Men do not rest content with parrying the attacks of a superior, but often strike the first blow to prevent the attack being made. And we cannot fix the exact point at which our empire shall stop; we have reached a position in which we must not be content with retaining but must scheme to extend it, for, if we cease to rule others, we are in danger of being ruled ourselves. Nor can you look at inaction from the same point of view as others, unless you are prepared to change your habits and make them like theirs."

– Alcibiades before the Athenian Assembly, 416 B.C.

It is written that there is nothing new under the sun. Some 2,421 years ago, a politician convinced a powerful democracy that in order to defend itself from an enemy that had attacked it, it was necessary to attack an enemy that had not attacked it. In the event that the analogy I am drawing here is not immediately apparent to the reader, the relevant comparisons are Athens to America, al Qaida plus Saudi Arabia plus Iran to Sparta, and Iraq to Syracuse.

Like Alcibiades before him, George Bush has staked his entire strategy on the idea that Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish Iraqis are all burning to breathe free, assuming that breathing free is equivalent to a strictly limited democracy subject to constitutional power-sharing enforced by foreign arms. That the current situation is vastly preferable to living under a murderous dictatorship is undeniable, however, this is not to say that any of the so-called Iraqis who identify with one of the three major factions – or others, such as the various nomadic tribes and so forth – will be content with the new order established by America and her willing coalition.