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History Repeating Itself.

First, you push on your territories, where you have no business to be, and where you had promised not to go; secondly, your intrusion provokes resentment, and resentment means resistance.  Thirdly, you instantly cry out that the people are rebellious and their act is rebellion…Fourthly, you send out a force to stamp out rebellion; and fifthly, having spread bloodshed, confusion and anarchy, you declare with your hands uplifted to the heavens that moral reasons forced 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.

  • Viscount John Morley, State Secretary for India, 1905-1910; summarizing the anger of Pashtun tribesmen; quoted in C.F. Andrews, The Challenge of the North West Frontier, 1937.
  • HT: Bloodmoney: A Novel of Espionage.

 

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