To the ancient Egyptians, the words of children held mystical significance—that’s why their sun god Horus the Child (Har-pa-khered) always pointed to his own mouth. After the Greeks adopted Harpocrates as their God of Silence, they misunderstood the gesture to mean “hush.” Aphrodite created roses as a gift to this god, persuading him to keep secret her many amorous indiscretions. The Romans hung roses in banquet halls to remind revelers that utterances made “under the rose” (sub rosa) were strictly confidential. During the Middle Ages, roses were carved into the ceilings of council chambers, government meeting rooms, and Christian confessionals for the same reason. And now the SUBROSA CLUB is an exclusive space for System Failure insiders…
The Doomed Gallipoli Campaign
The Gallipoli Campaign was an effort by Allied powers to knock the Ottoman Empire out of World War I. The plan was to open up the Dardanelles Strait in modern-day Türkiye. If it had succeeded, the Campaign would have exposed the Ottoman capital of Istanbul to naval bombardment.
Instead, the Gallipoli Campaign became a famous disaster. It’s a warning from history about what could happen if the United States attempts to invade Iranian territory in or around the Strait of Hormuz.
The Allies launched an amphibious assault in April of 1915, and successfully established multiple beachhead positions. But they were sitting ducks thereafter, and subjected to constant fire from Ottoman positions. By January of the next year, half a million casualties had piled up on both sides of the lines. The Allies were forced to withdraw.
The Turkish commander at Gallipoli, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, rose to prominence as a result of the battle, and became the founder and first president of the modern Republic of Turkey in 1923. On the British side, Winston Churchill was forced to resign as First Lord of the Admiralty. It took a considerable period of time for his career to recover from the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.
For the newly formed countries of Australia and New Zealand, Gallipoli became a tragic first chapter in the stories of those countries’ national identities. Hopefully, the events at Gallipoli will continue to resonate through history as warning to the United States. Attempting to occupy enemy territory is always a costly endeavor reckoned in human lives—but trying to hold isolated territories like beaches or islands is even more expensive in that grim currency.
