| MontanaHatchet said: Ownership of land is decided by the most powerful people. No one really deserves the land, no matter when they lived there or what the circumstance. It's land. If the people in power believe that it should be Israel, then tough luck. |
The Athenians present the Melians with a choice: the island may pay tribute to Athens and thus survive, or fight Athens and be destroyed. The Melians respond by arguing that their neutrality should be respected, and that international law guarantees their right to neutrality. The Melians also present several other counter-arguments, namely that showing mercy towards Melos will win the Athenians more friends; that the Spartans will come to Melos' aid; and finally that the gods will protect the island.
The Athenians, however, refuse to discuss either the justice of their demand or any substantive argument advanced by the Melians. Instead the Athenians offer a sharp, simple, and oft-quoted formula of hard realism: The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. The Athenians further suggest that the Spartans are no strangers to this principle, and thus that the Spartans will not assist the weak Melians if doing so is to Sparta's disadvantage.
Yet, today, America's leaders are reenacting every folly that brought these great powers [Russia, Germany, and Japan] to ruin -- from arrogance and hubris, to assertions of global hegemony, to imperial overstretch, to trumpeting new 'crusades,' to handing out war guarantees to regions and countries where Americans have never fought before. We are piling up the kind of commitments that produced the greatest disasters of the twentieth century.
— Pat Buchanan – A Republic, Not an Empire
