We're Not Here to Help

There's a quote, attributed to Ronald Reagan, that goes something like this: "Hello. I'm from the federal government, and I'm here to help." It's supposed to represent, in joking fashion, the ultimate conservative horror of a national government that would do more harm than good in trying to impose its will, even if it was motivated by good intentions. Given that basic tenet of the conservative faith on the domestic scale, why to people seem so surprised that other folks feel the same way around the globe?

I mention this because of this of the comments of outgoing British PM Tony Blair, as noted by Glenn Grennwald. Blair, who's been Duhbya's staunchest ally in the Iraq folly, just doesn't understand why the Iraqis aren't more grateful:

I was stopped by someone the other week who said it was not surprising there was so much terrorism in the world when we invaded their countries (meaning Afghanistan and Iraq). No wonder Muslims felt angry.

When he had finished, I said to him: tell me exactly what they feel angry about. We remove two utterly brutal and dictatorial regimes; we replace them with a United Nations-supervised democratic process and the Muslims in both countries get the chance to vote, which incidentally they take in very large numbers. And the only reason it is difficult still is because other Muslims are using terrorism to try to destroy the fledgling democracy and, in doing so, are killing fellow Muslims.

What's more, British troops are risking their lives trying to prevent the killing. Why should anyone feel angry about us?

That's Blair, from a column in this past weekend's Sunday Times of London.

What Blair fails to realize is that the American-led occupation of Iraq has not made their lives better on a daily basis. In fact, for many it's worse than during the days of Hussein. The Iraqis don't view as as liberators as the same way, say, the French did in World War II because they weren't under the heal of another foreign power. Power could be returned to the rightful French government life could return to normal. In Iraq, there was no rightful government to put back in power. We went in and kicked over Saddam's ant hill in a way that made daily life for many Iraqis much worse.

In addition, as Greenwald points out, the "we're here to help you form a democracy" rings a bit hollow from a government who is best buds with several of the regions other despotic leaders.