Same Old Story

"First you push into territories where you have no business to be , and where you had promised not to go ; secondly , your intrusion provokes resentment and , in these wild countries, resentment means resistance; thirdly, you instantly cry out that the people are rebellious and that their act is rebellion (this in spite of your own assurance that you have no intention of setting up a permanent sovereignty over them) ; fourthly, you send a force to stamp out the rebellion; and fifthly, having spread bloodshed, confusion and anarchy, you declare , with hands uplifted to the heavens, that moral reasons force you to stay, for if you were to leave, this territory would be left in a condition which no civilized power could contemplate with equanimity or with composure . These are the five stages in the Forward Rake's progress."

David Starr Jordan , Imperial Democracy, 1899

Now doesn't that all sound very familiar !!