Don't know whether I agree with you. Check out for example Trautmann's comments on Kissinger's memoirs on SE Asia in the intro to Aryans and British India, Chomsky's notes on US elites' attitudes towards Haitian govt leaders in Year 501, and the whole sordid history in Paul Gordon Lauren's award winning Power and Prejudice.
Geopolitical designs of the ruling
>class have and will make use of anyone, including those of "Islamic and/or
>Arabic culture."
True enough. But we would have to look at how even these allies are represented more carefully. Been years since I read Said's Covering Islam.
>Yes, "American culture" has been Orientalist, but that didn't stop the
>American governing elite from building up Japan -- perhaps the enemy No. 1
>during the "Good War" -- as the pillar of post-WW2 capitalist
>reconstruction in the Asia-Pacific theater.
Heard John Dower lecture. He thinks post WWII American attitudes are quite disturbingly orientalist but collusively so in that we often taken the Japanese ruling class's distorted ideas about its own society for our starting point. Quite surprised to see you make this argument, Ms Furuhasi!
>Orientalism does exist, but it doesn't affect their geopolitical thinking
>as much as Said may think it does. They are, if anything, more
>Machiavellian than Orientalist.
Not quite sure but a provocative point.
Yours, Rakesh