Odysseus in America (45 page)

Like ending chattel slavery, ending the social practice of war will be the work and struggle of centuries. Clausewitz famously said, “War is a continuation of politics by other means.” Tyranny is Clausewitz on his head: tyranny is the prosecution of war by means of political institutions. When a state declares war on a segment of its own population, we call it genocide. As a practical matter, if we wish to end wars
between
states, we must also end the wars that states wage against their own people, as the events in the
Balkans show so clearly. Destruction of an ethnic minority in one country becomes a casus belli in a neighboring country where that minority is the majority. It simply doesn't work to turn one's back and say, “That's an internal affair.”

How do we do this? You will be disappointed to hear that the answer is already so familiar that it may seem tedious: trustworthy collective security. To end war, every nation and every population within every nation must have well-founded confidence in their own safety. This was essentially Kant's argument two centuries ago. In liberal republics, citizens do not fear being killed or enslaved by their own governments, so there is the first echelon of protection for their populations. The second layer of protection would be—and Kant necessarily argued this without historical evidence—that a universal regime of collective security among republics would end wars among themselves.
²⁰

An enduring sense of surprise—a heartening surprise—in my work with American military professionals on prevention of psychological and moral injury in military service is that
they
are not the obstacles to the elimination of war. Those who have been in it hate it with more passion than I am ever likely to match.

The service of the soldier will still be needed in the collective security regime that Kant envisioned. International peace, according to Kant, is domestic peace writ large. So we have a paradox: to have peace we need soldiers—whose main task is making war.

Even if the United States cannot and should not be the only policeman for the world, this does not mean the world does not need soldiers—the international equivalent of the police in a collective security regime—nor mean that the United States shouldn't actively support the police. As freelance military and paramilitary organizations, such as al-Qaeda, acquire more powerful weapons and communications technology,
²¹
it should be doubly evident that the world needs people with the
thumos
to be soldiers.

Those who sacrifice in military service rightly enjoy profound honor. They sacrifice their lives and body parts, sometimes their sanity, and according to my analysis, they sacrifice their freedom when plunged into war. In a peace-ensuring system of trustworthy collective security, those who offer to do the soldier's work, to risk all that, and sacrifice all that for peace, truly deserve our honor. These paradoxical strains are part of what we must take on in ending the human practice of war.

The original Abolitionists understood that their work would take more than one lifetime. They passed it as a heritage to their children. In the
words of the Talmud, “You are not expected to finish the job, but neither are you free to lay it down.”

The shared experience and aftermath of the attack on the New York World Trade Center and on the Pentagon produced bittersweet reactions among the veterans of VIP On the one hand, they were flooded with sensory-reliving symptoms: the smell of burning jet fuel, the stench of dead bodies, rage, the gut-twisting sense that another attack is coming—but where?—the hunger to personally hit back. On the other hand, one veteran after another reported seeing the light of comprehension coming on in the eyes of family members, neighbors, employers. “I
get
it! This is what it's been for you …” Like combat vets with PTSD, ordinary Americans had nightmares, intrusive memories, constant, obsessive thoughts about airplane and anthrax attacks. Like combat vets with PTSD, they lost interest in many things they had previously thought very important. Sex? Forget it. Laughter? Forget it. They became jumpy and hypervigilant.

The country as a whole rediscovered a great many lessons about cohesion and how it controls fear. I hope readers will see the connection—between the courage-making power of solidarity and the moves I have advocated in this book to protect and strengthen our troops.

Odysseus' wife, Penelope, and son, Telemachus, have lived for ten years knowing that the Trojan War is over, and that Odysseus made it out of Troy alive. But where is he? Penelope is still beautiful (and rich,
if
Odysseus
and
Telemachus are dead), and surrounded by all the ambitious and aggressive young men in the area, competing for the widow's hand. Not satisfied simply to pay her court, the suitors carouse in Odysseus' manor house on the island of Ithaca, feasting from his herds and storerooms, drinking his wine, and taking their pleasures with his maidservants. The suitors press Penelope to quit stalling and choose one of them to replace her missing-and-presumed-dead husband. The boy Telemachus is an adolescent with an absent father, who has heard how great his dad was, but his mother's candidate husbands are the only men on the scene now. Desperate to know whether he is really an orphan as he fears, he leaves home to visit his father's comrades on the mainland who have already made it back from Troy. The suitors secretly plot to assassinate Telemachus on his way back. This will give them control of Odysseus' wealth and lands, once Penelope picks one of them as her new husband.

Not too flattering for Odysseus, we find him alive and bedded down with the lovely sea goddess Calypso on her distant island where he's a cast-away. But the gods on Mount Olympus tell her to let him go; even though she's beautiful and has been very nice to him, after seven years, he's tired of her and wants to get home. The trouble is, he's lost his whole squadron and his own ship. With her reluctant help he builds a raft and sets out across the sea, only to be shipwrecked again, and washed up naked and half dead in a river inlet on the island of Phaeacia. With a nudge from his patron goddess, Athena, Princess Nausicaa goes to this very same river, and they meet. Odysseus is nothing if not charming to beautiful young girls, and he persuades Nausicaa to give him clothes and entrée to her parents' court and its hospitality. He does not reveal who he is. He fills his hungry belly and hears the great court poet sing true stories of the Trojan War. This bard is the genuine article. The complacent Phaeacian nobles are hugely entertained by these stories of the war—but when Odysseus hears them he weeps and weeps. The king notices and presses him to say who he is.

