Unpeople.

Noam Chomsky isn't tops on my list of social commentators, but with Darth Cheney grumbling about success in the Iraq quagmire, I found this critique spot on:

A few weeks after the Pentagon report, New York Times military-Iraq expert Michael R. Gordon wrote a reasoned and comprehensive review of the options on Iraq policy facing the candidates for the presidential election. One voice is missing in the debate: Iraqis. Their preference is not rejected. Rather, it is not worthy of mention. And it seems that there is no notice taken of the fact. That makes sense on the usual tacit assumption of almost all discourse on international affairs: We own the world, so what does it matter what others think? They are "unpeople", to borrow the term used by British diplomatic historian Mark Curtis in his work on Britain's crimes of empire. Routinely, Americans join Iraqis in unpeoplehood. Their preferences, too, provide no options.