Marco Rubio, return to confrontational narrative of civilizations
By Kourosh Ahmadi
Former diplomat
The recent speech by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Athens is yet another example of the oversimplification—and distortion—of historical processes and narratives in pursuit of narrow political objectives. The Israeli far right has also repeatedly resorted to this kind of oversimplification coupled with historical distortion.
Rubio framed 480 BC as an unprovoked Persian attack on an innocent Greece, which is historically distorted and incomplete. The Greeks — specifically Athens and Eretria — had attacked and burned Sardis, in the Achaemenid Empire just 18 years earlier. So there was a cycle of retaliation. Rubio’s remarks in Athens likewise reveal a selective approach to human civilizations and a damaging attempt to set them against one another. By invoking the golden age of one civilization while overlooking periods of decline within that same civilization, Rubio presents an incomplete picture and a distorted historical narrative.
No doubt that ancient Greek civilization is praiseworthy in itself. What is questionable, however, is Rubio’s selective treatment of human civilizations. There can be little doubt that no civilization as a whole is either entirely virtuous or entirely evil. Both Iranian and Western civilizations have experienced numerous periods of rise and decline, and both have been sources of achievements as well as destructive consequences. There is no doubt that ancient Greek civilization, particularly the classical Greek philosophical and political tradition, was one of the most important sources of philosophical reason, critical thought, and political theory in human history.
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