IRAQ=Syracuse?

IRAQ=Syracuse?

One of the reasons for the decline and fall of the classical Athenian democracy was a disastrous attempt by Athens to coerce Syracuse, the dominant city-state on the (by ancient standards) incredibly rich island of Sicily.  The Athenian expeditionary force, plagued by internal dissension, was destroyed almost to the man.  Athens in the fifth century BC was in some ways very comparable to the United States in the early 21^st Century.  Athens had assembled a coalition to resist an implacable, imperial foe which had “enslaved” the Greek population of what is now Turkey.  Afterwards, Athens converted that anti-Persian coalition into an empire of its own  The analogy with the United States and the Cold War against the Soviet Union is too obvious to belabor.