In an op-ed in Sunday's WaPo, CJCS Admiral Mullen advanced the theory that America is a reluctant Empire, a hegemon only because its allies trust it and want it to rescue and protect them...just like ancient Rome. To accomplish this slight-of-hand, he kicks off with a lengthy quote from Thomas F. Madden's book "Empires of Trust: How Rome Built - and America Is Building - a New World" in which vassals of Rome are shown by a Roman account as trusting Rome as a whole even while Rome's appointed overlord is robbing and enslaving them.

It's significant that Mullen chooses as his historian-of-choice a man who appeared in many rightwing venues in the wake of 9/11 explaining how the War on Terror was to be a "defensive war"...like the Crusades, according to Madden. But when it comes to Rome, Madden's revisionist thesis is that Rome, like the United States is so mistakenly believed to be, was an isolationist culture that preferred alliances to the use of force, and was pushed reluctantly into empire building by the desire to defend itself and its friends...because they were just trying to help the poor blue-painted barbarians by crucifying them. (To do this, he has to rely pretty much solely on Roman accounts, almost never hostile ones.) Note he doesn't deny America's empire exists - just the obvious reasons for it. It's simply a retelling of the British Victorian "White Man's Burden" fable for a New American Century. British Imperials compared themselves favorably to Rome too, and often depicted themselves as new, more noble, Romans just like Mullen is now doing.

Neoconservatives loved Madden's version of Empire. David Frum, for instance, noting glowingly how understandingly civilized Rome must have been to have waited 50 whole years before finally burning Carthage, enslaving its populace and ploughing the ground with salt. Others weren't so happy, especially with Madden's conclusion:

If you think the insurgency in Iraq is bad, Madden writes, then you should have lived in Jerusalem in the first two centuries and dealt with Jewish terrorists who believed that their allies the Romans represented an evil that must be destroyed at any cost.

The Romans, after much bloodshed, finally dealt with Jewish factionalism with brute force - legions retook Jerusalem, destroyed the Holy Temple and forced Jews to focus their religion more on synagogues and rabbinic studies than the Temple itself, blunting some of the messianic zealotry responsible for the violence.

Madden believes that the lesson for America from this ancient insurgency is that the war on terror must be fought on the religious front as well. The only way to win both militarily and politically is to modernize Islam as the Romans changed Judaism to fit into their empire.

That is, by sword, flame and exile.

That the senior uniformed officer of America's military is a fan of Madden's feeble excuses for the cruelties of war and empire is worrying. That Mullen is writing neocon-style "Hoo-ah! we're the Roman Empire - and we're proud of it!" op-eds is downright scary.

(Nicole): It's odd to me that these historical analogies seem to stop before their logical conclusion. Doesn't Mullen know that the Roman Empire didn't end so well for the Romans? Is that where he thinks we should go?
Crossposted from Newshoggers

Tom Ricks, hagiographer to generals and much-lauded fellow of the Obama administration's "counterinsurgency HQ" at the Center for a New American Security, finally comes out and says it: the US has accepted the White Man's Burden from previous colonial empires and will be meddling in the Middle East for centuries, "following in the footsteps of Alexander the Great, the Romans and the British".

For thousands of years, it has been the fate of the West's great powers to become involved in the region's politics. [as if they had no choice - C] Since the Suez Crisis of 1956, when British and French influence suffered a major reduction, it has been the United States' turn to take the lead there. And sitting on that wall, it struck me that the more we talk about getting out of the Middle East, the more deeply we seem to become engaged in it.

President Obama campaigned on withdrawing from Iraq, but even he has talked about a post-occupation force. The widespread expectation inside the U.S. military is that we will have tens of thousands of troops there for years to come. Indeed, in his last interview with me last November, Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told me that he would like to see about 30,000 troops still there in 2014 or 2015.

...So, to address the perceptive question that Petraeus posed during the invasion: How does this end?

Probably the best answer came from Charlie Miller, who did the first draft of policy development and presidential reporting for Petraeus. "I don't think it does end," he replied. "There will be some U.S. presence, and some relationship with the Iraqis, for decades. . . . We're thinking in terms of Reconstruction after the Civil War."

He goes on to explain that, no matter when the US eventually leaves, there'll be a civil war in Iraq.

Toby Dodge, a British defense expert who was an occasional adviser to Petraeus, "the current Iraqi government is full of Iranian clients. You'll almost certainly end up with a rough and ready dictatorship . . . that will be in hock to Iran."

...Maj. Matt Whitney, who spent 2006 advising Iraqi generals, predicted that once U.S. forces were out of the way, Iraqi commanders would relapse to the brutal ways of earlier days: "Saddam Hussein taught them how to [suppress urban populations] and we've just reinforced that lesson for four years," he said. "They're ready to kill people -- a lot of people -- in order to get stability in Iraq."

..."When you got to know them and they'd be honest with you, every single one of them thought that the whole notion of democracy and representative government in Iraq was absolutely ludicrous," said Maj. Chad Quayle, who advised an Iraqi battalion in south Baghdad during the surge.

So can someone explain to me how squandering "blood, treasure, prestige and credibility" for decades to simply delay the inevitable is better than getting out now? And if that explanation is forthcoming from military-enamoured liberal COIN hawks, maybe while they're at it they can explain why, in extolling the virtues of their new and improved war-fighting and nation-building formula, they keep neglecting to be specific about the generations-long colonialism it entails.

Crossposted from Newshoggers