But then Africans come higher in the pecking order than Serbs. Blacks are the Democratic Party s most important constituency. Yet he says nothing about the slaughter of the Hutus by the Tutsis in the Congo in 1996-7. Throughout history, imperialists have justified conquest and their right to rule over others by claiming that their only concern is the welfare of their subjects. As bearers of a higher civilization, the conquerors have a moral duty to rescue primitive men from their benighted condition.
Imperialism is always humanitarian imperialism.
The rhetoric of the Clinton Administration echoes uncannily the moral zealotry of the nineteenth century, but adds to it a contemporary politically-correct twist. Then he went into his standard routine of sucking up to an audience by apologizing for the deeds of others. We will continue to make the case that it is in America s interest to see an Africa that is at peace, prosperous, and whose people are free and empowered to shape their own destinies. But there is one sense in which today s imperialism is unlike the nineteenth-century variety. In the last century, as we know, the Europeans acquired in Africa cheap raw materials as well as secure markets for their manufactured products.