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Saturday, May 3, 2008 12:00 AM

Fred Hiatt on the noble glories of occupation

The Washington Post editorialist says that mere airstrikes are bad because they result in civilian deaths, cause displacement and aid al-Qaida recruitment. Therefore, we should invade and occupy countries instead.

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  • Sunday, May 4, 2008 10:56 PM

    Two interrelated (and controversial) points

    In the first place, I see no indications that any sector of US political culture except the far Left has really faced up to the issue of implicit racism. I say 'implicit' because explicit racism is very properly condemned, but the WAY in which it is condemned contains a subtext, to the effect that it is cruel to make explicit the actual and concrete position of inferiority in which US Blacks are trapped - and the only explanation for this subtextual nuance is a widespread assumption that US Blacks DESERVE inferior status, which in turn is derived from a sense of cultural and geopolitical superiority, on which all US citizens are encouraged to rely, as a means of evading the horror of their real global actions over the entire span of their history. To say, well, Rowan, you're a Brit, we learned white supremacist imperialism from you, is true but irrelevant - the USA purports to be 'better than that,' and it isn't. The second point is that white supremacism is maintained largely via a mystifying proxy which is (a) religious rather than explicitly racial, and (b) Jewish rather than Christian - Christianity being re-written as supportive of Jewish global rights as progenitors of 'Western values.' Sorry to have to say that, because I am deeply in love with the Jewish people, no point in my trying to hide that.

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