On Emperor Justinian and G.W. Bush
I got into a short debate with someone on another blog and I seem to have been grossly misunderstood, so I decided to elucidate here.
I made allusions to the similarities between G.W. and Justinian I, emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire during the 6th century, AD.
I would like to direct my readers to this article about the time period. I'm going to copy anything out of there as the article explains things better than I can.
Basically, Justinian could not abide by the Western Empire being in the hands of barbarians, and so, he went to war with them and at the same time pretty much devastated, both physically and economically, the land he was trying to reconquer ( and that conquest was short-lived) from the Ostrogoths and Lombards.
Bush is the same. He couldn't stand it that Hussein was still in power. He used false information to fool the public and congress into supporting his war. He has, in his years as president, devastated his own country economically. Republicans can say all they want about how that's not true, but Clinton left the Oval Office with a surplus in the budget. Bush will not be able to say the same. Bush has done little to address domestic issues (except, apparently, the all-important issues of Gay Marriage and Flag Burning). I could go on and on, but I've said all this before.
I also mentioned in this debate that the Arab world now hates the US, and the country they see as the US's proxy in the Middle East, even more than they ever did because of the Bush Crusade. Sure, they hated the US and Israel before. But now it's far worse. See this post.
8 comments:
Hey Barak,
I followed you over here from DovBear. I read the SparkNotes history that you linked to. (Whether we should be using SparkNotes to give a definitive judgment on slightly complex historical questions is another issue.) In any case, maybe you can provide me a quote because I didn't really see the article saying what you did.
I think that you're imputing Justinian and Bush's decisions to unflattering motives that you can't possibly know. (Which is and should be a separate issue from the efficacy of those decisions.)
[As an aside, you attributed the fall of the Roman Empire to Justinian's "Bushlike" decisions.
1) For one thing, when Justinian was empire, the Roman Empire as we know it (in Rome)was long gone. Justinian was the Byzantine Emperor, as your Sparknotes pointed out.
2) Justinian's army lost the war for Rome and Italy and did serious damage there in the process. But it was far from the end of the Byzantine Empire. It lasted for almost 1000 more years.
3) Justinian is actually considered to be one of the Empire's better rulers. He introduced a new uniform law code which is still the basis for a large part of modern Western civil law. Though his Italian campaign failed and stretched his forces thin, Justinian presided over a huge expansion of the empire's territory.]
So, though at this point I agree that Bush is largely a failure, I'm not sure why that makes any comparison to Justinian relevant. (This aside from the fact that Justinian was not an abject failure; at the worst he was a mixed bag for the Byzantines.)
Between you an Ma?, I want to know if anyone on DovBear doesn't read history through political glasses.
I do. But I also truly believe in the maxim of "Those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it."
I understand you don't like making comparisons between them. That's fine. I see comparisons, so I make them. You want to dispute them, great. You may be right. Or I may be right. We may both be right.
Theodoric was ruling what was left of the Empire better than it had been ruled for quite a while until he was threatened by the outside.
The classes I took on the this subject made it pretty clear what and why Justinian did what he did. The point was that even though at that point Western Europe was pretty much in the hands of "barbarians," things were pretty much the same. Once Justinian came along, things changed drastically for the worse.
Before Bush came along, things were pretty ok. You want to dispute that, great. I have a very close friend is, unfortunately, a Republican, and is one of the staunch ones who believe everything the party does is God-directed and therefore the correct thing to do. Most of the country at this point does not agree with this (based on a recent Newsweek poll, Bush has about a 26% approval rating...). As I said in my post, Bush has screwed up this country and its reputation in several ways.
Anyway, we can agree to disagree...:)
Abe,
If I had the time to write a proper paper to present here, I would. Unfortunately, with watching two kids and trying to run a business from home, I just don't have the time. But based on the views I learned in college, I see some very disturbing similarities between these two rulers.
Ciao.
I'm afraid you mis-stereotyped me. Not particularly a Bush fan (though I think that the hate Bush crowd such as the one on display at DovBear does a disservice to their position in the way that they present the issue).
I'm not sure why you bring up your Republican friend, but if you're trying to pigeonhole me, I'm not a true believer. An agnostic, in fact. Besides, what do opinion polls have to do with anything. The fact that most Americans disapprove of the job that Bush is doing tells you only that most Americans disapprove. (And that if the election were today, he wouldn't be reelected.) It's worth something, but it doesn't really tell you if he's a good president.
In any case, the Democratic Congress' polling is right down there with Bush's.
Anyhow, enjoy the child rearing. I'm liking your blog; I'll be back.
Thanks!!
Wondering if you read this today?
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/weekinreview/01goodheart.html?ref=us
Thanks! I'm going to post the link...
Post a Comment