Odysseus reveals his identity and agrees to tell his story: (1) Shortly after leaving Troy, his squadron sacks the city of Ismarus, escaping with serious losses during a counterattack. The squadron then is blown off course to the (2) Land of the Lotus Eaters, who offer the men an addicting drug, and then to (3) the island inhabited by the Cyclopes (plural of Cyclops), one of whom eats several of his crew. Escaping from there, the squadron fetches up on (4) a floating island ruled by King Aeolus, who can control the sea winds and who helps Odysseus and his squadron get straight home to Ithaca. After screwing this up within sight of home and losing Aeolus' further help, Odysseus' exhausted squadron pulls into (5) the peaceful fjord of the Laestrygonians, which looks like a safe place to rest. The inhabitants surprise and sink all the ships in the squadron, except Odysseus' own ship, which alone was moored outside the fjord. Terrified and bereaved,
they row away from the slaughter and land on (6) the island of the beautiful witch, Circe, who turns all her guests but Odysseus into pigs. After getting the upper hand, Odysseus persuades her to restore his crew. She gives him sailing instructions from there that lead through (7) the Land of the Dead. Here he meets the ghosts of his dead comrades Achilles, Agamemnon, and Ajax and of others, including his mother, who has died while he was away at the Trojan War. He learns from the ghost of Teiresias that if he reaches home alive, he then must leave again to complete one last trial. Returning to Circe for more instructions, he continues on past the dangers of (8) the island of the Sirens, and (9) the many-headed monster Scylla and the nearby whirlpool Charybdis, to (10) the island where the sun god keeps his cattle. There, Odysseus' crew disobeys him by killing and eating some of the sacred cattle and brings down the god's destruction of the last ship and crew. Odysseus rides some flotsam past (11) the giant whirlpool of Charybdis. Odysseus alone survives and washes up on (12) the island of Calypso, where we found him at the beginning of Part Two.

The Phaeacian king and queen are deeply impressed by the truth and glory of Odysseus' story and give him a pile of valuable gifts and a free ride home to Ithaca. Disoriented on the beach at Ithaca and unable to recognize his homeland, Odysseus meets his patron, the goddess Athena, who tells him where he is and disguises him as an old beggar so the people of his homeland won't recognize him. She tells him of the dangerous situation with the suitors, and assures him his son is safe. She instructs Odysseus to go to the hut of his loyal servant, the pig farmer Eumaeus, rather than head straight home. Athena then flies off to tell Telemachus to hurry back, but only to Eumaeus' hut, avoiding the ambush laid by the suitors. Odysseus cannot immediately enlist Eumaeus, because there's been a steady stream of con artists passing through Ithaca. It's been twenty years since he left, and who knows what he looks like? When Odysseus says he knows that Odysseus is close by, Eumaeus politely calls him a liar. Odysseus tells a heartrending life story—which
is
a complete pack of lies—and in response, Eumaeus tells his equally heartrending, but true, life story. They weep together. Then Telemachus arrives and son and father are reunited. They
test each other, and after Odysseus reveals himself, discuss their common enemy, the mob of suitors.

Telemachus and Odysseus make their way separately to the palace. In his beggar's disguise, Odysseus appears at the door, where his son, playing along with the beggar ruse, piously and charitably admits him to the palace. The suitors again show themselves to be disgusting hooligans, just “asking for it,” punishment from the gods. Taking Odysseus as a penniless bum, they abuse him in various ways, even though he now enjoys the religious and political protection of the manor's hospitality. There are more than a hundred suitors, and Odysseus has to be very careful not to tip his hand and get himself killed. Apart from Telemachus, no one knows who he is, and given all the scammers who have shown up, who is going to believe the kid if he tells them? After the suitors clear out for the night, Odysseus remains behind and gets an audience with Penelope on the pre-text that he has news of Odysseus. Both because Penelope has had her hopes raised and dashed by con men and because the goddess Athena guarantees his disguise, she does not recognize him. However, his childhood nurse, Eurycleia, does, and almost blows his disguise. But maybe because of the subliminal effect of his actual presence, Penelope sets the next day, a feast day to Apollo the Archer God, for the trial of Odysseus' bow. To win her in marriage a suitor must string it and shoot an arrow through the lined-up holes of twelve axe-head sockets—one of Odysseus' favorite stunts before he went off to war. After prayers and omens before dawn, Odysseus arises to prepare himself, his son, and two loyal servants for the coming feast, trial, and battle with the suitors, who crowd back into the hall to resume their rowdy binge.

Penelope fetches the bow, a stiff, powerful hunting bow that few men are strong enough to string, much less shoot straight. She carries it to the hall
where the suitors are drinking and abusing the disguised Odysseus. She announces the contest for her hand in marriage and leaves. They try to string it and fail. Telemachus, who of course knows the beggar's identity, fakes an argument with Eumaeus to get the bow into his father's hands without tipping off the suitors. Odysseus quickly strings the bow, and puts arrow after arrow into the suitors. When his arrows are gone, he and his son and two comrades battle with spears against the still superior number of living suitors, but after killing some in a pitched battle they panic the rest and slaughter them as they try to flee the locked house. Odysseus has identified all the maidservants who had been sluts with the suitors and orders them to drag the corpses from the hall and wash up the suitors' blood and their terror-loosed shit; then he has Telemachus kill the maids.