Once again being reminded of the horrors of Abu Ghraib, thanks to today's front page story, I couldn't help wondering what sort of conceit makes people think that the West's presence in Iraq is going to make things better. Then, dangerously, I started to think a little more and my mind difted back to 1899.
You see, our countries have a long history of mutually backslapping one another while we go in and take over smaller and weaker countries. Back then, America had just 'purchased' the Philippines from Spain after winning the Spanish-American War. Some Filipinos, who had just declared independence from Spain, weren't too keen on the idea of their country being bought and sold like a commodity, and so a bloody war began.
Soon, some filthy sell-out liberals in the United States were questioning whether colonialism was really part of the Founding Fathers' intentions. Looking across the Atlantic, Rudyard Kipling saw parallels with the the self-hating chattering classes of London, who were only to keen to diss Britain's colonial achievements in India. So he wrote a little poem to keep the spirits of those Americans who were keen to export democracy and freedom up. It became one of the most controversial pieces of writing in the English language.
The White Man's Burden sees colonialism as a grand adventure in improving the lot of less fortunate peoples. For Kipling, a proper colonialist did not act out of a desire for gain or glory (yeah, right) but out of a desire to help their subject peoples reach the rank, or at least nearly so, of their elders and betters.
While of course, today, such crude racial epithets aren't acceptable, have a read through the poem below and tell me that it doesn't sum up the mentality of a lot of the neo-Con hawks precisely. It sums up, even more accurately, of a lot of 'progressive' 'left-wing' pro-War opinion. Show me anything, other than the self-politically incorrect expression of White superiority that couldn't have been written by Christopher Hitchins or lefty warbloggers like Norman Geras and Oliver Kamm.
It's beyond my comprehension how anyone can think we're doing anything useful in Iraq, but remember more than the crude 'nuke Mecca' freepers, it's this, subtle, self-righteous, mentality we're fighting. The people who convince middle-Britain and middle-America that we need to 'stay the course' aren't the morons who want to ethnically cleanse the West Bank... it's the people who play on the conceit that we're better than the rest of the world, and that other countries benefit when we 'help' them.
Tell that to the victims of Abu Ghraib.
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.
Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.
Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"
Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.
Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!