Wow, this is really powerful stuff by Kristof.  Those who forget the past are indeed doomed to repeat it:

To me at least, Melville captures the trajectory of the Bush years. It begins with a president who started out after 9/11 with immense support at home and abroad and a genuine mandate to fight terrorism. But then Mr. Bush became obsessed by his responsibility to prevent another terror attack.

This was an eminently worthy goal, but Mr. Bush abandoned traditional rules and boundaries — like bans on torture and indefinite detentions — and eventually blundered into Iraq. And in a way that Melville could have foretold, the compulsive search for security ended up creating insecurity.

Melville’s lesson is that even a heroic quest can be destructive when we abandon all sense of limits. And at a time when we hear the siren calls of moral clarity, the classics almost invariably emphasize the importance of moral nuance, an appreciation for complexity, the need for humility.

So, students, study those classics. They are timeless — and in the days of the Iraq war and Guantánamo, they have never been more timely.

This line really captures what's critical -- and what I think Obama understands: "And at a time when we hear the siren calls of moral clarity, the classics almost invariably emphasize the importance of moral nuance, an appreciation for complexity, the need for humility."

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January 23, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

Et Tu, George?

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF 

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/01/23/opinion/23kristof.html

 

Maybe George W. Bush is the education president after all. Whatever one thinks of his No Child Left Behind initiative, he has made the classics powerfully resonant today.

So for those schoolchildren and university students out there struggling through “Moby-Dick” or the “Aeneid,” take heart! They’re not just about white whales or Trojan wanderers — they’re also about President Bush and Iraq.

Forget the Vietnam analogy that critics of the Iraq war usually toss out. A more trenchant analysis of Iraq-style adventures appears in the histories of Thucydides, written 2,400 years ago.