EBB AND FLOW

“You must note beside, that we have tried the utmost of our friends, our legions are brim-full, our cause is ripe. The enemy increases every day. We, at the height, are ready to decline. There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted - all the voyages of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat and we must take the current when it serves or lose our ventures.”… Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act IV, Scene III

Judging the state of the tide is an art. The virtuoso gains the flood and is sped on his way. The casual navigator is seized by the ebb and driven on the shoals. So it was with Brutus who spoke with such confidence to Cassius as they led their legions to meet Octavius and Antony on the fateful field of Philippi. What was left of their lives was indeed bound in shallows and in miseries as they found themselves alone on the field without the friends they had tried to the utmost.

And so it is that the President has misjudged the tide omitting to take it at the flood. With the Defense Secretary as his Casca and the Secretary of State his Cassius he is bound for battle filled with confidence born of imperial ambition and hubris. Our friends have fallen away. Our legions stand alone.

We had allies in Afghanistan for the tide was full and the cause we espoused was just and the case for war was strong. Yet even then President kept moving the mark he expected the Taliban to toe were they to avoid the war that came to them. And when the battle joined and the Taliban first fought then fled, the just objective painted with such vivid clarity to a world of friends faded into vagueness and moved to the margins as his legions came, saw, conquered then left a garrison behind to pacify a restless and fractured land.

The tide was slack when last we passed the Ides of March and the President set his bellicose course for Iraq. When first the Congress and then the Security Council endorsed his plan without dissent it was easy to mistake the state of the tide. But he has tried our friends to the utmost with fabricated illusions of smoke and mirrors, inflated claims and misdirections. The tide turned to the ebb. Each day another friend steps from the line of march and at the height we, like Brutus’ tide, are ready to decline.

He would be Octavius with Britain as his Antony. Yet it is Brutus and Cassius who march on for Philippi to run upon their swords and Antony abides his fate at Actium.