Assyria and Us

Before going on about how we compare to the ancients, I should say that people were having a problem commenting on this blog. The link has been fixed now, so comment away.

Let’s start with us:  I’ve heard many times that the U.S. spends more than any other country on the military. We’re responsible for 43% of the world total. Now I find—in time for tax day, when it is most likely to gall me—that our military spending has nearly doubled in the last nine years, from $379 billion in 2001 to $698 billion in 2010. And that’s in real dollars, not inflated ones. (http://www.sipri.org/research/armaments/milex/factsheet2010)

Meanwhile, the country is going broke. I feel like I’m married to a junkie, watching him drain the family budget, wondering how long it will be before we’re out on the street. Back in 2001 the Neocons began talking about American exceptionalism, as though this country was exempt from the historical forces that affect other nations. I don’t know if they’re still promulgating that theory, but it’s been taken up by the Mad Hatters of the Tea Party.

Every empire seems to delude itself in the same way, but the one I studied while researching my book was Assyria. At the beginning of the 9^th Century BCE, the Assyrians lived on a tiny strip of not-very-fertile land—about 2/3 the size of modern Israel. Hostile tribes surrounded them and controlled the trade routes. Initially they fought a war of national liberation. In the process they developed military skills that overwhelmed their contemporaries. The now free nation metastasized into a predatory state, conquering its neighbor in order to devour their resources. Their shock-and-awe techniques were the ancient equivalent of carpet bombing or napalming. In those days it wasn’t necessary to pretend you were bringing democracy or civilization to your victims.

By 640 BCE the Assyrians controlled their world from Egypt to the Persian Gulf. Originally the Assyrians were farmers and citizen-soldiers. Those citizen-soldiers became aristocrats, turning over the dirty work of farming to lesser people, and hiring mercenaries to do the soldiering. The end came shockingly fast. Egypt regained its independence, the Babylonians revolted, the Medes attacked, and by 610 the empire had ceased to exist.

I feel like I'm looking in a very scary distant mirror, and wondering what we can do to change course.