Tibet

From my favorite political cartoonist:

Incidentally, for a glimpse of what Americans sound like when they’re defending the Iraq war before the rest of the world, peer in at some of the online comments on the riots in Tibet by Chinese: the Tibetans are barbarians, they should be grateful to the Chinese for being there, the Chinese put an end to all sorts of atrocities, offered them economic development, built schools, etc. (Again with the schools. You’d think that the great imperial powers of the world were fanatics for education, some sort of heavily armed truant board or PTA, invading ignorant hooky-playing nations and forcibly building schools out of the stern, well-intentioned kindness of their hearts.) All of which sidesteps the issue that it’s not their fucking country. I remember once talking to a Chinese political cartoonist, a bright, erudite, cosmopolitan woman, who nevertheless, on the subject of Tibet, innocently parroted the party line: well, they were invited there, Tibet was really very backward before the Chinese came, they were helping to develop the area, the Tibetans should be grateful to them. It was creepy. Replace Chinese with Americans and Tibet with Iraq and tell me whether this doesn’t start to sound familiar.

Naturally he’s completely wrong about all of this. We’re nothing like the Chinese.

But it *does* kinda sound the same, doesn’t it?