), not just the tribalism, that makes Islamofascism a meaningful term.

The Fundy Christians haven't put their most restrictive ideas into Law, and aren't about to. That's a big difference. And the FCs are much more open to individual differences, and, in the US, believe in the separation of Church and State, unlike the Mullahs and the Taliban. That's a bigger difference. The comparison is laughable. Seen many Christian suicide bombers lately?

The unifying factor is not just Islam. It's the Islamic Jihadi movement tied to Islamic Fundamentalism. Not all Muslims are fascists (thank God!).

How is Fred's understanding of anything here "sophisticated"?

I said "relatively sophisticated". Oops -- I see I actually said "reasonably" but I meant "relatively", i.e. to wingnuts who use the term. I stand by that.

The rest of MQ I agree with, although I wouldn't say the "comparisons with 1930s European states" are "absurd" so much as irrelevant, since similarities (as they say at the end of movies) are basically coincidental. Dictators will be dictators. Doesn't mean you should conceptually fuse two sets of them a half-century apart into one thing. In fact doing so gains you nothing, that I can see anyway, by way of understanding.

Oh, and I probably shouldn't have tossed in "Shinto" as an equivalent to the others, since only for a relatively short segment of its history was it used to justify totalitarianism.

I forgot to add that another rhetorical strategy at work for those who love the 'Islamofascism' label is often to suggest that, like the 'other' fascists, Islamic radicals can't be deterred or appeased but can only be destroyed. It's the pernicious Munich analogy in slightly disguised form.

Now seeing Fred's last post, he makes it clear he thinks the relevance or usefulness of the term is as a way not so much to *understand* the threat as to underline the *importance* of the struggle. And I guess I would just say that if you can't justify a current struggle on its own terms, but must resort to invoking a past one, well, maybe you need to rethink the magnitude of the stakes. These guys have the resources of neither Hitler nor Stalin.

It's called Persian chauvinism. They're the descendants of the Aryans, they created civilization (not the Greeks), they're still better than any of the regional ethnicities, etc etc.

It's interesting that even Iran's contemporary theocrats regard themselves as the heirs to all the pre-Islamic Persian empires.

The BBC had a good radio series about Iran's history and culture: the mixture of Shia Islam and classical Persian self-identity is distinctive and woefully understood in the US.

Oh, and Al, as ever, is full of shit.

Per Crassus:

Not so sure about that. There were Greeks on Xerxes side, where did Greek sympathies lie? Greeks were a 'two Greeks three opinions' sort too. Not liking Crassus doesn't mean hating Romans either, Plutarch himself is an example, nobody liked Crassus. I think everybody should read Plutarch, once upon a time every educated person did and in that respect I think the past was better.

Last but not least, if you were a member of an ethnic group that Persians traditionally hated, deep in what would then have been enemy territory, after he'd won a great victory, well what would you have done out of a concern for one's skin? I guess I'd disagree about that incident being conclusive to the point.

"Dictators will be dictators."

Well, if we're going to say every autocratic government anywhere at any time is identical, then we are indeed facing a massive conspiracy, that combines all the threatening badness of Hitler, Stalin, Kaiser Wilhelm, Attila the Hun, and Caeser. I think we should just call it Islamo-Awfulness or Islamo-Evil instead of Islamofacism. But maybe it's as nice as Queen Victoria or as wise as the Emperor Aurelius? I'm confused now.

This wingnut fake sophistication drives me crazy, when they lecture you in this patronizing tone that implies they have much superior knowledge, but the actual content of what they are saying seems to come from some bizarro-world of near-total confusion. The late, lamented Steve Den Beste was the past master at this.

I don't think al-Qaeda is in any way Arab nationalist - they see Arab nationalism as an un-Islamic secular ideology. That why Tahir Yuldashev has been able to rise so high in their ranks, for example.

I also think that while Iran isn't above allying with Sunni fundamentalists (such as Hamas), al-Qaeda in its present form is way too radical for that. There's active division in the ranks over whether Shi'ites should be killed immediately or just ignored for the time being.

"The Warriors was a rendition of Greek history?"

"I think everybody should read Plutarch, once upon a time every educated person did and in that respect I think the past was better."

Or even make a visit to IMDB. Anabasis, Al, Xenophon.

Anabasis

How about that. Learn somethin' new every day.

I've read Anabasis and seen The Warriors but never made the connection, but it's obvious. I'd like to include that in my list of movies to be made above.

The idea that Iran should fall under the same 'Islamofascism' title as al-Queda is ridiculous and extremely unhelpful. Iran can be very useful to us as a bogeyman to scare the real 'Islamofascists' coming from Sunni-ruled countries like Saudi Arabia.

if we're going to say every autocratic government anywhere at any time is identical

Who the hell said that? "Dictators will be dictators" was just my condensed (OK, also flippant) rehash of my earlier point: "megalomaniac sociopaths of all eras have often come up with similar ideas about how to organize society." Doesn't mean they're organically connected. Did I say *always* or *exactly the same*? No, "often" and "similar". Are they all driven by exactly the same impulses, or have exactly the same tools available to them? Of course not. Point: such similarities as exist between Mussolini and bin Laden are coincidental, not organic, and for this reason (among others) it's misleading to conceptually or rhetorically fuse them into one phenomenon.

You and I seem to agree, MQ. Let's not indulge the narcissism of small differences.

And by the way: Queen Victoria? How did she get into this?

The idea that Iran should fall under the same 'Islamofascism' title as al-Queda is ridiculous and extremely unhelpful. Iran can be very useful to us as a bogeyman to scare the real 'Islamofascists' coming from Sunni-ruled countries like Saudi Arabia.

this comment engrossing

thank you matt good job ;)

if we're going to say every autocratic government anywhere at any time is identical

Who the hell said that? "Dictators will be dictators" was just my condensed (OK, also flippant) rehash of my earlier point: "megalomaniac sociopaths of all eras have often come up with similar ideas about how to organize society." Doesn't mean they're organically connected. Did I say *always* or *exactly the same*? No, "often" and "similar". Are they all driven by exactly the same impulses, or have exactly the same tools available to them? Of course not. Point: such similarities as exist between Mussolini and bin Laden are coincidental, not organic, and for this reason (among others) it's misleading to conceptually or rhetorically fuse them into one phenomenon.

You and I seem to agree, MQ. Let's not indulge the narcissism of small differences.

And by the way: Queen Victoria? How did she get into this?

thank you ryan

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