What's this "WE" business paleface?
The naked colonialist arrogance of this disgraceful article posted on Firedoglake by "Democrat Taylor Marsh" put me in such a bad temper that I left. Here's her concluding paragraph in which the memsahib delivers her instructions to the brown people:" "A few days" wait to form an Iraqi government is not good enough. Someone needs to light a fire under these people. If Bush and his administration can’t get it done they need to get an emissary over to Iraq immediately who can make it happen and soon. Everything depends on Iraq forming a permanent government. Get it done."Before you click the link I suggest you grab a pencil and some paper. Count the number of times she says "we" in the ensuing comments. The pottery barn principle: "We broke it we own it."is alive and well and it's not just for right wing republicans like Colin Powell or extreme right wing Republican presidential wannabe Senator John McCain. In an earlier generation the American satirist Tom Lehrer exposed this sort of colonialist mindset succinctly:
I'd like to believe that the wonderful denizens of what is one of my favourite American political sites - Firedoglake, who piled in with unfavourable comments on Marsh's article are in the majority, but I don't. Now to be fair they had another guest posting that night entitled "Oh Wow" by Ian Welsh. It's just that Ian Welsh is ummmm Canadian. markfromireland *OAS - "The Organisation of American States" an intergovernmental organisation set up by the USA during the cold war to coordinate its various satraps ruling over a mix of descendents of colonists and brown people in South America. |