What began as a weekend war, according to The Donald, seems to have stretched well into the year, which only proves to me that underestimating your enemy happens to the best of us, despite being the worst mistake an aggressor can make. The belief that you can influence your own future is a fine trait—“All things be ready if our minds be so,” according to Henry V—but a positive psychology, while fine for selling real estate, is helpful only up to a point in warfare.
Looking back, history provides us with a plethora of overconfident leaders, ironically starting with the Persian kings who underestimated the small Greek nations existing quietly to the west. They now call themselves Iranian, but were Persians for most of their history. (The shah changed the name in order to prove they were Aryans.) The Persians and their neighborhood have a very long history that begins way up high and drifts downwards. The 20th century has to be the nadir, a time when the Brits and the Americans ran the place so they could control its oil, with Persian leaders like the shah playing along, pretending to be the boss. Then came the ayatollah, and you know the rest.
Going back to 500 B.C., Darius I was one of the most powerful in the ancient world. He moved to subjugate Greece after being wheedled into it by his wife Atossa, or so I was taught as a child: She demanded he bring back exotic Greek slave girls to wait on her. Admittedly, the Netanyahu con of The Donald—that it would be a walk in the park—pales before the Atossa challenge. The conquest was not to be.
Ten-thousand Athenians wiped the floor with the Persian invaders at Marathon, sending the vast Persian army back in disgrace. Four years later, Darius was dead, succeeded by his son Xerxes, who also was defeated at Salamis after his multi-million–man army, according to legend, had tasted victory in Thermopylae against 300 Spartans. (Only a few thousand Persians could squeeze through Thermopylae.) The Persian invasions of tiny Greece ended by the time Alexander the Great invaded Persia, subdued it, and ended the Persian–Greek wars forever.
The Romans were not known for starting wars half-cocked. Their only weakness seems to have been Cleopatra, with whom both Julius Caesar and Mark Antony fell in love, the latter with catastrophic results. Those looking for a single cause for the downfall of Rome will be disappointed. The final act took place in 1453, after close to 2,000 years of lording it over everyone, when Byzantine Constantinople fell to Mehmet, after disease and moral decadence had sapped Roman genius.
Which means the good Uncle Sam has a long way to go as top banana if he wants to even come close to the glory that was Rome. Not falling for Netanyahu’s sweet-talk should be lesson number one. And reading about Napoleon would also help. Master of Europe, the Corsican invaded Russia in 1812 with half a million men, planning to free the serfs and humiliate the fleeing Alexander. But many serfs were Russian patriots, and burnt their crops and their holdings before the invaders could use them. It was the beginning of the end for the great Napo.
His nephew, Louis Napoleon, also had a great start but a humiliating end. In exile, he plotted to restore the empire and managed to get himself elected president of France at age 40, and three years later seized power and became emperor. Instead of cuddling his numerous mistresses and girlfriends—he actually made JFK seem celibate by comparison—he sought to fight the great Prussians Bismarck and Moltke, who had recently humiliated the Austrians. (He believed that France was numero uno in battle.) The argument was over a Prussian royal on the Spanish throne. Not only did he lose at Sedan, he also fell prisoner near the battlefield and had to present himself in front of Bismarck like a naughty schoolboy. It was the end of him as far as being emperor was concerned.
The biggest bluff of power by far, however surprising it may sound, came from a man called Hitler back in 1939. Forget what the propagandists herald as the great and unbeatable Wehrmacht. As my friend the historian James Holland has proved, Germany was by no means ready for all-out war when it broke out. It did not have enough tanks, vehicles, or trained soldiers, and certainly not enough natural resources. Germany possessed insufficient quantities of iron ore, oil, copper, tungsten, bauxite, and rubber, and certainly not enough land to be farmed to fulfill the food requirements of both the population and a massive military.
I remember my father saying that there was no way Germany could win without resources; his German great uncle, a field marshal, was writing to him from Germany saying just that. The Blitzkrieg victories against the Brits, French, and Russians at the start masked the sense of impending doom that was felt by every one of the top generals and field marshals of the Wehrmacht.
The one that Hitler convinced of total victory was Mussolini, despite the latter’s son-in-law’s pleas that Italy was in no shape to fight. Count Galeazzo Ciano was throughout the war against Italy’s involvement, and paid for it with his life. The Donald’s son-in-law, alas, will only reap more billions from the Saudis, and unlike Fascist Italy, the USA does not execute the sons-in-law of presidents. (Pity.)
Needless to say, Uncle Sam has not unleashed his most fearsome arsenal on the Persians. This is a good thing. Perhaps if The Donald read more history and listened to historians rather than real estate sharks and Netanyahu, oil prices would be down, inflation under control, and Greek shipowners would not be printing money.
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