Monday, October 12, 2026
Marco Rubio is promoting troubling ideas about ‘western civilization’ | Ted Widmer | The Guardian
Marco Rubio is promoting troubling ideas about ‘western civilization’ | Ted Widmer | The Guardian
“The article describes Marco Rubio’s speech at the Acropolis, where he promoted the idea of “western civilization” and the need to rediscover its values. The article criticizes Rubio’s speech for being nostalgic and lacking in substance, and for promoting a vision of the west that is exclusionary and exclusionary.
They had obviously worked hard on the backdrop – and it was magnificent. On 7 October, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, delivered a major speech in Athens, outdoors, with the Acropolis behind him. The sun was setting, bathing the ancient scene, including the Parthenon, in the light of the golden hour.
The golden hour, but yet not quite the golden age. This was not Pericles defending democracy. Instead, Rubio offered a haunting vision of the choices facing the west, arguing that the US and Europe must rediscover the values of exploration and conquest that once drove centuries of expansion, or face decline and irrelevance.
For long stretches, it was an exercise in nostalgia, lamenting the decline of western civilization as if this were a seminar at Hillsdale College or the Claremont Institute.
In fact, a freshman seminar would have been able to puncture most of the speech’s assumptions. It’s true that the founders read deeply in the literature of ancient Greece and Rome, but they went there to justify their hope to build a democracy of equals – not a civilization of conquest.
Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, admitted his debt to Cicero, who wrote: “Citizens of the same republic ought to have equal rights.” Abraham Lincoln considered the Greek mathematician Euclid a major influence, precisely because he defined equality as an inviolable concept.
And what exactly is “the west”? We have a vague idea, but the question becomes complicated in the details. Is Vladimir Putin invited to this party? Russians also feel that their history stems from Greece and Rome. How about Adolf Hitler?
Few leaders loved Rome and Greece more, as he made clear at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. In Mein Kampf, he celebrated the “higher culture” that arose from “the hardships of the Persian War”, in lines that might easily have fit into Rubio’s speech.
Then there is the problem that a great deal of knowledge flowed into Greece and Rome from other places – eastern, not western. Writing comes from ancient Sumer, in what is now Iraq.
Much mathematical thinking comes from the Arabs (a young Pythagoras probably traveled through the Levant). Even as the Persians and Greeks fought, they also influenced each other.
Rubio seemed to enjoy retelling the story of a small band of Greek fighters, defending the Acropolis from Persian invaders. But that seemed theatrical during a week in which the war against Iran is not going well – with the USS Abraham Lincoln limping into San Diego, 12 B-1 bombers hastily evacuated from a base in England, from fear of a drone attack, and a rise in Iranian attacks on shipping.
The price of oil remains sky-high. This is not a war that the speech’s heroes – Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne and Hernán Cortés – would rush to claim as a conqueror’s legacy.
To be fair, there was some elegant writing in the speech, displaying actual historical knowledge (for example, that the authors of the Federalist Papers cited Plutarch more than any other author).
But again and again, Rubio wandered back to a precarious theme, that history is decided by “great men” who defy adversity and conquer lesser peoples.
He almost seemed to be writing out text for a video game (Super Mario?), offering “an arena for great men to test and prove themselves”, where they can show off “fierce individuality and relentless ambition; daring exploration and invention; a yearning for discovery, for adventure, risk and glory”.
To be fair, there have been many speeches in this vein, about striving for greatness and avoiding the fatal weaknesses that cause empires to vanish. Decline was much on the mind of the founders; John Adams wrote that “there never yet was a democracy that did not commit suicide”.
Later presidents sounded similar themes. In 1910, Theodore Roosevelt described the virtues of the “Man in the Arena”, “whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds”.
Similarly, John F Kennedy promised that “we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty” in his 1961 inaugural address.
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But in each case, they also paused to define the democratic ideals they believed in, and Kennedy went out of his way to mention human rights and the aspirations of the vast parts of the world that are not the west.
Also, Roosevelt and Kennedy were legitimate military heroes, with the authority to discuss the waging of war and the even more important waging of peace. They were deeply read historians, too, who used the bully pulpit to celebrate intellectual excellence.
