President Bush today commemorated the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown by hailing the early colonists’ indomitable spirit in the face of near disaster and holding up the English colony as a milestone on the path to creating American democracy and spreading it around the world.
Oooookay. So, George Bush, in yet another attempt to justify his disaster in Iraq, is trying to compare it with the settlement of Jamestown. Hmm. Not the smartest analogy, considering that Jamestown was the toe-hold that Europeans needed to subjugate and then destroy the Native Americans. With “democracy.”
Gee, do you think that Iraq is yet another example of privileged white men sweeping in to take over and “educate” the savage natives in the superior ways of democracy?
Of course, he also made the now obligatory comparison to how poorly things are going in Iraq and yet, how stupidly optimistic he is:
“Looking back 400 years later, it’s easy to forget how close the Jamestown colony came to failure,” Bush said. Yet, he said, the colonists persevered, creating the first permanent English settlement and leaving a legacy of free enterprise, rule by law and the beginnings of representative government.
