the more things change...

"If we compare the barbarian instances of inhospitality... with the inhuman behavior of the civilized, and especially the commercial, states of our continent, the injustice practiced by them even in their first contact with foreign lands and peoples fills us with horror; the mere visiting of such peoples being regarded by them as equivalent to a conquest. America, the Negro lands, The Spice Islands, the Cape of Good Hope, etc., on being discovered, were treated as countries that belonged to nobody; for the aboriginal inhabitants were reckoned as nothing... And all this has been done by nations who make a great ado about their piety, and who, while drinking up iniquity like water, would have themselves regarded as the very elect of the orthodox faith."

-- Immanuel Kant, Eternal Peace and Other Essays, 1795

Is this not applicable to our treatment of the Iraqi citizens, Shuni, Shi'ite, or Kurd notwithstanding? Is this not the attitude with which not only the current Federal Adminstration view those in Islamic nations around the world, but all too many so-called "average" Americans who either are ingnorant, apathetic, or both of the world around them?

This also makes me wonder if Gene Roddenberry (or sci-fi writer Theodore Sturgeon from whom it's contended by some that he lifted the idea) was at all familar with Kant, and specifically with the passage quoted above, and if it may have been a source of inspiration for his "Prime Directive" in the Star Trek series?

"The Prime Directive is not just a set of rules; it is a philosophy... and a very correct one. History has proven again and again that whenever mankind interferes with a less developed civilization, no matter how well intentioned that interference may be, the results are invariably disastrous."

- Captain Picard (TNG: "Symbiosis")