Beware Americans Bearing Gifts

Jon Schwartz has a great piece on how truly helpful and noble the American people are:

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.

Now, none of this 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. One of the (two) books on Bush's current reading list is Imperial Grunts by Robert Kaplan.

Kaplan's book explains that a) the War on Terror is very similar to America's Indian Wars; b) the WoT is "really about taming the frontier"; and c) most of the earth is now "Injun country."

Look at all those people out there saying, "come over and help us." How can we possibly refuse?