In thinking about the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine I couldn't help but recall a recent article (May 2, 2006) published in The Wall Street Journal, "White Guilt and the Western Past." The author, Shelby Steele, a noted intellectual at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University in the US was lamenting the insufficient ferocity used by western powers in their wars against developing countries in recent times.

The pictures in this morning's front pages of my local paper, The San Diego Union-Tribune, and The Wall Street Journal, of bombed out sites in Zifta and Beirut, respectively, should, one would think, reassure Mr. Steele about the level of ferocity being employed by western forces, even if the Iraqi casualties reported by Iraq body count, or Lancet, or the blastings of Iraqi cities and towns had previously only caused him to despair at their meekness.

But I actually find Mr. Steele's socio-political analysis of "White Guilt" extremely interesting -- though the diagnosis of meekness in the case of current western wars on Asia is hardly sustainable. According to him the lack of ferocity is due to "the world-wide collapse of white supremacy as a source of moral authority, political legitimacy, and even sovereignty."

"This idea had organised the entire world, divided up its resources, imposed the nation-state system across the globe, and delivered the majority of the world's population into servitude and oppression. After World War II, revolutions across the globe, from India to Algeria, and from Indonesia to the American civil rights revolution, defeated the authority inherent in white supremacy, if not the idea itself."

Thus while the dogma of white supremacy has retreated into the background, the cumulative weight of the moral crimes of racism and imperialism, notes Mr. Steele, means that "if a military victory makes us look like an imperialist nation bent on occupying and raping the resources of a poor brown nation, then victory would mean less because it would have no legitimacy."

Mr. Steele's analysis of the foundation of the western colonialist project on the dogma of white supremacy is elegant and sound, and the natural consequences he suggests of such past behavior -- expiation, labouring "to prove that [westerners] have not relapsed into their group's former sinfulness" -- is logical. But not the reality.

Perhaps, in an ideal world, the species would engage in such self-correcting modifications, but for now, Mr. Steele's conclusions (lamentations) remain in the creative realm of counter-factual history that some scholars are so fond of. Now, in the world we live in, evangelical Christians pack into Washington hotels to cheer on Israel's bombardment of Lebanon. Now, in the world we live in, "Christians United for Israel" draw in US political heavyweights to their rally in Washington to promote wars in Lebanon and Iran, with messages of praise and thanks from the US and Israeli leaders.

A theory of the inherent superiority of the colonial master is a sine qua non for the occupation and rule over a foreign people. As Bangladeshis, we know twice over the perniciousness of being subjects to colonial overlords exercising their divine right to be our rulers. If, as Mr. Steele observes, the idea of white supremacy is now morally repugnant to most westerners, on what alternate doctrine of supremacy might the 21st century western occupiers of Asian lands base their moral foundation upon?

John Hagee, the leader of the aforementioned "Christians United for Israel," is happy to provide a substitute for the role left vacant by the demise of the doctrine of white supremacy, at least, for the time being, insofar as the West's wars in the Middle East are concerned. He, and his fellow evangelicals, embrace the notion of a global conflict between the Judeo-Christian West and Islam, and are mobilising people, capital, and political resources for wars across the region

Viewing the West's new colonialism in Asia through the lens provided by Mr. Hagee, and his supporters, it is hard not to discern a certain symmetry in the response to the current occupations. The only resistance of any substance in the various occupied territories -- be it Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, or Afghanistan -- is being put up by various, mostly indigenous, Islamist groups.

To a confirmed secularist, brought up in the spirit of Liberation, the present state of affairs --occupation by Judeo-Christianists, resistance by Islamists -- is both depressing and alarming. The replacement of racial animus for the religious, and the possibility of even greater vitriol generated by religious fervour, is demoralising and even immobilising, reducing one to merely uttering "a pox on both your houses." The heightened emotions, and the faith-imposed impossibility for compromise on either side, would seem to lead to the Judeo-Christianists' end-game of Armageddon.

Prior to leaving Dhaka, I was reading in the letters column of this newspaper passionate and, not surprisingly, anguished letters from readers, both in Bangladesh and abroad, decrying the disproportionate violence unleashed by Israel. Bangladeshis, having had the misfortune to experience two colonial overlords in recent memory, are perhaps more sensitive and empathetic to the straits of occupied peoples, and the plight of the Palestinians naturally strikes an immediate chord.

However, and unfortunately, sometimes in our (correct) condemnation of Israeli action, we add in sentiments that demonise Jews. The occupation of Palestine is wrong, and the historical mistake that is Israel, has caused undeserved pain and suffering to an entire people, and reason demands that it be condemned.

But the source of the ethnic cleansing suffered by the Palestinians is not something inherent in Jewishness but rather in the (at best, anachronistic) logic of a Zionist state in Palestine, just as we should not attribute the plight of the Tibetans to something intrinsically evil in being Chinese. When we criticise Jews qua Jews, we fall, I fear, in the same trap as the occupiers, with their self-serving dogma of their inherent superiority.

Three hundred fifty years ago, a 23-year old philosopher named Baruch Spinoza was excommunicated from the Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam for arguing the logical impossibility of rightfully claiming God's partiality towards the beliefs and ways of any one group, or religion, thereby ushering in the Age of Modernity. The Judeo-Christianists and Islamists among us may wish to consider adding Spinoza to their reading list.

Manzur Rahman is a professor in San Diego, California.