A Policy of Unremitting Force? Us?

Comment to Lew Rockwell on his artice: http://www.mises.org/story/2690

Dear Lew,

Amen.

We are supposed to believe that the wogs have always been killing each other and that we must "stay the course" to prevent civil war as we guide the heathens down the path toward civilization. Sounds pretty noble, doesn't it? We are noble if we are anything, that's for sure. But people should ask themselves how these native combatants managed to live together for six hundred years when they were part of the Ottoman Empire. Were the Turks so vicious that no one dared to step out of line? Do Iraqis now misbehave only because we are such nice guys? Could be …

Or, perhaps the troubles started when the Ottoman Empire was destroyed, dismembered and looted, from WW I to today — by us! (We? Actually, I didn't have anything to do with it and neither did you, I'm sure, Lew. But you know what I mean.)

I think the record shows that things were quite peaceful throughout the region when the Ottomans ran things in Mesopotamia, just as they were peaceful in the Balkans and also in Iberia when the Moors ran things there. Why, after Constantinople became Istanbul, the Orthodox Christian Church HQ stayed just where it had always been — in Istanbul. And the Jews lived there and in Sarajevo too. [And in Baghdad and in Cairo!] Fancy that. If that is true, then it suggests that we are the problem, not them. That ominously suggests that someone other than them is responsible for all those nasty suicide bombings we see killing the natives by the hundreds every week. Maybe it's us, or our agents. Maybe the real plan is to drive everyone out of Iraq, or kill them if they refuse to leave. It would be unthinkable to think something like that.

Of course that couldn't be true. We are the good guys, after all. Aren't we? Sure we are.

- Morley Evans