Savages...are by nature rash. They have no middle gear. The middle gear of any man is self-discipline. - John le Carré

Because we are so unfamiliar with the motivation of the people we are dealing with, we are more afraid of them than we need to be.

We colonise them, Your Graces, we corrupt them, we exploit them, we bomb them, sack their cities, ignore their culture, and confound them with the infinite variety of our religious sects. We are hideous not only in their sight, Monsignors, but in their nostrils as well — the stink of the round-eye is abhorrent to them and we’re too thick even to know it. Yet when we have done our worst, and more than our worst, my sons, we have barely scratched the surface of the Asian smile.” Other

In the war on terror we did everything wrong that we could have done.