Maximus of Tyre vs. the Bush Doctrine

“if doing wrong is bad, then so too is doing wrong in return...What limit will there then be to the harm done? If the victims of wrongdoing take their revenge, the harm will for ever be transferred from one to the other and perpetuate itself, and one act of wrongdoing will follow another. The same justification by which you allow the victim to take his revenge is equally effective in allowing the right of retaliation to pass back from him to the original offender; the justification is open to both of them equally. For God’s sake, look at what you have brought about! Justice compounded of wrongs! How far will the mischief go? Where will it come to rest? Don’t you realize that this is an inexhaustible source of wickedness that you are opening up, that you are laying down a law that will lead the whole earth into harm? It was just this principle that brought men the great misfortunes of days gone by, armed expeditions of foreigners and Greeks crossing to attack each other, robbing and warring and plundering, and making the preceding wrong their excuse for each new one. The Phoenicians kidnap a royal princess fro Argos; the Greeks kidnap a foreign girl from Colchis; then the Phrygians strike again, taking a Spartan woman from the Peloponnese. It is obvious how ill succeeds ill, how pretexts for war arise, how wrongs multiply. This same process brought Greece into destructive conflict with herself too – self-styled victims of wrongs attacking their neighbours, in inexhaustible rage and undying anger and lust for revenge and moral ignorance.”