The analytical category “Orientalism” thus enables an analysis of the ambiguity of U.S. imperialism, which is driven by the twin goals of supremacy and liberation. The Iraqis and Afghans cannot liberate themselves, the logic goes, because they are supine, so the GIs must liberate them, especially Iraqi and Afghan women (Armstrong and Prashad 2005). So the U.S. army arrives as a force of liberation. At the same time, the army secures raw materials and creates markets for global corporations and for the dynamic of advanced capitalist states. The urge to liberate is as fundamental as the requirement to subordinate. What is forbidden in the Orientalism of our period is for the “native” to speak in its vital variety—and, because that voice is muted, the native might choose means that are unspeakable. That too is the price of Orientalism.

This is an excerpt from Vijay Prashad’s entry in Keywords for American Cultural Studies (p. 177).