The American Spectator

Reader Mail

After the Fall

5.30.07 @ 12:01AM

IMPERIAL DEBRIS
Re: Paul J. Cella's The Last Sunrise:

The article on the fall of Constantinople is highly relevant to the battle against Islamic terrorism. The Eastern Roman Empire for centuries was the foundation of order and civilization in the Middle East, it survived repeated Islamic invasions and always managed to keep the invaders out of Europe. Once the Empire had fallen the Turks occupied the Balkans and twice reached the walls of Vienna, creating the conditions for wars that we are still dealing with now. Once Islamic armies are entrenched, you lose everything and it might take centuries and a lot of bloodshed to get your liberties back.

The Eastern Roman Empire might well have survived but for internal disunity, bad leadership and attacks from Christian forces who should have been allies (in particular the Venetians) that sapped the Empire's strength at critical times. Constantinople had been undermined by bad and corrupt government when it was sacked in 1204 by the Fourth (Unholy) Crusade after Venice managed to divert the crusaders from going to the Holy Land to attacking Constantinople instead. You never hear the jihadists complaining about that particular crusade -- it was a catastrophe for the West that gets nothing like the attention it deserves in the history books. The Empire never recovered from this defeat and the civil wars that followed and the Ottoman Turks managed to pretty much walk in and pick up the pieces one by one. The Empire rotted from within well before it was defeated from without, two centuries later.

The war against Islamic terrorism is going pretty much the way it went for the Eastern Roman Empire -- worthless allies, disunity, internal moral weakness and failure, incompetent and self-serving leaders and endless failures to recognize threats and to act decisively against them in good time. Leaders who can't warn against these things and organise their people to oppose them in their own interests do not deserve to be appointed. Too bad they will not be around in 500 years to explain, once again, how a second great empire crumbled to dust in the face of a threat that it should have soundly thrashed centuries before.
-- Christopher Holland
Canberra, Australia

One has to wonder how future historians will chronicle our fall. A Nation of 300 million with the highest standard of living on the planet, the strongest economy, the strongest military on a man for man basis and we can't control our own borders or subdue a third world back water Nation like Iraq where most of the people there want peace and a rising standard of living. Over 10 million foreigners have invaded our country and no one takes the least bit of offense at that.

Add to all this a divided Nation, half wanting what no signer of the Declaration of the Independence would have signed for and willing to sell out their mother for one more vote on election day and you have the stage for the eventual fall of the greatest Nation this world has ever known. If self government is to survive it will either rise to the occasion as required or fall by the way side like Rome did. Rome and Greece both fell from the pentacle of achievement when they stopped believing in themselves. Half this Nation's population would feel better living somewhere else. Every hyphenated American is testament to this. Our strength does not come from our diversity. It comes from our common ground born and paid for in blood not ballots on Election Day.

We don't pay much in blood any longer as a proportion of our glutted population. The best and brightest this Nation has to offer go to law school to figure out how to suit doctors to get rich the easy way; most of the rest go into politics to figure out how to get rich without suing anyone. What's left are fighting and dying another political correct limited war that was supposed to define our future, again. Our military may have the Spartan reputation when fighting an enemy out in the open but they share another characteristic with them too. They are a bit Spartan in numbers too. The early Romans or Greeks would not suffer this kind half arse incremental approach to war. The latter Empires wanted Peace; they got war.
-- Thom Bateman
Newport News, Virginia

Though lyrical, Mr. Cella's moving panegyric omits a coda two centuries long.

Byzantium's end is not to be found by the shores of the Bosphorus, but overlooking the blue Caribbean, in a churchyard not ten miles from the International airport where the Concorde used to land in Barbados.

There, still projecting from the hallowed ground of St. John's parish, can still be read a stone bearing this inscription, chastely framed by a Doric temple portico:

HERE LYETH YE BODY OF
FERNANDO PALEOLOGOS
DESCENDED FROM YE IMPERIAL LYNE
OF YE LAST CHRISTIAN
EMPEROR OF GREECE
CHURCHWARDEN OF THIS PARISH
1655-1656
VESTRYMAN TWENTY YEARS
DIED OCTOBER 3, 1678

How Ferdinand Paleologos came to be there is, as they say, another story.
-- Russell Seitz
Mustique, West Indies

Thank you for the report on the fall of Constantinople.

Today Tuesday 29 May, like that Tuesday of May 29th 1453, the Greeks mourn and remember...

Thanks a lot
-- Kyriacos Savoullis
Cyprus

HILLARY'S CAPITAL IDEAS
Re: Jennifer Rubin's Hillary's Die Is Cast:

The comment: "The gal who declared contemptuously that small businesses should just grin and bear Hillarycare health costs ("I can't be responsible for every undercapitalized small business in America") was at it again."; in particular the line in parentheses is typically viewed as a sign of Hillary's callousness. It is, no doubt about it. However, there is a deeper, more troubling aspect to it coming from someone who wants to dictate to one-seventh of the economy. Healthcare costs are an operating expense, not a balance sheet item, such as capital. She clearly doesn't know the difference, nor does she understand the implications of either. There isn't enough capital to continue to subsidize the losses that would occur with Hillarycare. Do we really want such a contemptuous ignoramus as President?
-- James M. Mulcahy
Grand Island, New York

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Taxes, Transportation, Hillary Clinton, Business, Entitlements, Medicaid, Islam, Books, Law, Military, Iraq, Iran, Africa, Communism, Immigration, Oil