Bloated Chief

 In his family history of the Byrons and Trevanions, A.L. Rowse at one point asserts that Lord Byron (the famous one) was "no real radical," in spite of his apparent lifelong devotion to the people's cause. The evidence for this claim? Byron displayed pride in ancestry, Rowse says. He used "feudal" terms like "vassals" in many of his poems. And, most important of all—according to Rowse—he had "unquestioning admiration" for Napoleon. 

"Byron was," in all these regards, "at the opposite pole to his friend Shelley," Rowse insists, with strange confidence. 

Well, here then is exhibit #1000 in historians and biographers attributing negative personal and political traits to Byron that appear to have no basis—as far as I can tell—in his actual writings. And look—I don't mean to be a simple-minded Byron apologist or hero-worshiper; but some of the claims made against the poet just seem demonstrably false. "Unquestioning admiration" for Napoleon? How can one square that with the evidence from the poems? 

Byron devotes a whole section of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," after all, to the Napoleonic occupation of Spain. And unless we are to apply an obscure rule of interpretation according to which all words mean their opposites—he appears to be against it. No one before or since has portrayed more powerfully the scrappy underdog heroism of the Spanish guerrilla resistance to Napoleon's invasion (at least not in words—Byron did in verse what Goya conveyed in images). 

As for the French self-appointed emperor, here is Byron's choice phrase for him: "Gaul's Vulture." Speaking of Spain's heroic dead, fallen in the struggle against French imperialism, he asks: "And must they fall—the young, the proud, the brave—/ To swell one bloated chief's unwholesome reign?"

That "bloated chief" can only be Napoleon. It sounds, then, like Byron's attitude to the French ruler who betrayed the revolution was very much like that of "his friend Shelley" after all. (The latter, we know, called Napoleon a "fallen tyrant" and an "unambitious slave" who had accomplished nothing better than to "dance" upon freedom's "grave.")

I was thinking about Byron's treatment of the Spanish guerrilla resistance in "Childe Harold" yesterday, in part because of current events in Iran. By many accounts, after all, Trump's war on that country appears to be developing along the same lines as other historic incidents of asymmetric guerrilla warfare—when a heavily armed foreign power, despite overwhelming superiority in military strength, nonetheless failed to subdue a local population. Think Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc.—and, most relevantly here, early nineteenth century Spain.

Events in the Strait of Hormuz are a perfect example. The United States has practically unlimited air power and resources to bomb Iranian naval vessels and military installations. In spite of the decimation of these forces, however—which our Secretary of Defense has been so lewdly crowing about for weeks—Iran has still been able to impose a virtual blockade on oil shipments in the strait as leverage, purely through waging micro-scale insurgent tactics that are almost impossible to spot from the skies. 

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday: "It is unclear whether U.S. air power, used to scour the Iranian coastline along the strait, would be enough to provide relief. Iranians are using mobile antiship missiles to mount hit-and-run attacks and rely on what is known as a mosquito fleet of small vessels to attack tankers."

Beyond this point, of course, comparisons must cease. The Spanish guerrilla rebels in the early nineteenth century were heroic, in just the way Byron portrays. Whereas no one can make the Iranian regime out to be anyone's heroes. In the massacre that they just committed against their own people—murdering tens of thousands of protestors in cold blood, mere weeks before the U.S. invasion—they stood in the role of Napoleon's troops firing on civilians in the notorious Third of May incident that Goya depicted—not that of the guerrilla resisters fighting the French emperor. 

And that's not even to mention their whole prior ignominious career of antisemitic terrorism and murder—which continues to the present with their efforts to lob drone strikes and rockets indiscriminately at civilian targets throughout the region. No—the Iranian theocracy certainly bears no resemblance to the scrappy Spanish fighters whom Byron praised. (The Iranian people—not their government—is another matter. The photos of black-clad Iranian women mourning the war's victims do indeed call to mind Byron's images of Spanish women facing the horrors of imperialist violence in their "coal-black veils.")

