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Are you enjoying the Hub? Donate $5, $10, or $15 to support a completely Canadian perspective on the major problem of the day and receive a charitable tax receipt.This situation benefits two groups more than any other: political leaders and, indirectly, DND. Both typically avoid criticism or inspection since there aren't enough individuals covering the story or overseeing their actions. The circumstance gives our executive more power to influence the narrative or even dismiss questions.For example, last year, the administration effectively blocked efforts by the House of Commons operations committee to investigate the controversial $2.2 billion Fixed Wing Search and Rescue program. In any other country, DND representatives would be dragged in front of the committee to explain themselves, maybe with serious consequences. Nonetheless, the subject has essentially faded from public discourse. The existing arrangement protects the governing party's public image, but it comes at a high cost to the country's security.A stronger defence civil society would result in increased accountability and better policies. DND allows problems to linger for years, like as Jonathan Vance's ugly background or the CF-18 replacement debacle. Building a stronger military environment may also result in better public debates and policy outcomes. It could tear down the barrier between the department and the public, which appears to impede fresh policy proposals from being enacted.

It will not be easy to develop our defense civil sector

The simplest place to begin is to strengthen parliament's oversight and legislative functions in defense, as well as to provide it with additional resources. This would draw more attention to defense and boost the demand for civilian skills. Increasing financing for independent analytical bodies would have similar benefits, as would boosting academic funding through MINDS and other outreach programs, which might have a knock-on effect on the media, academia, and think tanks. Importantly, they are not large sums—millions to tens of millions of dollars versus the $20 billion DND budget—and would result in a disproportionate return on investment.Addressing this large gap is a serious issue. While it may not yield immediate results, boosting the defence discourse in Canada can only enhance the country's policymaking in this critical area. Perhaps the most challenging issue will be convincing the governing party and bureaucracy to relax their grip. Given the 13-year disaster of the CF-18 replacement program, such an effort will be well worthwhile.If this sounds familiar, it's because it comes from the poetry "Ozymandias." But not this "Ozymandias." This version was written by Horace Smith as part of a competition with his friend Shelley to write sonnets on a common theme, in this case a passage from Diodorus Siculus's Bibliotheca Historica. (These competitions were a profitable pastime for the Romantics; Percy's wife Mary created the novel Frankenstein as part of a similar challenge with Lord Byron while the Shelleys were living nearby on Lake Geneva during the miserable non-summer of 1816.)

Shelley's and Smith's sonnets both depict a 

broken colossus crumbling in the desert above slightly different paraphrases of the inscription that Diodorus Siculus reports as "King of Kings, Osymandyas." If anyone wants to know how great I am and where I am, let him surpass one of my works." Both poems are fables on the fleeting nature of worldly fame, and Shelley's version, with its mawkishly didactic lesson about pride and hubris, has become a high school English curriculum classic.The moral is artistically effective, and the message is unforgettable, but both are incorrect. No matter how hard Shelley tries to persuade us that the accomplishments of great men are ultimately in vain, the poem's sheer existence contradicts its purpose. The truth, inescapable, is that Ozymandias' works—or Rameses II, as he is better known—live on, and not just in Shelley's well-known (and Smith's lesser-known) poem. They can be found from the Nile Delta to Abu Simbel, and we still stand in awe of them. Look on his works, powerful or average Joe, and despair.I was reminded of Shelley's poem in the Pergamonmuseum in Berlin last year, as I read the burial epitaph of the neo-Hittite King Panamuwa I. Carved on a massive statue of the Hittite storm-god Hadad, the long inscription opens with echoes of Diodorus Siculus:

I am Panamuwa, son of Qarli, king of Y'DY, and I have erected

 

this monument of Hadad in my eternal residence. The gods Hadad, El, Rašap, Rākib-El, and Šamaš aided me. Hadad, El, Rākib-El, Šamaš, and Rašap handed me the scepter of rule. Rašap helped me. The gods granted me whatever I asked for.Reading it, I realized how wrong Shelley was. A statue created by a provincial warlord to his everlasting memory stood in the great center of the capital of a country whose power and richness he could not have imagined, and it was on display to visitors from all around. Millions of people have read about King Panamuwa's exploits and marveled at his monument three millennia later, three thousand kilometers away from where he died. So much for the melancholy fading of worldly renown.Shelley and Smith appear to have recognized the flaws in their artifice, as both poets changed their source material to convey their arguments. According to Diodorus Siculus, the statue is not "a colossal wreck" and does not have "vast and trunkless legs of stone" (or, as Smith puts it, "a gigantic Leg"). He describes the head as "seated … the largest of any in Egypt" and as "marvellous by reason of its artistic quality and excellent because of the nature of the stone, since in a block of so great a size there is not a single crack or blemish to be seen." The connotation is clear: Osymandyas' magnificence is well demonstrated by his surviving monument.