Word: imperialists
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...wish he were with us now; our times cry out for someone with Orwell's gifts of clear-eyed observation and analysis. What would he have thought, I wonder, of American policy in Afghanistan and Iraq, which uses essentially imperialist means to defeat fascist regimes and rebuild nations ravaged by them? Orwell was not a pacifist. He had lived long enough among the poor in Britain and France to understand the inequities of the liberal democracies, but he had a splendid contempt for those unwilling to defend them against a greater evil. If he believed that rogue states or radical...
Members of the Bush Administration, of course, are not so crass as to admit that their aims in Iraq are imperialist. Yet U.S. soldiers are already finding themselves in situations miserably familiar to those of the old imperial powers. Take the deaths last week in Fallujah. Young soldiers firing on demonstrators among whom agents provocateurs with weapons may (or may not) have been hiding--we've seen this movie before, from India to Algeria to Ireland. Many of the Administration's statements on Iraq reveal a cast of mind last exercised by those with ostrich-feather plumes on their hats...
...imperialism's apologists, that such a familiarity with exotic climes would have bred a reverence for foreign cultures, as if every child of empire wanted to do something noble, like translate the Bhagavad Gita or teach for a year in Sierra Leone. Sadly, not so. In Britain, the imperialist adventure produced a belief that Britons were better than anyone with dark skin. In my hometown, imperialism bred a pervasive racism. When John Barnes, a great black soccer player, first played for Liverpool, the fans greeted him by throwing bananas on the field and making monkey noises. This...
...Iraqi cars is a reminder that Iraq is nominally occupied, and should therefore be neither anarchic nor chaotic. If the angry protests staged daily in front of the Palestine and Sheraton hotels where the media are staying are any indication, Iraqis are demanding their freedom from a brutal imperialist occupation - although clearly not sufficiently brutal to suppress the demonstrations themselves, which a mere month ago would have been greeted with machine gun fire...
...Many Iraqis might actually prefer an occupation, imperialist or otherwise, to the anarchy that prevails today. Ask an Iraqi to list their desires, and the first answer is always safety and security. Some call for an immediate evacuation of U.S. and British troops; others ask that Iraq be made the fifty-first state; and some demand both in the same breath. Most long only for a place in the shade and a future better than their past, but their pride as an ancient, wise and strong people should not be underestimated...