Michael J. Totten: The Poem of Force

Victor Davis Hanson frightens me, he's that intelligent. It's in moments like these that I'm most terrified of trying to go for my Masters and a PhD. I'm a pretty smart guy, I really am, but not anywhere close to this. I could never write like Victor Davis Hanson in a million years.

Posted by: Grant McEntire at June 1, 2004 12:19 AM

Also On His Website:

"We are spoiled utopians; and if we can't have our way - paradise right now on earth - we become demoralized, turn on each other, and give up. This year in Iraq is not nearly as hellish as one day on Iwo, nothing like a night over Schweinfurt, or a few hours at Normandy. And our now demonized 'neoconservative' planners haven't made half the errors of a prior generation's naive trust in Stalin, turning over Eastern Europe to totalitarians, not bombing the death camps, or attacking head on 100,000 dug-in Japanese on Okinawa...Yes, we can learn from WWII and D-Day about courage and audacity; but far more importantly, we can grasp from that generation something about quiet confidence in our civilization, a lack of arrogance about obtaining perfection, and a quiet trust in doing what we can according to our station and time. It sounds reactionary and trite to say that as a general rule I like those folks better than my own generation (I was born in 1953), but I confess I do and so might as well as admit it."

Priceless.

Posted by: Grant McEntire at June 1, 2004 12:28 AM

Even Better Yet...

http://victorhanson.com/Articles/Private%20Papers/Wages_of_Appeasement.html

An Excerpt:

"In the face of such visceral anti-Americanism, the problem may not be real differences over the West Bank, much less that "we are not getting the message out"; rather, in the decade since 1991 the Middle East saw us as a great power that neither could nor would use its strength to advance its ideas--that lacked even the intellectual confidence to argue for our civilization before the likes of a tenth-century monarchy. The autocratic Arab world neither respects nor fears a democratic United States, because it rightly senses that we often talk in principled terms but rarely are willing to invest the time, blood and treasure to match such rhetoric with concrete action."

In the words of Lawrence from Office Space: Fuckin' A.

Posted by: Grant McEntire at June 1, 2004 12:52 AM

(Grant, you beat me to all the pro-VDH stuff!)

His recent
Terrible Arithmetic
also talks about a race -- to establish Iraq democracy through killing terrorists BEFORE the US public gets tired of the US deaths and has us cutting out. He suggests a 1,000 tipping point, though I think 3,000 (approx WTC deaths) is a better number.

VDH doesn't note the power of the media against Bush; and I can't help but feel Kerry's biggest real attraction is the hope that, if he's elected, the media will stop its LOUD Bush-hate noise & spin. Many people "tired of Bush" are really just tired of the Big Media coverage against Bush.

? Vote Kerry and the media will stop being so gloomy! ?
(no comments there ... don't really want to highjack this thread -- but I haven't seen the movie yet)

Posted by: Tom Grey at June 1, 2004 01:45 AM

Yeah, a thousand probably will be the tipping point. Like a symbolic saturation point for an American populous quickly losing their stomach for casualties. We're at a little over 800, today. If we hit 1000 before November, especially if it's right before November, I'd almost guarantee a Kerry victory.

The way I see it, if the American people reach this saturation point, it'll be 1968 all over again only this time for the Republicans. All Republicans will be tainted by Iraq the way the '68 Democrats were by Vietnam and Kerry will be the Nixon-esque winner by default. The irony of all of this...the similarities, the complete and utter party reversal, the fact that John Kerry led the anti-war movement in those days, and the sheer hatred Nixon had for the guy...is pretty unbelievable.

Posted by: Grant McEntire at June 1, 2004 02:10 AM

About hijacking the thread, though...

Sorry everybody. Tom and I will try and better behave ourselves. Please commence with the discussion of Troy.

Posted by: Grant McEntire at June 1, 2004 02:12 AM

On the other hand, if MJT is going to quote VDH, and then update that it wasn't even him, why NOT hyjack it? I haven't gotten a good Iraq war liberal hawk fix from my dealer here in a week!

Posted by: Tom Grey at June 1, 2004 05:50 AM

I've seen Troy and I quite liked it, its not going to go down in history as the greatest piece of cinematography ever, but it was okay.

I've people who complain about the film not being true to the Iliad, but come on if it had tried to include the entire book the film would have been days long. Most people are not willing to watch a film for much more than three hours, so something had to be cut. It helps ease the annoyance if you think of it as a summer action movie, not a deliberate recreation of the Iliad.

