Letter to the Book Review Editor of The New York Times, 10/23/05
Paul Johnson’s review of Victor Davis Hanson’s “A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans fought the Peloponnesian War” (Book Review, 10/23/05) does not spell out why “Hanson sees the United Sates as sharing Athenian hubris and inviting nemesis by trying to export democracy to countries like Iraq and Afghanistan.” Athens was trying to export democracy but also to dominate the region and to increase its great wealth. The wars with Sparta were expensive enough, and it seems unlikely that Athens, a great naval power without a great army, could long have held hegemony over the Hellenic world. Invading Sicily, as urged by ambitious orators who promised more than they could deliver, overstretched the Athenian military and economy, with drastic results.
Johnson quotes Hanson as stating, “Perhaps never has the Pelopennesian War been more relevant to Americans than it is to us of the present age.” Hanson is correct: our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are stretching our military dangerously, depleting our economy, turning allies against us, turning adversaries into enemies, and spreading religious and ethnic hatreds. All this encourages terrorism and theocracy, makes the development of successful democracies in the Arab world less likely and makes us all less secure. This is indeed hubris. Gerald M. Levitis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peloponnesian_War
