shag carpet bomb wrote:
>
> the neo-corpus that i read at PNAC is based on the premise: once you
> are number one, you must do everything to maintain that position. no one is
> a friend, everyone an enemy. maybe a handful are frenemies. All of them are
> jealous and want to take you down and take your shit. Never sit still for a
> minute. never assume you're safe. they're all out to getchya.
It's been decades since I read Thucydides, but if I remember correctly, this rather parallels the defense Pericles offered for the Peleponneisan War, though like most Athenians he was a bit less hypocrtical abut it than u.s. ideologists. Rougthly: Our imperialist plicies and our tyranny over other cities have put us in the positon of riding the tiger(not his metaphor), and so we have to keep fighting. Perhaps someone on thelist has a fresher memoery of Thucydies on Pericles than I offer here.
Carrol