[Law is not justice but process]

I haven't read this particular bit of Kipling's verse for a wile. TR may have thought it marginal poetry, but I consider it the quintessential statement of one view of "imperialism": the view that it is the duty of the "civilized world" to bring civilization to the heathens. If the civilized world failed to do so, darker forces would move in and the heathen would suffer a fate far worse than colonization. It is a very politically incorrect view, but in my opinion it is not without merit (witness the difference between India with its British-derived democracy and the legacy of communism in China). It is not much of a leap to have the same view about bringing democracy to the Arab world.

The comparisons here have been mostly to the situation in Iraq. I see an even stronger comparison to the situation with Western aid to the tsunami victims:

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Pretty much sums up the Indonesian Government's reaction to U.S. aid operations and Christian aid groups. They have let religious xenophobia come before the good of their own people. "Heathen Folly" indeed.

[dirtboy]

Pretty much sums up the Indonesian Government's reaction to U.S. aid operations and Christian aid groups. They have let religious xenophobia come before the good of their own people. "Heathen Folly" indeed.

I agree, it is much more applicable to the tsunami relief than Iraq. I really can't blame the Iraqis for being hesitant initially to stand up to the terrorists - last time we told them to rise up, we left them to twist in the wind. I think that they decided by election day that we were serious and they could take a stand. Although some of the various couplets of the poem might apply to Iraq, the key phrase "heathen folly" IMO does not.