His Nemesis: Alcibiades and the Downfall of Athens was published by Harvard University Press in April 2018.
David also writes regular book reviews, and lectures widely on history and literature, including for the Arts Society.
David’s Nemesis: Alcibiades and the Downfall of Athens was published by Harvard University Press in April. Comments include: ‘No one before has come anything like as near as David Stuttard to penetrating the inner recesses of the mainsprings of Alcibiades's often outrageous, sometimes statesmanlike, always commanding public performances. Stuttard's mastery of the ancient sources and his narrative exposition are dazzling throughout, bringing to singing life the mercurial, magnetic, passionate and persuasive personality of this still hugely controversial Athenian aristocrat of the fifth century BC.‘ (Paul Cartledge)
Meanwhile Looking at Antigone (Bloomsbury Press, 2017) has garnered considerable praise: ‘Stuttard brings together his humane and sensitive translation with a stellar cast of insightful minds who offer new and exciting journeys into the rich texture of the play. Not to be missed!’ (Michael Scott); ‘A rich resource for both readers and performers’ (Pat Easterling); ‘An accessible and informative resource for anyone who reads the Antigone in translation’ (Mary Lefkowitz); ‘Stuttard’s eminently speakable translation is amply illuminated by varied and thought-provoking essays’ (Niall W. Slater).
David is currently working on Roman Mythology: A Traveller’s Guide from Troy to Tivoli (Thames and Hudson), Looking at Ajax (Bloomsbury) and Phoenix: Cimon and the Rise of Athens (Harvard University Press).
Throughout 2018 he is delivering workshops and lecturing on a range of subjects – including Alcibiades – at venues throughout the UK, as well as appearing on a panel with Edith Hall and Tom Holland as part of Ian Hislop’s I Object exhibition at The British Museum. At the same time, his Just a Little Murder, starring Fenella Fielding and Stephen Greif has been performed in venues in and around London.
For dates of all future events and activities, please click here. You can contact David by clicking here and follow him on Twitter @davidstuttard.
Dear Congressman Sestak, How would you like to win an election? Can I give you a bit of unsolicited advice? Thanks.
I opposed this war before it began, as did many people in Pennsylvania, and I hope to explain why. But, Congressman Sestak, you need not agree that it was always wrong in order to agree that it is wrong now. I support the immediate announcement of a swift withdrawal of all troops, mercenaries, and military contractors, and I hope to explain why. But you don’t need to agree in order to oppose spending $33 billion to escalate the war with 30,000 more troops. To vote to fund that escalation, you have to believe that this war is such a good thing that it should not only be continued but also expanded. Or you have to believe that the way to end it is to expand it, AND that nothing more useful at home or abroad could be done with all that money, AND that distinguishing yourself from your electoral competitors wouldn’t do you or Pennsylvania any good.
Last summer, Congressman Sestak, you and a majority of the Democrats in the House voted for an amendment to create an exit strategy for Afghanistan. You’ve said at public events that the President should announce an exit plan. Here’s something that I take to be a simple fact that has been obscured by propaganda: you do not exit a war by escalating it. The president sent 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan last year, plus 5,000 more mercenaries, and tens of thousands of contractors, all without so much as a by-your-leave to the first branch of our government, the United States Congress. We have at least 68,000 troops and 121,000 contractors or mercenaries now in place, and violence, deaths, and misery escalated following the troop escalation. In fact the president said that he sent those troops prior to developing a strategy for the war, almost as if sending the troops was an end in itself, a possibility that is almost too grotesque to contemplate, a possibility I would hate to have to explain to the parents of all the soldiers who will die in the hell that will be the coming attack on the province of Kandahar. The military has recorded 244 wounded and 41 dead from Pennsylvania prior to this onslaught.
Your website, Congressman Sestak, says: “We diverted our attention from Afghanistan, the home base for the al-Qaeda that attacked us on September 11, 2001, and now we are still struggling to defeat the Taliban and bring stability to that region.” Unstated here is the fact that al Qaeda isn’t in Afghanistan. Stated here is an assertion that the goal is “stability” and “defeating the Taliban”. You go on to say: “President Obama has taken the correct approach to our most pressing national security issue: the ‘safe haven’ that al-Qaeda has found on the porous border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the threat the Taliban and al-Qaeda pose to Pakistan’s stability. Our military is not able to operate there without inflaming passions to a breaking point. We must, therefore, get Pakistan to stop viewing India as its number one threat, rather than the Taliban/al-Qaeda insurgency it has. . . . This is ultimately, as we blunt the insurgency, a battle for ‘hearts and minds.’ Meanwhile, we cannot permit Afghanistan to slip any further because it cannot become a base again for the one third of the Taliban that have become ‘al-Qaeda-ized.’ It is not our principle focus; Pakistan is. But it could become our principle focus again if we don’t secure it.”