The chief monument to Kennedy, of course, is the Kennedy Center, currently shuttered, its fate uncertain. It’s a short distance from Rubio’s state department, which added to the hollowness of his claim that a great nation, like the Greeks, pursues achievement “in philosophy and poetry, in sculpture and drama”.
Given extensive cuts to scientific research, particularly climate science, it also sounded a false note to argue that Americans, like the Greeks, are consumed by “an insatiable curiosity about the world and the principles by which it operates, a hunger to know the mysteries of nature and grasp the secrets of the cosmos”.
On the second day of the administration, the United States pulled out of the World Health Organization, and nearly every day brings another story about funding cuts for research.
A former director of the White House office of science and technology policy, Arati Prabhakar, has argued that these cuts are leading us less to the “golden age” than to the stone age.
Rubio’s speech was not quite as dismissive of Europe as a previous one he gave, in February, warning of “civilizational erasure”. At the foot of the Acropolis, he extended an olive branch, saying: “We believe that Europe can awaken from its long slumber and rekindle the fire that was here millennia ago.”
But still, as he stood below the Parthenon, he seemed to be pointing out a path that will be difficult and mostly uphill for the US’s allies.
In sum, it was a beautiful photo op. But at the end of the day, that’s all it was. There were no new policies advanced, and no ideals expressed, beyond the right to exploit resources and dominate others.
This was a long distance from the Enlightenment that inspired Jefferson and the other founders. Instead, it provided more evidence of a moment that is darkening, despite Rubio’s efforts to capture the fading light of a sunset on the Acropolis.
Ted Widmer, a former White House speechwriter, is the editor of American Speeches, and the recently published The Living Declaration: A Biography of America’s Founding Text, both published by the Library of America“
Israel’s Destruction of Southern Lebanon Intensified After the Cease-Fire
Israel’s Destruction of Southern Lebanon Intensified After the Cease-Fire
“Since the April cease-fire, Israel has leveled 48 of 60 villages in occupied southern Lebanon, targeting Hezbollah infrastructure and creating a security zone. Wildfires burned 16,500 acres, and displacement of Shiite residents has altered demographics.
Today, 48 of the roughly 60 villages and towns within Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon are mostly leveled, the Times analysis shows.
The scale of Israel’s systematic demolition has fueled fears among many Lebanese that Israel is seeking to permanently empty the territory of its population.
Israeli officials say they have razed villages both to eliminate Hezbollah military facilities, like tunnels and weapons depots, and to prevent Hezbollah from returning to the border area. The Lebanese territory that the Israeli military has seized and occupied since fighting resumed in March extends as far as eight miles north of the Israeli border.
South of this village, destruction stretches for 6 miles.
Much of the area is now uninhabitable.
At the same time, Israeli forces built new infrastructure, suggesting plans for a prolonged military presence.
Since the April cease-fire, about 16,500 acres across this swath of southern Lebanon were burned, including agricultural land, by wildfires that often coincided with Israeli military operations in the area. The fires, which claimed about 11 percent of the territory under Israeli occupation, spread rapidly, with Lebanese firefighters unable to enter the Israeli-occupied zone to extinguish them.
Note: Shows fires that occurred between April 16 and Sept. 7. Small agricultural and urban fires are not included in the data. Source: European Forest Fire Information System.
The destruction has reshaped not only the physical landscape but also the religious demographics of southern Lebanon.
Nearly all the villages that are no longer inhabitable were predominantly home to Shiite Muslims, the sect from which Hezbollah draws most of its support. Residents of those villages left during the fighting as Israel issued evacuation warnings for much of southern Lebanon and have not been able to return since Israel declared the area a “security zone.”
The minority of villages that escaped the worst of the damage were home predominantly to Christians, Druse and Sunni Muslims. Many of those residents were assured by the Israeli military that their villages would not be targeted during the war and have been able to remain in their homes, even though they are now within the occupied zone.