As for the abscence of the gods in the film, I dont know why that was. Maybe the director was worried about mentioning the Greek gods pushing the film into the fantasy genre or something.

Posted by: sam at June 1, 2004 06:19 AM

Crap. They changed Lord of the Rings as well.

At least the Harry Potter films are pretty close to the mark.

Anyone know if anyone's planning a film version of The Inferno? Bet the CGI in that would be impressive, but I suspect that the allegory would be left out...

Posted by: double-plus-ungood at June 1, 2004 08:23 AM

Troy was absolutely awful. Laughably awful. Of the top of my head, here is where the story strays from the Illiad/Aneid/legend.

1. Helen ends up back with husband Meneleus and lives out her years. She doesn't escape with Paris and nobody kills Menelaus;

2. Hector does not kill Ajax. In fact Hector is beaten by Ajax and several other Greek warriors in battle. THAT is what makes his decsion to battle Achilles such an extraordinary act. The movie misses that completely.

3. Ajax kills Priam. Achilles doesn't come to Troy voluntarily at first.

4. Agammemnon makes it safely home with hector's wife as his servant only to be killed by his wife for haveing sacrificed Iphigenia.

I could go on and on and on. It's not the alterations to the story itself that troubled me. It's that what they were replaced with revealed an enormous ignorance of the lessons of the tale. Truly a terrible, terrible adaptation.

By comparison, the weather movie is Casablanca.

Posted by: spc67 at June 1, 2004 09:33 AM

Complaining about the lack of lessons in a summer blockbuster seems like complaining about the lack of caviar in a hot dog.

I did not go to see this film expecting to see a faithful adaption of the original legend. I went expecting to see large amounts of swordfighting and action scenes, I was not dissappointed. I would have liked to have seen a real adaption, but I'm not holdding my breath for one.

Posted by: sam at June 1, 2004 09:55 AM

Complaining about the lack of lessons in a summer blockbuster seems like complaining about the lack of caviar in a hot dog.

Perhaps, but I wish someone wouldn't try to label it caviar.

I did not go to see this film expecting to see a faithful adaption of the original legend. I went expecting to see large amounts of swordfighting and action scenes, I was not dissappointed.

My point is the real legend (how's THAT for an oxymoron) has no less swordplay and action, and in fact enhances its importance. Peterson's choices detracted from BOTH the action AND the lessons to be taken from it.

I would have liked to have seen a real adaption, but I'm not holdding my breath for one.

Yeah, I know. But it'd be a great miniseries.

Posted by: spc67 at June 1, 2004 10:11 AM

spc67,
"I would have liked to have seen a real adaption, but I'm not holdding my breath for one.

Yeah, I know. But it'd be a great miniseries."

Now there's an idea, you'd need a pretty big budget for a lot of the series but it could work. You'd have a lot more time to cover the full scale of the original story.

Posted by: sam at June 1, 2004 11:01 AM

>>>"Perhaps, but I wish someone wouldn't try to label it caviar."

I don't think anybody has labeled it as caviar. That's why the movie is called Troy, and not The Illiad.

Posted by: David at June 1, 2004 12:06 PM

For the record, I kinda liked the movie. It wasn't a masterpiece, but it didn't suck. It's worth seeing if you aren't a Homer purist.

Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 1, 2004 12:27 PM

I don't think anybody has labeled it as caviar. That's why the movie is called Troy, and not The Illiad.

But it's not supposed to be just the Illiad. The Illiad ends with the funeral games being held for Patroclus and Hector. The fall of Troy doesn't happen except as flashbacks in the Odyssey and more completely in the Aaeneid and the poems/plays or Euripides etc.

It even botched the part with Aeneas leaving the burning Troy. Anyway...

As for the labeling? Hollywood labels everything caviar, don't they? (OK, Jim Carey excepted)

Posted by: spc67 at June 1, 2004 12:31 PM

Don't spend your money on rubbish. Read a chapter from my book here for free

Posted by: Bill Clinton at June 1, 2004 12:38 PM

"He suggests a 1,000 tipping point, though I think 3,000 (approx WTC deaths) is a better number."

As usual our focus is too narrow. I read some time passed, that SINCE 9/11 about 7000 have died and about 10,000 have been wounded worldwide in Islamic terrorist attacks. While most of them were not Americans, they were killed by our common enemy.

Posted by: Dan Kauffman at June 1, 2004 12:38 PM

What about Iphigenia? Euripides thought enough about this tragic turn to write a cycle about it. I really couldn't understand the omisssion of this major plot point.

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The Poem of Force