But there is another, different sense in which the present conflict in Iran is actually highly reminiscent of the Peninsular War in Spain. Recall that Goya, like other Spanish liberals, was originally pro-French in his sympathies. He detested the ancient regime of the Inquisition and the stake in Spain, and he looked to the France of the revolutionary period as a source of enlightenment and emancipation. It was only after Napoleon invaded and started massacring civilians that Goya came to see the French government as an oppressor. 

Something similar may be happening right now in Iran. After all, Iranian liberals for years have longed for the demise of the dreadful post-1979 regime. They have been, by many accounts (see yesterday's episode of the Ezra Klein show), intensely pro-Western and pro-American in their sympathies, seeing the United States as a source of democratic and pluralistic values that could offer an alternative to the grim theocracy under which they live. 

But if anything could turn the Iranian people—including liberals—against the United States, it's for our government to unleash unspeakable bloodshed and mayhem on their country (including an attack on a girl's school that now appears to have been committed by the U.S.)—with no plan whatsoever as to how this would help the democratic opposition. 

From being seen as potential liberators, we have obviously made ourselves already into the latest round of would-be conquerors and murderers under whom the Iranian people have long suffered. 

Now, it appears that the theocratic regime is only strengthening its grip on the country, while the costs of war—as they always do—seem set to fall on the civilian population. Trump is destroying their country with bombs, and meanwhile doing nothing to strengthen any alternative political faction that could take power from the existing regime. 

Byron—who, in spite of all Rowse says, I maintain to be a true radical indeed—would have understood what is happening here perfectly. Even if he did have "admiration" for Napoleon at some point in his career—it plainly was not "unquestioning." By the time Napoleon had stepped into the role of conqueror and occupier, Byron had come to see him no longer as a hero, but as a "bloated chief" and "vulture." 

Byron knew, then, that the same government or nation who could appear in one light as a liberator could live to betray its own values and become the oppressor. He had witnessed France complete that evolution in his own political life—going from being the beacon of liberalism and enlightenment values at the dawn of the revolution to being a new source of bloodshed and imperialism. And when he saw France betray itself, he did not hesitate to condemn her leaders for it. 

This is another aspect of Byron (like so many) that people misunderstand. Back during the Iraq war, I recall, the "liberal hawks" and neocon converts like Christopher Hitchens tried to enlist the memory of the poet on behalf of their doomed crusade in Iraq. They even titled one of their journals after Byron and Shelley's own short-lived periodical "The Liberal." 

I guess they assumed Byron—because of his role in Greece—shared their longing for a Jacobin empire that would conquer the world in the name of "freedom." (By one of those gross distortions in the fun-house mirror of ideology, they mistook Byron's martyrdom in the cause of Greek independence for their own Ottoman–like imperial adventures in the Middle East. Byron gives his life to defeat imperialism; and they seek to make him a mouthpiece for it!)

They should have paid closer attention to their copy of Byron's collected works—if they had one. Because the poet got the chance to witness precisely such a program—a campaign of world conquest by a self-proclaimed "liberator," who proposed to overthrow the ancient regime of surrounding countries in the name of enlightenment and progress. And Byron—as we have seen—was not taken in by the mere tawdry rhetoric of liberty, when it was used to hide despotism. 

Byron saw perfectly well that Napoleon—for all his talk of emancipation and enlightenment—stood in Spain in the role of foreign invader and tyrant—massacring the people who dared to resist his unjust rule. 

So too with the United States. We were once hailed as potential liberators. Much of the Iranian populace looked to us as a source of enlightenment and progress as compared to their own reactionary obscurantist government (just as the Spanish liberals once regarded France, vis-a-vis their own ancien régime of clerics and corruption). But now that we have bombed their country into the dust and murdered schoolchildren—we have squandered any such credibility that we had. 

We too have become the "vultures" over the carcass of Iran's democratic aspirations—all at the behest of our own "bloated chief." Our commander in chief, that is. 

And how many more American soldiers, Iranian soldiers, Iranian civilians, Iranian children, people throughout the region, will have to perish before it's over? How many will die merely to feed one man's invincible and infinite arrogance, stupidity, greed, narcissism, and folly? 

 And must they fall—the young, the proud, the brave—

   To swell one bloated chief's unwholesome reign?