The distinction is clear in the separate fates of Beit Lif and Debl, only two miles apart. The mostly Shiite town of Beit Lif has been nearly completely flattened since the cease-fire, while the Christian town of Debl is largely still standing.
Source: Satellite image via Airbus, captured on Aug. 26.
The scale of the destruction in southern Lebanon surpasses that caused by the country’s 15-year civil war, several foreign invasions and two previous wars between Israel and Hezbollah, experts say.
“The level of violence, the scale and tools of destruction, is unlike anything we’ve seen in the past,” said Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. “Every bit of infrastructure is being destroyed, as if to prevent the population from returning anytime soon even if Israel withdraws.”
Israel Katz, Israel’s defense minister, has said his country’s approach to southern Lebanon is modeled on tactics used in Gaza, where the Israeli military reduced entire neighborhoods to rubble.
“All houses in villages near the Lebanese border will be destroyed, in accordance with the model used in Rafah and Beit Hanoun in Gaza, in order to permanently remove the threats near the border to northern residents,” he said in March.
The Times analyzed satellite imagery before and after the cease-fire, verified photos and videos from the areas under Israeli occupation, and spoke to Lebanese political and military officials, local leaders, civil defense members, legal experts, rights groups and conflict researchers. The Times classified towns as mostly destroyed if the town center was almost entirely flattened, often along with the surrounding area.
The Israel Defense Forces have said the deliberate destruction was part of an effort to dismantle Hezbollah’s military infrastructure near the Lebanon-Israel border and ensure the safety of communities in northern Israel. Hezbollah has fired thousands of rockets, drones and missiles at northern Israel since war first broke out in 2023, forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of Israelis from the north. Israeli officials have said their forces will continue to occupy what they call a “security zone” in southern Lebanon until Hezbollah is disarmed.
In response to questions from the Times, the Israeli military’s media office said there is no directive to “to carry out widespread damage to structures or to demolish villages.”
“The I.D.F. operates in the security zone in southern Lebanon with the aim of removing threats posed by the Hezbollah terrorist organization to the residents of Israel and to I.D.F. troops. It does so in accordance with international law, the directives of the political echelon, and the understandings reached between Israel and Lebanon,” the military’s media office said in a statement.
The war reignited in early March when the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah fired on Israel in solidarity with Tehran soon after the United States and Israel attacked Iran.
The war in Lebanon has since killed more than 4,300 Lebanese, according to Lebanon’s health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and Hezbollah militants, and at least 43 Israelis.
Widespread Ruin
Since the cease-fire was announced, Israeli forces have carried out hundreds of controlled demolitions in villages under their control, according to data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a conflict-monitoring organization. Videos and photos show that, in some cases, the Israeli military appears to have used drones to place explosives.
Videos verified by The Times appear to show the Israeli military using drones to place what seem to be explosives on a public school in Mansouri, followed by an explosion in the same place.
The demolitions have transformed a landscape of olive groves, tobacco farms and centuries-old villages into an ashen wasteland of pulverized rubble.
In Beit Yahoun, about a dozen buildings were destroyed before the cease-fire in April. Three months later, almost all the buildings in the town center appeared to be destroyed.
Mustapha Maki, the mayor of Beit Yahoun, visited it in August, escorted by troops from the Lebanese Armed Forces. Entering the village for the first time since he left when the war broke out, he said, he was completely disoriented.
The mosque had disappeared. The water tanks were gone. He tried to place where his neighbor’s house used to be or the football field where schoolchildren used to play in the late afternoons – but could not. The cemetery was a mangled mess of smashed headstones and tree branches.
“I couldn’t even find my relatives’ graves,” Mr. Maki said.
The scale of the destruction has drawn sharp criticism from rights groups, which say the wholesale demolitions could be a violation of international law.
International laws of occupation govern activity by the I.D.F. in the Lebanese villages it controls and impose stricter limits than those governing active combat, according to legal experts. In occupied territory, destroying civilian property is lawful only when it is absolutely unavoidable in achieving a specific and immediate military goal.
Legal experts say it is unlikely that this bar is met by the possibility that Hezbollah could one day use homes in a village, and it would not justify destroying entire villages.
