Trojan War's lessons for Iraq
THE FALLUJAH insurgents are hardly the kind of people you'd want to see ruling a city, much less a country. But the grisly figure of more than 1,200 dead in the latest US-led assault is hardly something to celebrate. Whoever these insurgents may be, the one thing that is sure is that they all had mothers and fathers and perhaps families of their own. Many of those families will soon be returning to their city to look for rotting bodies, many of them shredded, in the rubble of their demolished homes.
It was to make us remember this sight that Wellesley College Theatre performed Euripides's classical tragedy "Trojan Women" this past weekend. The play is set in the direct aftermath of the Trojan War, when the Greeks finally succeed in crushing Troy after a 10-year war of attrition that was itself devastating.
What is remarkable about the play is that Euripides, despite being Greek, writes from the perspective of the Trojan women. The play is, in fact, an extended epic lament as the women grieve that their men and children have been killed, torn apart, and left for vultures to prey on; that their city has been obliterated, and with it, their lives and culture as they knew it; and that the fate that awaits them is rape.
The director of the Wellesley College production made the provocative, some would say outrageous, choice of casting the Trojan women as Iraqis. Certainly the coalition forces are not raping Iraqi women, but there is a logic to the choice, as the play continually reminds us that rape stands ultimately as a metaphor for the humiliating violation the land and its people have suffered. Further, what matters in this play is not how the war started, though with a promiscuous Helen whose sexual betrayal is the original motive, the grounds for war are made to appear unbearably flimsy; rather, what matters in the end is the irreducible and tragic fact that so many thousands of lives have been violently destroyed.
A classical tragedy is not a reliable basis for foreign policy, but it does remind us of the human cost of war on all sides, and in this way can inspire us to reimagine what a policy that truly countenances that cost might look like. It is no revelation to say, first, that to win the war on terror, Americans will ultimately have to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Arabs, and second, that the situation of the Palestinians is experienced as a corrosive wound in the Arab world that generates hostility toward the United States and even sympathy for terrorists. Especially at this moment of transition in the Palestinian leadership, the United States must help to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict in a way that does justice to both sides and shows the power of America's decency to the Arab world.
Here's one idea: Offer what it costs to wage war in Iraq for one year -- roughly $87 billion -- to Israelis and Palestinians to compensate the settlers and the refugees as part of a comprehensive two-state solution. The territorial claims of the settlers and refugees obviously go far beyond what can be accounted for in dollars, but it is also a fact that a majority of Israelis, Palestinians, Arabs -- indeed the entire international community -- supports a framework that is common to the many plans that have surfaced, including Camp David II, the so-called Saudi proposal, and more recently the Geneva initiative.
A daring offer of compensation could very well serve as the catalyst for finally achieving a lasting peace. President Bush could earn himself a place in history as an inspirational peacemaker if he used the "political capital" he has earned to roll back his tax cuts -- which amount to a few hundred dollars a year for the average family -- and inspire the country instead to sacrifice a little income for a cause that is incommensurately larger.
Within Iraq itself, the president could reduce bloodshed considerably, I believe, if he went there and spoke directly to the people. Much has been made of the (very real) power of freedom and ideas to inspire ordinary Iraqis to embrace change. Why not tour the country, including Fallujah, and address the people in secured arenas or other public places? To many Iraqis, Bush's remoteness from them is just another emblem of the untouchable supremacy of the American empire of military and corporate might.
The president can give Iraqis a taste of freedom's exhilaration with his own version of "Ich bin ein Berliner."
"Trojan Women" ends with the defeated women being dragged away as their city smolders in the distance. The play presents this as the ineluctable conclusion to the logic of the Trojan War, a logic so powerful that it rivals the power of the gods. President Bush, as the leader of the world, has the power to convert tragedy into peace.
Yu Jin Ko is an associate professor of English at Wellesley College. 