For Christmas, Give Yur Politician The Iliad, Simone Weil's "The Iliad, or the Poem of Force" . . . and a bottle of Corazon tequila

Simone Weil's analysis of the Iliad entitled "The Iliad, or the Poem of Force," has been read as a pacifist statement, a reading that with the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany on September 9, 1939 Weil rejected, but it is more successful as an analysis of the dangers of using force, and the humility that should reign when one weilds it. "Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates." We've seen the results of the Bush administration's hubris in Iraq (this is not an argument against the use of force, it's an argument against a naive, oversimplistic, immature use of force) and the Olmert administration's use of air power in Lebanon. Now it appears there are plans to bomb sites in Iran, as if maybe this time air power alone will save the day. Force, as our technological skill, certainly has become intoxicating to contemporary politicians, while those who are assigned "enemies" are quickly learning that they can oppose that technological force by not responding in kind. What's clear in Weil's reading of force in the Iliad is that no one can possess it exclusively. Writing about Agamemnon, Achilles and the rest of the Greeks Weil posits, "But at the time their own destruction seems impossible to them. For they do not see that the force in their possession is only a limited quantity; nor do they see their relations with other human beings as a kind of balance between unequal amounts of force. Since other people do not impose on their movements that halt, that interval of hesitation, wherein lies all our consideration for our brothers in humanity, they conclude that destiny has given complete license to them, and none at all to their inferiors." On one side religion appears to justify "complete license," on the other side political ideals and technology. What this calls upon the American Colossus to do is to avoid oversimplifications that the "enemy" from Iran to Gaza only gather together to oppose democracy (keep in mind Hamas was elected, keep in mind a democratically-elected goverment was undermined in Lebanon) and instead of obfuscating the situation, sit down and begin to learn what language fits the force that's necessary to solve the problem.

Tuesday: Captain Langston on Rhetoric and a link to a Newshour conversation on Failed States in the Middle East.
Wednesday: Decaying Imagination, Frigglefraggling, and a new Bloody Mary recipe or as my wife says, "maybe your just heading toward alcoholic gazpacho"