"Come over and help us!"

[phantom power]

This formula recurs over and over again throughout American history. We go somewhere because we HAVE TO HELP PEOPLE. Then they all somehow—perhaps because of a 400-year streak of bad luck on our part?—end up dead. In 1966, the editor of U.S. News and World Report wrote:

"What the United States is doing in Vietnam is the most significant example of philanthropy extended by one people to another that we have witessed in our times."

True, we killed an estimated two million people in Indochina. But when you get down to it, aren’t philanthropy and napalm essentially the same thing?

Now, none of this history necessarily means exactly the same thing is happening in Iraq. Maybe this time we really are going to help! You never know!

But probably not.

http://thismodernworld.com/2604

[ugarte]

1. The missionary mentality

The same way we "saved" all the heathen natives in the "New" World...kill 'em to save 'em.