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:
Send The Marines! - Tom Lehrer
"When someone makes a move
Of which we don't approve,
Who is it that always intervenes?
U.N. and O.A.S.,*
They have their place, I guess,
But first - send the Marines!
We'll send them all we've got,
John Wayne and Randolph Scott;
Remember those exciting fighting scenes?
To the shores of Tripoli,
But not to Mississippoli,
What do we do? We send the Marines!
For might makes right,
And till they've seen the light,
They've got to be protected,
All their rights respected,
Till somebody we like can be elected.
Members of the corps
All hate the thought of war;
They'd rather kill them off by peaceful means.
Stop calling it aggression,
Ooh, we hate that expression!
We only want the world to know
That we support the status quo.
They love us everywhere we go,
So when in doubt,
Send the Marines! "
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. |
