Monday, March 19, 2007

Quartus Annus

Bush's Iraq War (March 20, 2003 - March 19, 2007):
"Assumptions that would have been unthinkable even a few decades previously were becoming commonplace. Enthusiasts for empire argued that Rome had a civilizing mission; that because her values and institutions were self-evidently superior to those of barbarians, she had a duty to propagate them; that only once the whole globe had been subjected to her rule could there be a universal peace. Morality had not merely caught up with the brute force of imperial expansion, but wanted more."
-- Holland, RUBICON: The Last Years of the Roman Republic
(Anchor Books Random House, 2003), p. 262-63

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