This Hanson man

I'll bow to no one in my admiration of Victor Davis Hanson. Anyone else as irredeemably fuckwitted as him would have learned to STFU a long time ago, but Vic just ploughs on with Teh Stoopid, over and over.

In his lauding of 300, Victor makes a couple of minor errors, which are worth noting.

Thermopylae really was an unambiguous and heroic last stand to preserve freedom against tyranny

Erm, no. Although the final action of the battle of Thermopylae was a a "last stand", it's more accurate to describe the battle itself as what you might call a forlorn hope, a "forward stand" even. The purpose was to buy time for the rest of the Greeks to organise.
Nor was it a defence of freedom from tyranny. That's bullshit. The Spartans are a byword for cruel tyranny themselves. They were a warrior aristocracy, ruled by an autocrat, that had imposed itself on the local population and ruled it with a fist of steel. All citizens were compelled to serve in the army, if they survived their brutal childhood.

Alexander's invasion of Asia was morally ambiguous even to the Greeks

Well, possibly, although they didn't fall over themselves to say so. They didn't really have a problem with the morality of attacking nonGreeks.

who died in droves as mercenaries in service to the Persians to stop him

The key word here is "mercenaries". One might suggest that the Greeks who fought on the Persian side were doing so not out of moral outrage, but because they were being paid.

One notes also that Alexander fought a similar Persian ruler to the one who faced the Spartans at Thermopylae. This one was not a tyrant? How's that?

In this regard, note the success of the British - produced "Rome" which, while taking detours from history, and adding a few too many Anglicisms in the dialogue, was nevertheless a brilliant take on both the Roman ruling class and the nature of ancient life in general, so much so that most believed rightly that the modern movie and the ancient reality were nearly one and the same.

So it took liberties with the historical truth, and was not in any way authentic, but you would be right to think that it was the "ancient reality". Yeah right, and Braveheart made you feel like you really were in middle-age Scotland.

The 300 and those beside them were better than the alternative, had the moral high ground, and were willing to match deed with word.

This is close to demented. The 300 were "better than the alternative"? Tell it to the helots, man.

Interestingly, the 300 were betrayed by their own side, a Greek who didn't care for them. Most peasants couldn't care less who ruled the place. Persian rule was nothing like as onerous as Spartan, as it happens. The Persians were reasonably enlightened, informed by their Zoroastrian faith. The Greco-Persian war had complicated origins, which are hard for us to discern with certainty, because our only real source is Herodotus, who was a horrible bullshitter.

Worst of all:

Luck. A movie comes out with a stereotypical view of the Persians as aggressive, imperious, arrogant, and autocratic; it is criticized for such simplicity; but then an aggressive, imperious, arrogant, and autocratic Iranian ruling caste 2500 years later at almost the moment of its release continues to defy the world over nukes and is reduced to sordid piracy and hostage-taking.

Let's take a look. First of all, the film portrays the Persians as dark, gay and nasty. As today, Persians then were no darker than Greeks; considerably less gay (we don't call buggery "Greek sex" for nothing and classical Greeks saw nothing wrong with fucking boys: their motto was boys for pleasure, women for kids); and about even in nastiness.

But Davis Hanson is quite right that liberals take issue with the idea that Persians are aggressive, imperious, arrogant, and autocratic. Why?
Aggressive? Who invaded Iraq recently?
Imperious? Who has military bases in about 80 countries around the globe? Who has tried to spread its political philosophy, its religion, its economics around the world?
Arrogant? What? The Yanks? No! Don't say it! No one would ever say that about them.
Autocratic? Well, no one can accuse Dubya of wanting to assume ever more power, can they?

Davis Hanson is just another rightist tool (in all senses of the world). Another blowhard sneakily building a myth about Iran so that his puppeteers can start a war on it, allowing US companies to profit from its resour^H^H^bringing democracy and freedom and utter fucking chaos in which hundreds of thous^H^H^Hsorry, what exactly are we going to be bringing? I've lost me talking points.

posted by Dr Zen @ 2:35 pm