History repeats itself

Via LRC Blog

A proposito de.

Barbara Simpson: "Skip the words, drop the bombs."
Joseph Farah: "We may need to flatten Fallujah. We may need to destroy it. We may need to grind it, pulverize it and salt the soil, as the Romans did with troublesome enemies."

Diz Thomas Woods:

Interesting that Joe Farah points out that Rome would pulverize and then "salt the soil" of "troublesome enemies." He's probably thinking of the Third Punic War (149-146 B.C.). In fact, modern historians dismiss the claim that Rome cursed and then salted the soil after destroying Carthage.

That inaccuracy aside, the comparison is eerily appropriate. In the Third Punic War a degnenerate political class in Rome whipped the people into a jingoistic frenzy, urging them to destroy Carthage utterly, even though by that point Carthage was a threat to no one, having already been smashed by Rome in the past. But Carthage was a terrible threat to Rome, you see, so it had to be attacked and destroyed."

E Lew: Speaking of mass murder and sowing salt, Rome launched its third war against a nearly defenseless Carthage in accord with the warmongering Cato and in violation of a sacred religious treaty -- as St. Augustine notes. The Romans under Scipio Aemelianus killed hundreds of thousands, sold the survivors into slavery, and burned the great commercial city to the ground.