2nd most oppressed people ever

Question: in what context might one justify the more pessimistic of 2 positions by saying -- "But then I'm Irish, not Polish"?

Answer: if you're Andrew Sullivan, explaining that unlike the former "Good News from Iraq" blogger (on which more in a second), you think that Iraq is already down the tubes.

Here's the context. Sullivan notes the resurfacing of Arthur Chrenkoff, who had blogged from Australia with the goal of showing that there was much unreported good news from Iraq (and Afghanistan) that the mainstream media was choosing to ignore. The blog evolved into a remunerated, edited item for the Wall Street Journal online, a fact that both Chrenkoff and the WSJ Online initially tried to conceal from readers, and Chrenkoff soon stopped blogging on the topic anyway.

He's now back with a novel, whose plot is suggestive of ex post recognition of mistakes, so Sullivan asked him whether he regretted the crowd he'd gotten in with via the Good News from Iraq blogging:

[Chrenkoff] Re Iraq - it's funny, because I'm not by nature an optimistic person (I think that the stereotypically romantic but melancholic and fatalistic Polish psyche has been too strongly beaten into us over the centuries between the hammer of Germany and the anvil of Russia), but I remain cautiously optimistic, even if for the sake of all the decent people in Iraq ...

[Sullivan] On that last point, I am in complete agreement. My only motive in exposing the lies and incompetence of the Bush administration is precisely because I want Iraqis to have a decent future, and my heart breaks for those brave souls facing down murder and blackmail each day to protect themselves in the face of our arrogant incompetence. I fear it's too late now. But then I'm Irish, not Polish.

Normally we Irish have enough famine and oppression to win the right-for-pessimism stakes, but the Poles give us a good run for the money so that's an odd ranking of the two histories. But it confirms yet again the Iron Law of Sully -- his self-identification as Irish when he's feuding with American conservatives. In fact as we look back an old post where we set this out, we see something that's missing from his current feud, which he attributes to divergent views about religion and politics. In British politics, the cost of tax cuts is much more internalised in domestic politics, and it's hard to see what that has to do with religion.