Nixon Redux

The NYTimes has a front-pager on the new release of classified documents from the Nixon Administration, and how they relate to the current predicament. Le plus ca change, indeed.

Of course the real irony is that Johnson and Nixon made the same mistake, ignoring the lessons of history. Like those before them, they bogged their nation down in an unneeded war of aggression, prompted by an epidemic of fearful paranoia in the context of a larger geopolitical struggle. The lessons they ignored? Those laid out by Thucydides in the History of the Peloponnesian War.

Syracuse, anyone?

I'm afraid that no one in this White House has ever read the Melian Dialogue. On second, much scarier, thought, maybe they all have. What better explanation for our current foreign policy then the argument of the Athenians:

The strong do what they can; the weak suffer what they must.