Enlightenment leads to death.

In The Guardian Weekly of 22 March one Ed Vuillamy writes " What Kind Of Mess Do We Want In Syria?" By " we " he means western countries. He draws a parallel with the war in Bosnia when he spent " all those nights in trenches, forests and cellars and along treacherous mountain roads with the resistance fighters of betrayed Bosnia ". The war ended when the US bombed Serbian forces and its President, Milosevic was transferred to the Hague to the face International Criminal Court where he died before a verdict was reached. But is there real peace in Bosnia? Will the hundreds of UN troops stay there forever and, if not, what happens once they leave? He admits that Iraq is a mess but still advocates that there should be some sort of military intervention in Syria because " those who advocate doing nothing can never look the desperate or the dead in the eye ". Saddam may have killed tens of thousands but western countries killed hundreds of thousands in Iraq, not just in the 2 Gulf wars, but by blatant theft of Iraqi oil over a decade in the " Oil For Food Program ". Are Iraqis supposed to feel grateful for the slaughter of their children by the US, rather than by Saddam, and then dismissed as so much dross by being labelled " collateral damage "? What happens if Assad of Syria is bombed into oblivion as Gaddafi was? The Sunnis, encouraged by their victory, will surely help their brothers in Iraq where they are a minority. There is every chance of the war drawing in Jordan and Saudi Arabia on the one hand and Iran on the other. What makes western people feel so morally obliged to protect others by bombing them to hell? The answer is in the same paper in an article entitled " Westerners Don't Rule But Their Values Do " by Will Hutton in which he insists that the west may have lost its economic and political power but is still morally superior because others are now accepting its values of 19th century Enlightenment, with a capital " E ", which are " its commitment to justice, fulfilling work and the necessity to enfranchise every human " and homosexuality. From the Arab spring to microblogging in China everything is because of the spread of western Enlightenment. So, all of Asia was in darkness,we were living in trees until the white man brought guns and missionaries and syphilis.  This is the " white man's burden ". Try to bring Enlightenment, with a capital " E ", to unenlightened Asians and if they refuse to be enlightened shove it down their throats with 2 nuclear bombs on Japan, napalm on Korea, dioxin on Vietnam and depleted uranium on Iraq. Punish 10 million Indians to death, making Churchill a greater mass killer than Hitler, but, hey, they should be grateful for having been enlightened by being enslaved. Dangerous sanctimonious twaddle which gives the excuse to slaughter ever more. How many more will be enlightened to death by the west?