Antoine-Jean Gros "Battle of Abukir" 1806
but it never, ever looks like this

"Petraeus says Iraq 'surge' working" (headline of lead Reuters story on Yahoo!)

Do they think we have a hundred years to work on it? Do they think we're actually going to be able to stay? Do they actually expect we can establish any order whatsoever? Is our order their order? Under what mandate are we going to continue to occupy and terrorize another people? Have they any idea how these things always turn out? Do they know this is a grotesque imperialism, regardless of what they choose to call it this time around? Can we, and can the rest of the world, afford the luxury of our deceit, our mistakes, our illusions?

Don't they realize we know their speeches by heart?

Leopold's Congo (1885-1908)

French Indo-China (1887-1954)

Portuguese Angola (1486-1975)

Italian East Africa (1936-1942)

British South Africa (1795-1961)

American Phillipines (1899-1946)

Soviet Afghanistan (1979-1988)

Chinese Tibet (1950-?)

Japanese Nanjing (1937-1945)

Japanese Manchukuo (1932–1945)

German eastern Reich (1938-1945)

French North Africa (1830-1962)

Ottoman southeastern Europe (1453-1919)

British Ireland (1171-1921-?)

Spanish Netherlands (1579-1713)

Russian empire (1654-1991-?)

United States empire (?-1898-?)

[image from allthingsbeautiful]