George Orwell once wrote that people “feel that a thing becomes different if you call it by a different name.”12 Americans have habitually relied on different names to cloak U.S. imperialism: Manifest Destiny, settling the frontier, converting the heathen, protecting American lives and property, and sharing the blessings of democracy. But the presumed beneficiaries of U.S. ministrations, be they Native Americans, Mexicans, Cubans, Filipinos, Vietnamese, or, in more recent days, Iraqis and Afghans, have never been fooled.
