Reading Brent Sowcroft in the New York Times this morning prattling on about how if we "cut and run" from Iraq there will be chaos and civil war and yadayadayada, I realized what that stuff reminds me of.

(And I don't want to pick soley on Republicans like Sowcroft here. Plenty of mainstream Democrats talk this way too.)

It reminds me of this cassical gem from President McKinley, a bit over a hundred years ago, justifying the annexation of the Philipines after the war with Spain:

"I walked the floor of the White House night after night until midnight, and I am not ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed to Almighty God for light and guidance more than one might. And one night late it came to me this way -- I don't know how it was, but it came...that we could not leave [the Filipinos] to themselves -- they were unfit for self-government -- and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's was...that there was nothing left for me to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men for whom Christ also died."

Now, if we can recognize this as magnificently self-serving colonialist bullshit when McKinley says it at the end of the 19th century, we should recognize it as the same thing when the likes of George Bush (or, for that matter, John Kerry, who, remember, wanted to send *more* troops) say the same thing now, that whether or not it was right to go into Iraq in the first place "now that we're there, we have no choice but to stay" to guarantee stability and democracy and yadayadayada...

Colonialism that incessantly pats itself on the back about how benevolent it is is not a 21st century invention, and there's no more reason to take those claims seriously now than there ever was.

"I don't want to eat that sandwhich. No, sir. But if I don't eat it, the sandwhich will fall to anarchy and misrule, so I have a terrible heavy burden of obligation to eat it. Pass the mayo."

OK, rant concluded.

Back to those revisions I was supposed to be working on tonight.