Monday, November 26, 2007

And on the subject of the Archbishop calling us the problem,

one of his little 'examples' was "It is one thing to take over a territory and then pour energy and resources into administering it and normalising it. Rightly or wrongly, that's what the British Empire did - in India, for example." Has he ever actually read anything about that time? It hasn't been a specific area of study for me, but I do recall a few things.

For instance, for some years after the British moved in, the Brit army in the area was the armed forces of John Company, the British East India Company. And their concern wasn't 'administering and normalizing it', it was ensuring things stayed calm so the Company could make money. Lots of it. I'm sure some weenie will jump up and say "We're in Iraq to make money for Halliburton!", etc. Horsecrap. We could have had Iraqi oil, and a lot else, simply by making deals with Saddam, without all the expense and trouble of using the military.

There's a lot more. My level of respect for Williams has never been what you would call 'high'; now it's pretty mucn nonexistent.

Added: just ran across this from Victor Davis Hanson on the subject.

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