George Bush, Anti-Colonialist
[posted by Callimachus]
He may just accomplish what even the most daring progressive hardly dreams: Breaking down the last, most deep-founded relic of colonialism. Unintentionally, of course.
We've been told over and over that nations all across Africa and Asia are "victims" of colonialism. They're not victims of it. They're creations of it. It would be like aliens dropped out of the sky one day, and for reasons of their own convenience ruled that France, Bangladesh, and the U.S. state of Georgia should form one nation, ruled it for 50 years, then departed, insisting that this strange creature had to exist in perpetuity.
But nobody want to upset that accidental order, however rotten, because of the domino effect. What you'd end up with by a natural evolution in the Middle East might look like the Ralph Peters map that recently got a lot of attention.
And about 70 million dead people. I don't think it's a good idea to start this process, here, now, or ever. But there's a certain grim logic to it. There's no more cosmic fiat for there to be an Iraq in the atlas than there was for there to be a Yugoslavia.
He may just accomplish what even the most daring progressive hardly dreams: Breaking down the last, most deep-founded relic of colonialism. Unintentionally, of course.
We've been told over and over that nations all across Africa and Asia are "victims" of colonialism. They're not victims of it. They're creations of it. It would be like aliens dropped out of the sky one day, and for reasons of their own convenience ruled that France, Bangladesh, and the U.S. state of Georgia should form one nation, ruled it for 50 years, then departed, insisting that this strange creature had to exist in perpetuity.
But nobody want to upset that accidental order, however rotten, because of the domino effect. What you'd end up with by a natural evolution in the Middle East might look like the Ralph Peters map that recently got a lot of attention.
And about 70 million dead people. I don't think it's a good idea to start this process, here, now, or ever. But there's a certain grim logic to it. There's no more cosmic fiat for there to be an Iraq in the atlas than there was for there to be a Yugoslavia.