It sounds like we’re fighting a war for revenge and for humanitarian purposes, and for revenge against people who have mysteriously come to resemble in some way the people we want the revenge against. But revenge is not a legal ground for war, or a morally acceptable motivation for anything. And does revenge even make sense here on its own terms? The 9-11 hijackers were not from Afghanistan. Most of the planning of 9-11 was done in hotels and apartments in Germany and Spain, and flight schools in the United States, and would be again even if al Qaeda was permitted to build camps in Afghanistan. Paul Pillar, former CIA deputy chief for counter-terrorism, says that an al Qaeda base in Afghanistan would not significantly increase threats to the United States. Richard Holbrooke, President Obama’s representative in Afghanistan, says that if the Taliban had control it would likely not allow al Qaeda in anyway. And many observers treat with great skepticism the idea that a U.S. withdrawal would necessarily put the Taliban in control of all of Afghanistan. The Taliban is fueled by the occupation and would lose strength with its withdrawal. The fundamentalist Taliban, as opposed to those poor people just fighting for the pay and in defense of their homes, is not popular in Afghanistan. Neither are the war lords and the current government, and there is no easy solution. But the idea that building a quagmire in Afghanistan will protect the United States from a small terrorist organization whose mastermind we now claim must be murdered in Yemen gets things backwards. Occupying and bombing Afghanistan is actually making us less safe. It is enraging people against the United States, and building the Taliban and other resistance forces.
If you’re still convinced that the way to exit Afghanistan is to escalate the war, there may still be hope, because in order to vote for the funding you have to also believe that nothing more useful could be done with it. Let me just briefly highlight a few points. First, 27 million gallons of gasoline were used by the U.S. military in Afghanistan last month at a cost of up to $100 per gallon. The New York Times last week reported yet again on our money being given out to Afghans, among whom are members of the Taliban who turn around and use it against US troops. The semblance of a coalition in this war is created by giving hundreds of millions of dollars to other nations. For $1 million per troop sent, we could have 20 well-paid green jobs in Pennsylvania, one for that former soldier and 19 more. Pennsylvania alone has spent $10.2 billion on Afghanistan, not counting interest, veterans care, the economic impact, etc. According to the analysis on Iraq produced by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes the number certainly needs to be tripled if not quintupled.
The military puts hundreds of millions of dollars into your district (you can see the details at fedspending.org). But every dollar we give the military is a dollar less for jobs. Research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that nothing produces fewer jobs than the military. Funding education, energy, infrastructure, and other industries produces more jobs. Even cutting taxes produces more jobs. So even though you see military and weapons industry jobs everywhere, you’re not getting a bang for your buck. Some of those bucks go right back where they came from. If opensecrets.org is correct, Congressman Sestak, your campaign has taken $44,000 from “defense aerospace” and $36,000 from “defense electronics” plus $35,000 from “misc. defense”.
Congressman Sestak, we ask you to vote No on the $33 billion escalation. But we would like you to do something much more serious: Commit now, ahead of time, to voting No and urge your colleagues to do the same. If a bill is destined to pass, and some dozens of members vote No against no resistance from their parties, that doesn’t build the movement for peace. Committing ahead of time to vote No, and publicly making the case for it, is much more meaningful, because there is always the chance that your vote will actually matter and you will face the wrath of your party’s leaders and other war supporters.
I gave similar advice to Congressman Capuano to distinguish himself from his competitors if he wanted the senate nomination. He refused. He lost. And the Demoblican Repumocrat who beat him proceeded to lose the general election.
We’re asking for an unusual commitment, but less than those soldiers are making who refuse to go, and less than so many activists are making who routinely protest this war and, in many cases, face imprisonment. Whistleblowers have sacrificed their careers. We’re asking you only to advance yours.
Lipstick is being applied to this pigskin however. $2.8 billion for aid to Haiti will be put into this bill. And yet everyone knows that the Haiti aid can be passed separately. Nobody in Congress doubts that we know that they know that we know that they know it can be passed separately. So “I voted for a war in Afghanistan to help the Haitians” is unlikely to justify the wrong vote here. And efforts are underway in the Rules Committee to make Haiti and the war escalation separate votes. So, potentially there will be no lipstick.
However, Congressman Jim McGovern has introduced a bill requesting a flexible non-binding “timetable” for “redeployment,” and he may try to propose it as an amendment to the escalation funding. But passing that in the House would mean having to pass it through the Senate and getting the president to sign it. And then nothing would necessarily change. Such things are not meaningless, but they are talk, rather than action. Obviously we can all talk. We want our congress members to govern. Congressman Obey’s war tax bill is just as rhetorical, although signing onto it might stiffen his important spine. If you vote for McGovern’s meaningless “timetable” amendment, you should be clear that in the eyes of Pennsylvanian voters you will have given yourself absolutely zero cover to vote for the funding of an escalation. You do not exit a war by escalating it.
Some of your colleagues have said publicly that they will turn our Constitution upside down and vote to fund a war they “oppose” in order to obey the president. Not only is the president campaigning against you, but he was elected to execute the laws as passed by Congress and to command the military in wars as determined, funded, limited, and overseen by Congress. We elected you to the first branch of our government, the one that takes up the first 60 percent of our Constitution, the one to which our founders gave every power they’d seen King George abuse, the one whose laws and wars are to be faithfully executed by the executive. It was by giving war powers to a president that Congress got us into this disaster in the first place. The House of Representatives has the power of the purse for precisely the purpose now at hand. To choose not to use it because you approve of the war would be one thing. To defer to a party not sanctioned by the Constitution to make these decisions would be to undo our own revolution. For the people of your district to be represented by someone who simply obeys the president would be to grievously wound representative government in this land. I implore you, whatever you decide, to decide it yourself.
You will have to live with it. Your election prospects will ride on it. The president’s will not. And it would be foolish to misinterpret the political winds. In Massachusetts’ recent senate race as in the recent gubernatorial race in Virginia, Democratic voters stayed home because nobody inspired them to turn out. Republicans are turning against this war. The death count is about to jump. We have a financial crisis and an environmental crisis. Is this the time to be the party of reckless spending on foreign quagmire building? Did that work well for Lyndon Johnson?