Edward Said has an interesting column in Al Ahram today. In it, he argues that imperial policy is supported by an imperial perspective on the part of the controlling power. This perspective is "that way of looking at a distant foreign reality by subordinating it to one's gaze, constructing its history from one's own point of view, seeing its people as subjects whose fate is to be decided not by them but by what distant administrators think is best for them." Al Ahram, "Imperial perspectives", July 24, 2003

"[American views of Arabs] are so incompetent and ideological; they provide Americans not with ideas about Arabs and Muslims, but rather with the way they would like Arabs and Muslims to be. For a great and enormously wealthy country to be producing the kind of mismanaged, poorly prepared and incredibly incompetent occupation of Iraq that is taking place today is a travesty, on intellectual grounds, and how a moderately intelligent bureaucrat like Paul Wolfowitz could be running policies of such colossal incompetence and, at the same time, convincing people that he knows what he is doing, boggles the mind." Al Ahram, "Imperial perspectives", July 24, 2003

Edward Said is a historian and author who writes mainly about Arab affairs. He is highly critical of the most popular western orientalist, Bernard Lewis, for distorting Arab culture and history and creating the "imperial perspective" with which Americans view the Arab world.