Of course, Tony and George really don’t give a damn about the "hearts and minds" of the Iraqi people—if they did, Iraq wouldn’t be a violence-wracked garbage pit where "huge numbers of people [are] lacking adequate access to basic services and resources such as clean water, food, health care, electricity, jobs and sanitation," according to the New Standard, a situation characterized as "building a new and better Iraq" by General Sir Mike Jackson, the Chief of the General Staff of the British Army.

For centuries men with "sir" attached to their names have slaughtered, enslaved, starved, and abused millions of people—from the genocidal starvation of the Irish (Oxford history professor James Anthony Froude characterized the Irish as "more like squalid apes than human beings") to rounding up women and children during the Boer War in South Africa and allowing them to starve to death in concentration camps. "We insisted on reserving the right to bomb niggers," is how British prime minister Lloyd George encapsulated Britain’s racist colonial policies. "To Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill, the Iraqis, like all Arabs, were 'niggers’, against whom poison gas could be used," writes John Pilger. "They were un-people; and they still are."

It would seem very little changes over time. Consider Niall Ferguson, professor of political and financial history at Oxford University, who believes the British system of colonialism is better than the American version. Ferguson believes "the 'economics of empire and civil administration’ allowed the British to successfully colonize many parts of the world for well over a century. Ferguson added that 'out of all colonies, those who were owned by Britain have been better able to establish long-lasting democracies’" (emphasis added). So unwilling were the Iraqi people to be "owned" by Britain, they revolted continually, beginning in 1920, and Britain responded with aerial bombing, including the use of mustard gas, in order to "teach obedience" to "uncivilized tribes" consisting of "niggers," as Churchill deemed the Iraqis. Gertrude Bell, the "Uncrowned Queen of Iraq," officially bestowed with the title "Oriental Secretary," endorsed British violence and drew up Iraq’s borders. Such indignities against the Iraqi people seemed to be endless, so long as the British ran things.

No doubt more than a few Iraqis remember all of this and blame British and American neo-colonialism for the current situation in their country. Before Dubya’s daddy invaded Iraq in 1991—after sending mixed signals to Saddam as he prepared to attack Kuwait for stealing Iraqi oil through slant drilling—Iraq had the best health care and education infrastructure in the Arab Middle East. It was systematically destroyed—as were water purification plants (deliberately sabotaged to inflict disease on the "niggers," see Thomas J. Nagy), sewage treatment plants, electrical grids, and the entire Iraqi civilian infrastructure. This wholesale destruction was followed by more than a decade of sanctions, resulting in the murder of 1.4 million Iraqis, 500,000 of them children.

Hearts and minds? In fact, it is amazing more Iraqis—if we are to believe the results of the "secret" poll conducted by the Ministry of Defense—do not support resistance attacks against Americans and British occupation troops. Sooner or later, the Iraqis will drive the U.S. and Britain out of Iraq and then, here in America, we will be confronted with the "Iraq Syndrome," a sequel to the Vietnam Syndrome, and our rulers will chastise us once again for our lack of intestinal fortitude and mindless willingness to sacrifice and die in numbers for their new world order scheme, a scheme designed to enrich huge multinational corporations and a handful of rich overlords and plutocrats.

One of these days, the American people (and British) will finally get the message—they hate us because we invade their countries and subject their people to misery—and refuse once and for all to support the invasions and occupations of our neolib leaders.