'300' AND THE WAR AGAINST TERROR (COMMENTARY)

There's been countless articles about how Zach Snyder's Spartan film '300' is pro-war and anti-Arab, and I'm not really going to go into that because it's been hacked to death (pun intended), to the point where even the President of Iran has his own theories about the film.

I have yet to see '300', but the Battle of Thermopylae has significance to the current war in Iraq and Afghanistan from a different perspective, one that is not even broached in the film. After the battle, wherein the Spartans were eventually defeated and Athens was brutally attacked and humiliated by Xerxes and the Persian Empire, it took almost a century for the Greeks to seek justice for the invasion.

Alexander the Great, son of Phillip of Macedonia, set out East to destroy the Persian Empire, to avenge the humiliation of Greece and the slaughter of so many Greek citizens. Alexander commanded a dedicated battalion of tough, rugged Macedonian soldiers across much of the civilized world, brutally hunting down the Persian King Darius, and later King Bessus. Alexander chased the Kings across Turkey, Egypt, Palestine, Israel, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan where Bessus was murdered and the Persian capital of Persepolis in Iran was burned to the ground.

This is where the story of Alexander becomes relevant to our conflict today, in a far more poignant manner than '300' could ever convey. Alexander, having avenged his Greek ancestors, pressed on into Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, driven to a manifest destiny given to him by holy Oracles from the god Zeus-Ammon. Zeus-Ammon was later said to be a divine figure of Alexander's own creation, and he alone was only to receive the divine instruction from God. Alexander's soldiers, exhausted from the 22,000 mile journey from Macedonia, started to question their leader. Their faith to him, while still strong, began to waver. Finally, after facing brutal battles in India, the soldiers stood up to Alexander, claiming they would fight no more. They had avenged the Greeks, and conquering India had no relevance to the original mission. Alexander no longer had the will and dedication of his men. He had no other choice but to call off the campaign and go home to Macedonia.

Jump millennia ahead and we have the events of September 11th. The leader behind the attacks was Osama Bin Laden, a Saudi blue-blood who attacked America for her support of Israel and the Saudi Royal Family. Thousands of Americans were killed, and the nation was humbled and humiliated. Our leader, President George W. Bush and the U.S. Congress rightfully waged a military campaign to bring Bin Laden and Al-Quaeda to justice. A battalion of US soldiers were sent to Afghanistan to hunt down and apprehend Bin Laden, to make him pay for the humiliation and massacre of the American people. Much like Alexander led the Macedonians into the heart of the Persian Empire to pay for the massacre of the Greeks by King Xerxes.

America was behind George Bush, and was determined to find Bin Laden and crush his supporters, the Taliban. Once the Taliban was nullified (and Bin Laden was on the run and reported to be in ill health), the President, his eyes full of power and listening to the words of his own faith and oracles, pursued a military campaign in Iraq. Everyone within the US establishment questioned the campaign, but under the original plan of justice for atrocities committed against America, they still stood by their leader. The confusion was this: our enemy and mission was in Afghanistan, and to press forward into Iraq had no true rationale. Much like Alexander who, after crushing Persepolis, pressed onwards to India when there was no real rationale to do so.

So into Iraq we go, our soldiers depleted and wary, and we fight a battle that only our leader knows why, and we follow him blindly, taking heavy casualties from a little understood opponent. Such was the case with Alexander, who understood little of the Indian Empire, who had never seen a military fight with war elephants. The Indians were a formidable opponent, and many Macedonians were killed.

And here is where the allegory (and this overtly simplistic account of history) ends, and the future is yet to be determined. If history repeats itself, which it has shown to do, then what can we expect in Iraq, and maybe even Iran? We have a President, George W. Bush, a born-again Christian who makes decisions according to his evangelical faith and his false idols, money and oil. Here is a man who has gone beyond the original scope of the mission, which was to bring the murderers from September 11th to justice. Bin Laden has become an afterthought, much like Bessos and Darius in Persia. Bush is persisting for reasons unknown to us, unknown to the soldiers. And like the Macedonia troops, who after the fall of Persepolis wished only to return to Macedonia to their families, our US soldiers are forced to stay in a campaign that many are no longer believing in, many are questioning the reasoning behind it.

If this precedent follows suit, then it is the US military who will stand up to the President and declare that they will follow him no more, that the plan has skewed and betrayed its original intent. We see rumblings of this, with US military generals voicing dissent and confessing to the ill vision of the commander. Whereas Alexander fought alongside with his men on the front line, President Bush keeps his men at distance, dictating orders from afar, detached from his men, taking orders from Oracles that no one knows or understands. I imagine it would be difficult to fight for a leader who has distanced himself from your struggles. He will not fight alongside with you, he has nothing at stake, you are going to die for a man you've never seen.

Greece and Macedonia were the greatest democracies of their time, and it was the Macedonian troops who exercised their democratic right by speaking out against their leader, by questioning his motives, by noncompliance. They were not only soldiers for Greece, they were also citizens of a democracy. Perhaps then the United States, which is currently the greatest democracy of its time, should follow suit, and the citizens of its democracy, of its volunteer army, should question and ultimately disband itself from the ill conceived and justified plans of its delusional leader.

One man cannot win a war. Alexander understood that and retreated, and prevented the further slaughter of ancient civilizations. But then again Alexander was a smart man, a pupil of Aristotle. We can only hope that George Bush can spell 'Aristotle.'