ROBESPIERRE ON BUSH'S IRAQ WAR

This is from John Gray's very interesting book, Black Mass, p. 146:

The most extravagant idea that can be born in the head of a political thinker is to believe that it suffices for people to enter, weapons in hand, among a foreign people and expect to have its laws and constitution embraced. It is in the nature of things that the progress of reason is slow and no one loves armed missionaries; the first lesson of nature and prudence is to repulse them as enemies. One can encourage freedom, never create it by an invading force.

- Maximilien Robespierre, speech to the Jacobin Club, Paris, 1792