The Lex Gabinia

Paul Krugman is an excellent commentator as his facts are accurate and whether one agrees with his points (as I usually do) or not, he speaks truth and his words are worthy of consideration. This blog entry of his on a certain aspect of Roman law resonated with me as it seems to fit these days & times and so, I wish to share.

People on the right are constantly comparing the United States to ancient Rome, saying we are on the face of a moral decline and so, will be subject to the same sort of fall. While I have and do agree, it is for entirely different, albeit non-moral reasons - The United States is going to fall as we have given supreme power to a wannabe dictator, hence the parallel. Especially if we keep going in the same direction as we have these last 8 years.

From a linked NY Times Article:

In the autumn of 68 B.C. the world’s only military superpower was dealt a profound psychological blow by a daring terrorist attack on its very heart. Rome’s port at Ostia was set on fire, the consular war fleet destroyed, and two prominent senators, together with their bodyguards and staff, kidnapped.
But such was the panic that ensued after Ostia that the people were willing to compromise these rights. The greatest soldier in Rome, the 38-year-old Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (better known to posterity as Pompey the Great) arranged for a lieutenant of his, the tribune Aulus Gabinius, to rise in the Roman Forum and propose an astonishing new law.

The Lex Gabinia

Pompey was to be given not only the supreme naval command but what amounted in fact to an absolute authority and uncontrolled power over everyone,” the Greek historian Plutarch wrote. “There were not many places in the Roman world that were not included within these limits.

From the Wikipedia article:

The powers Pompey was granted were proconsular powers in any province within 50 miles of the Mediterranean Sea with a fleet of 500 warships, 120,000 and around 5,000 cavalry to fight the growing problems of pirates disrupting trade in the Mediterranean Sea.

From the linked NY Times Article:

Pompey eventually received almost the entire contents of the Roman Treasury — 144 million sesterces — to pay for his “war on terror,” which included building a fleet of 500 ships and raising an army of 120,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry. Such an accumulation of power was unprecedented, and there was literally a riot in the Senate when the bill was debated.
But it was too late to raise such questions. By the oldest trick in the political book — the whipping up of a panic, in which any dissenting voice could be dismissed as “soft” or even “traitorous” — powers had been ceded by the people that would never be returned. Pompey stayed in the Middle East for six years, establishing puppet regimes throughout the region, and turning himself into the richest man in the empire.

& ten years later Julius Caesar received similar powers and was followed by a long line of Roman dictators, each more greedy, foolish & bloodthirsty than the last. And thus ended the power of the Roman Senate & years later, the Roman Empire itself.

In 2002, did the United States do a similar thing to itself when GW was granted his now all-encompassing authorization to use military force in Iraq?