“Much of the destruction we're seeing in southern Lebanon is not with a view to imminent clashes with Hezbollah by I.D.F. forces on the ground,” said Adil Haque, an international law professor at Rutgers Law School.
Israeli tanks and military vehicles in southern Lebanon, on April 25, soon after the cease-fire. Jalaa Marey/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
“Rather, it is about creating a new long-term security situation that will exist after Israeli forces withdraw or for the duration of their occupation,” he said, adding this would not meet the threshold required by international law.
Preventing the return of the roughly 270,000 displaced Lebanese to their homes would also amount to a war crime and a crime against humanity, according to legal experts.
A Region Ablaze
The wildfires that have swept the area occupied by Israel since April are unusual for the time of year and far more numerous than in the past.
More than 200 fires broke out in that area between early April and early September this year, according to a Times analysis of data from the Fire Database of the European Forest Fire Information System. Before fighting between Hezbollah and Israel erupted in 2024, there were just three fires of that size during the same months in 2023, according to the data, and none in 2022 or 2021.
On the Israeli side of the border, there have only been a handful of wildfires in the same period this year.
More fires have burned in occupied southern Lebanon since the cease-fire
Circles are sized by burned area
Source: European Forest Fire Information System. Note: Shows fires of all sizes. Small agricultural and urban fires are not included in the data.
If residents are allowed to return, the fires will likely make it difficult for them to sustain their livelihoods in a region where agriculture is a major source of income. Around a third of the burned land was farmland — mostly grain crops and olive trees that take generations to mature — according to a Times analysis of U.N. land-use data.
“I see the destruction of trees as detrimental as the demolition of houses. It has the same consequences,” said Ahmad Baydoun, an independent conflict researcher.
Lebanese firefighters and local officials who have witnessed the wildfires say that at least some appear to be set off by Israeli drones dropping small explosives. The Israeli military has also used flammable chemical material, including white phosphorus, in the region, according to experts, aid groups and visual evidence collected by The New York Times.
The Israeli military denied responsibility for the fires that have broken out and said their troops had assisted in extinguishing them.
Without farmers to routinely water the fields, vegetation in the occupied zone has also dried out, making it more prone to fire, firefighters say. Lebanese firefighters say they cannot respond to fires within the Israeli-occupied region.
A fire burns in a field, filmed by local farmer Mostapha Sarhan in Majidiyeh on June 19. Civil defense said they were not permitted to put out the fire and that nearby farmers tried to extinguish it but were unable to do so.
Hassan Atta, 52, said he had around 1,000 olive trees in his orchard in the village of Yaroun, planted 50 years ago.
Displaced from his village, he kept checking on his trees over the summer by looking at online images. The last time he checked, he said, his land appeared to have been completely razed by fire.
“These olive trees were a financial resource – they were how my family supported ourselves,” Mr. Atta said.
In addition to the land consumed by fires, dozens of orchards and olive groves have been leveled by bulldozers in recent months, a New York Times analysis of satellite images show. Since the cease-fire, thousands of trees have been razed in the districts of Bint Jbeil and Marjayoun alone. In late August, more than 900 olive trees were bulldozed in this olive grove south of Meiss al-Jabal.
In response to questions from the Times, the Israeli military said it was not aware of the razing of trees near Meiss al-Jabal.
Source: Airbus (satellite images). The New York Times
The Demographic Divide
The swath of southern Lebanon under Israeli occupation was long home to a patchwork of Shiite, Sunni, Christian and Druse communities.
When war broke out in March, Katz, the Israeli defense minister, singled out Shiite residents, saying they “will not return to their homes” until the safety of Israeli northern communities was guaranteed. Other Israeli officials told some Christians and Druse communities they could remain in their southern towns and villages if they expelled Shiite Muslims seeking refuge there.
The ruin that followed the announcement of the cease-fire has followed the same pattern. Of the 48 villages that have been mostly destroyed, almost all are majority Shiite. The seven villages that have not been seriously damaged are home to predominantly Christian, Sunni Muslim or Druse residents.
Almost all villages destroyed are majority Shiite Muslim
Map shows the predominant religious group in each town.
