Hi NightOwl; Bush never had the mandate of the people to fight in Iraq. The best figures he ever had for agreement with the concept of "war in Iraq, now", was about the time that he declared victgory. Before the war, the American public was more inclined to support continued inspections.
You just can't expect to fight a war that everyone agrees will be decades long, with a mandate of barely 50% of the public. We didn't go into Vietnam with that kind of mandate, and we've never fought a successful war against a significant foe with those kinds of numbers.
Where there is a similarity is in the strategic blindness that led Alcibiades to put so much of his strength into a battlefield so far away and unimportant to Athens and unnecessary in that Syracuse was not a true foe of Athens (just as Bush got us involved in a hopeless occupation of a shitty little country all the way around the other side of the world, a country that had been an ally in the struggle against Islamic fundamentalism, and for the unnecessary rationale of stopping non existant WMDs).
Maybe it's easier to sell the idea of a faraway military adventure to the public because the public isn't familiar with the detailed understanding of what the military conquest of such a mysterious and distant land could require. It sounded like a great idea at the time, and was widely expected to be a great success here on this thread, this despite the many indications that there would be plenty of well armed Iraqis willing to shoot at an occupying force.
-- Carl
P.S. An interesting essay on Alcibiades' generalship:
Alcibiades captured the interest of the Athenians in a way unlike that of any of his contemporaries. We know he was a great personality, a great seducer, but was he a good general? Throughout his lifetime, opinions on him were mixed: some considered him a danger to the state and the cause of its downfall; others believed that he could lead Athens to a position of ascendancy and, later, that he might still save her from ruin.
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Thucydides indicates that Alcibiades was similarly heedless in his ambition when he encouraged the expedition against Sicily. Thucydides' narrative suggests that Nicias was right in his estimation of the strength of the Sicilian states; and Thucydides comments that his wise advice was ignored because Alcibiades was able to mislead and persuade an "overly-eager multitude."[8] In both cases, Alcibiades' bold but imprudent policy, when adopted by the Athenians, had detrimental consequences.
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brown.edu
My feeling on Alcibiades is that he's a lot more similar to George Armstrong Custer, than George Bush. Overconfident, rather than just plain stupid. |
