Stage
One:
“How dreadful! That horrible dictator is
oppressing his people. If we don’t stop him nobody will. Anyone who claims otherwise
is a supporter of oppression and dictatorship!”
Stage
Two:
“All right, now that we’ve taken over the
country, perhaps there is actually no evidence that the evil dictator was
oppressing anyone. But so what? He was still an evil dictator. We must stay
here to bring Freedom and Democracy to this country. Free elections and free
enterprise will make them Just Like Us!”
Stage
Three:
“All right, perhaps the elections and
privatisation didn’t go exactly as planned. But evil terrorists are trying to
destroy our honest and sincere efforts to help these people. We must keep our
troops there to fight them, otherwise the supporters of the evil old dictator
will be back!”
Stage
Four:
“All right, so the country has
disintegrated into sectarian chaos and inter-tribal civil war. But nobody could
have predicted this would happen! Any mistakes we made were made in good faith.
We always mean well and anyone who blames us is just a hater. If we hadn’t
invaded, after all, the situation would have been even worse.”
Stage
Five:
“These people don’t deserve freedom and
democracy. They’ve always been savages and will always remain savages. But we
can’t withdraw our troops because that would be dishonouring the blood they
have shed fighting for freedom and keeping our homeland safe.”
Stage
Six:
“These people don’t deserve freedom and
democracy. They’ve always been savages and will always remain savages. But we
can’t withdraw our troops because that would send a signal to our allies that
they can’t depend on us, and to our enemies that we aren’t prepared to stay the
course.”
Stage
Seven:
“Our president has ended that war, and
anyone who claims otherwise is a conservative racist hater.”
Stage
Eight:
“How dreadful! That evil dictator over
there is oppressing his people!”
 |
| Click to Enlarge |
Further
Reading: This.
Did I miss the stage where we scour the land for oil and minerals? And take them all for ourselves?
ReplyDeleteThat comes under the "privatisation" bit. Obviously, humanitarian interventions can't talk openly about that :)
DeleteAh yes. Tank Q.
DeleteBasically, every decent, patriotic American knows that the US is the Greatest Force for Good in the World. We only help. We punish the guilty and protect the innocent.
ReplyDeleteWe condemn the Muslim, Kenyan pretender to the presidency for apologising for a legitimate action by the US military. (OK, he ordered it, but then he apologised, and anyway, it was the heroes in the US military, not the pretender to the presidency, who killed those heinous terrorists.)
When the soldiers fighting for a legitimate government (i.e., the US) are injured, it is a heinous crime to bomb the hospitals treating them.
But when heinous criminal physicians are treating heinous criminals so they can commit more heinous crimes, they are not protected. If the US military finds them and kills the criminals, the criminal physicians must take their chances (and we hope they all get killed). Under International Law (as defined by the US) anyone killed by the US military is a criminal terrorist, and anyone who does not want criminal terrorists prevented from engaging in their terrorist actions is also a terrorist, as is any physician patching them up so they can commit more heinous crimes.
MichaelWme
I learned in school that America was the Greatest Force for Good in the World. Then came Vietnam, and the evidence (to those who actually looked with their own eyes) was overwhelming that the US was a neo-Imperialist power, and had been since the days of Monroe.
ReplyDeleteI learned in school that Hindus were all peaceful, non-violent vegetarians. Then I read the reality. A shock, I assure you.
This epistemology stuff has come as a profound shock to me. What do we know? (Not much.)
MichaelWme
There's one possible sidebar to the process. After Freedom and Democracy are brought in, sometimes the stupid savages vote wrong and then we can be in a pickle. We have no choice then except to try to slowly starve them with sanctions until they come to their senses, if they ever do . . . .
ReplyDeleteJust want to wish you a Happy Diwali. Here, we have fireworks all night long. And lots of junk e-mail wishing us a Happy Diwali (like this one). And (for those of us who have no idea what a Diwali is) articles about the fact that those who celebrate do so with lots of sweets (whose names I do not understand).
ReplyDeleteHope you can enjoy Diwali in whatever way you celebrate it.
MichaelWme
Once upon a time, there was the Guardian.uk, which said that post-mortems had proved that someone had used poison gas in Syria, but there was no way to know whodunit. The editorials said that the West should not rush to punish someone until they were sure who was really guilty. The UK government shut down the Guardian.uk and replaced it with the Guardian.com. The fact that the UK constabulary went in was reported, and (of course) lauded.
ReplyDeleteThe Guardian.com says there is irrefutable proof that the Syrian regime is evil, that it has killed 250,000 peaceful, unarmed protesters using Weapons of Mass Destruction, proof provided by the UK government, so it is, of course, classified, but still, it's irrefutable. The editorials now say the West must get rid of the evil regime and make Syria a Democracy.
But the Independent still had writers who said that, while the UK government had irrefutable proved that last year's gas attacks were by the evil regime, this year's gas attacks were by the rebels.
Fortunately, the UK government seems to have intervened. The two reporters who contradicted the UK government's carefully researched (using classified sources) study that the evil Syrian regime was responsible for every one of the 250,000 deaths in it's campaign of terror against the innocent, unarmed, peaceful Syrian Sunnis have disappeared from the pages of the Independent. And the editorials now say that the West MUST remove the evil Syrian regime and replace it with a Wahabbi Democracy.
MichaelWme