Source: New York Times analysis of satellite imagery.
The result is that the region has been effectively drained of its Shiite Muslim population.
Yet even within the Christian, Druse and Sunni communities there is growing unease about how long they will be able to sustain their daily lives in their villages.
“We are completely isolated, everything around us is destroyed, we can’t move freely,” said Guna Ginwa, 46, a resident of Ain Ebel, a predominantly Christian village within the Israeli-occupied zone.
Ms. Ginwa and others who remained in the village rely on aid convoys for basic goods like grains, vegetables and water. To travel from Ain Ebel to the nearest city outside of the occupied area, they must receive permission to join a convoy of Lebanese military and United Nations peacekeepers, and pass through Israeli army checkpoints.
“I want to stay, but if we can’t travel, if we can’t go to our jobs outside of Ain Ebel, people will be forced to leave,” she said.
New Israeli Outposts
Even as Israeli forces have leveled the landscape, they have been constructing infrastructure of their own, suggesting that Israel is planning for a prolonged military occupation of southern Lebanon.
At the start of the war in March, Israel already held five hilltop positions inside Lebanon near the Israeli border, which they had occupied during the 2024 conflict.
The Times analysis of recent satellite imagery found what appears to be at least three more Israeli outposts completed or under construction since the cease-fire announcement.
Sources: Airbus (satellite images); New York Times analysis of satellite imagery.
At other locations, satellite images and photos analyzed by the Times show Israeli military vehicles stationed near buildings, indicating their possible use as temporary bases. Israel has built fresh roads and bridges connecting these outposts to the Israeli border. The U.N. peacekeeping mission says the Israeli military now has more than two dozen outposts in the buffer zone.
In a statement to the Times, the Israeli military described the construction as “part of preparations for defense” in the buffer zone it has established in Lebanese territory.
As Israeli forces put down roots in southern Lebanon, villagers displaced from the region are growing increasingly resigned that they may never go home. That sentiment is a noticeable shift from the early weeks of the war, when displaced Shiites said they were determined to go back to their lands, as they were after the two previous wars between Israel and Hezbollah.
Photos taken of southern Lebanon from northern Israel show an Israeli flag hanging from a building in Taybeh, as well as a flag on the rooftop of a building in Meiss al-Jabal. Gil Eliyahu/Reuters (first photo); Ariel Schalit/Associated Press (second)
“Even if we wanted to go back, there’s nothing for us to go back to. It’s not liveable anymore,” said Amira Chkeir, 46, from Meiss al-Jabal, a village in the occupied zone that has been destroyed.
Two months ago, Ms. Chkeir drove to another village just outside the Israeli-occupied zone and went to the top of a hill hoping to catch a glimpse of Meiss al-Jabal. The once vibrant green landscape had transformed into a barren stretch of beige and brown. Seeing it, Ms. Chkeir recalled, she burst into tears.
“It looked like a desert, I couldn’t recognize anything,” she said. “All I could tell is when the beige ended and the land was green, that was Israeli territory.”
Methodology
The analysis assessed the most recent damage to 60 villages within the area occupied by Israel in southern Lebanon. The New York Times analyzed hundreds of satellite images from April to September, comparing images from before the April cease-fire with those captured on later dates. The post-cease-fire damage to each town or village was classified on a five-level scale of five levels, ranging from the lowest level, where no significant damage was visible, to the highest level, where the center of town and surrounding area appeared mostly flattened. Damaged areas outside the Israeli-occupied areas, those marked as “security areas” in Israeli military maps, were not included in the analysis.
The villages classified as destroyed in the map at the top of this story are those whose center was mostly destroyed, including those where the surrounding areas were also destroyed. Villages highlighted as having seen significant destruction after the cease-fire are those that reached those levels of damage only after the April cease-fire.
Fire data is sourced from the European Forest Fire Information System. It includes only fires that burned wildland and excludes any fires that burned only within agricultural or urban areas. A comparative analysis of satellite imagery and this data reveals that a small number of fires, mostly smaller than five acres, are excluded from the dataset.“
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