A short time ago my area on the coastside south of San Francisco lost internet access for an entire weekend. Being a complete internet junky I was soon experiencing major withdrawal. In my frantic desperation I scanned a bookshelf I visit all too rarely anymore and my eye alighted upon a book that had been in my possession since childhood, but that I’d never read; George Orwell’s Burmese Days. I soon found myself immersed in the simple joy of reading an unknown (to me) work of a great writer and forgot all about the internet.

Orwell based this novel- one of his first- on the five years he had spent as a policeman in the British Army during the occupation of Burma (now Myanmar) in the 1930s.

His chief protagonist in the novel, Flory, is obviously based on himself. The interesting thing about Flory is he despises his own people, the British. His best friend is a Burmese doctor named Veraswami who has a similar point of view about his countrymen, the Burmese. He believes the English are wonderful people “pukka sahibs” (british slang for “excellent fellow”) bringing great improvements to the lives of his people. Flory and Veraswami sit around in their off hours drinking gin to cope with the horrific jungle heat and repeating arguments againd and again that always amount to espousing these same views. Here Flory reacts to Veraswami’s claim that his cynicism borders on being seditious.

“Seditious?” Flory said. “I’m not seditious. I don’t want the Burmans to drive us out of this country. God Forbid! I’m here to make money like everyone else. All I object to is the slimy white man’s burden humbug. The pukka sahib pose. It’s so boring. Even the bloody fools at the Club might be bettter company if we weren’t all of us living a lie the whole time.”

“But my dear friend what lie are you living.”

“Why, of course, the lie that we’re here to uplift the dignity of our poor black brothers instead of to rob them. I suppose it’s a natural lie enough. But it corrupts us, it corrupts us in ways you can’t imagine. There’s an everlasting sense of being a sneak and a liar that torments us and drives us to justify ourselves night and day. It’s at the bottom of half our beastliness to the natives. We Anglo-Indians could be almost bearable if we’d only admit that we’re thieves and go on thieving without any humbug.”

- George Orwell “Burmese Days”

Does this sound eerily familiar? My first thought was- here we go all over again in Iraq. Claiming to be doing it only for the benefit of the poor helpless victims of oppression- at least that’s the latest rationale- while Halliburton and all of the other pukka sahibs grow fat off of high priced contracts and the higher profits generated by the suppressed supply of oil.

The British were forced to withdraw from Burma less than two decades after the events of this book. At the time of the occupation Burma was considered to be on the fast track to success in the modern world. Now Mayanmar is one of the most corrupt and impoverished nations on Earth. There are probably a few Veraswamis even now sucking up to the pukka sahibs in the green zone, expecting Iraq to be on the fast track to success if only the right brand of religion- theirs- would just become the consensus choice. Maybe it’s a bad analogy- as so many are- but I get a bad feeling reading this that it looks much closer to the model facing that region than the American Revolutionary war analogy tripe we hear spouted by the neocons and their fans. Perhaps democracy really is on the march. Let’s hope so. The cradle of civilization deserves better than a remaking of Myanmar’s misery.