Plotting Pre-emptive Strikes As a teacher of literature I am
struck by the dearth of literary, historical or philosophical
works that celebrate or even sanction pre-emptive strikes. Most
great plots in history are scripted in moral favor of the people
who have resisted invading or occupying forces. I recall
Leonidas, the leader of ten thousand Spartans, who withstood
King Xerxes’ hundreds of thousands of invading Persians at the
narrow pass at Thermopylae. Or I remember Michelangelo’s statue
of young David with his slingshot, waiting easy in his naked
silence and ready to hurl a stone from his slingshot at the
heavily armed giant, the braggart Goliath. Both of those
figures, one Greek and the other Judaic, feature fighters
central to the tradition of Western civics, who are poised in
potential energy, ready to fight, but awaiting the right timing.
They are icons of readiness. They await with certainty the exact
time for action. Hamlet’s dilemma, however, is just the opposite
of those two heroes. For Hamlet ca