The Scorching Dipshittery of John Derbyshire

The inimitable Mister Derbyshire invites Iraqis of all stripes to refrain from cluttering his beautiful mind with their sorry gripes.

Further, as a “To Hell With Them Hawk” (I think I can claim to be a founder member), the stuff about improving Iraqi lives bounces right off me. What business is it of mine, to improve Iraqi lives? Would Iraqis improve my life, if they could? “The enormous increase in cell phones, cars, and satellite TVs…” Leaving aside the fact that these improvements would have occurred anyway with the end of the Saddam embargo and the collapse of the command economy, was it really necessary to spend tens of billions of dollars and sacrifice two thousand American lives so that Iraqis could have more cell phones? If the good people of Chad, or Libya, or North Korea, suffer from an insufficiency of cell phones, shall we invade their countries?

Huh. You wanna know some stuff that doesn’t “bounce off” a person? A machete. Wielded by Hutus.

Derbyshire claims to be writing further on this matter in a future column. Let’s hope he takes the time to read Niall Ferguson’s book, Colossus, in the interim, which, while flawed in places, makes powerful note of the fact that the British Empire only flourished through the efforts of countless British subjects who did, in fact, travel to the furthest ends of the world fueled by their ambitions to better the lives of people around the world.

If he can, in fact, name a successful empire built by dickheads who tossed facile-sounding, egocentric essays at the walls from their easy chairs, we’d love to hear about it. In the meantime, Mr. Derbyshire, just know that if they ever erect the Donald Rumsfeld Memorial Funnel Cake Stand in the middle of downtown Baghdad, you don’t get to have any.

Derb On Nadler [The Corner]

READ MORE: fat armchair surfing fools, john derbyshire, niall ferguson, the corner, war in iraq