Perhaps most consequentially, the argument restricts your options "to make the world better". You leave yourself only a radical measure: uncompromising rejection of a phenomenon, ethical imperative by a decree. That may work with some issues, or at a proper time - like it happened with the abolishment of slavery in the US. But radical "good intentions" go awry often, right?
History and "empirically" realistic possibilities of a given culture should not be ignored. People change their behaviour most easily by following an example. When you say "any colonialism or violence is the same", you compell to ignore any differentiation of behaviours, so people are free to ignore mounting evils of most "effective" examples. Evils like violence and greed evolve, and these evolutions thrive on attitudes like "there is no difference". Why obstruct opposing evolution of more "humane" colonizations, etc?
As I said, forcing a radical imperative is possible at a right time. But to keep best opportunities to make that time and not spoil it, it is wise to appreciate and keep best examples of already available (or previously known) "decent" colonizations or whatever.
The attitude of "no shades" often implies "the worst" human nature or prior history, by effectively ignores whatever was nice or decent in other cultures. Ironically, this is kind of colonist attitude towards the past - "people are typically barbarians, etc". Seeing more shades might help to see more positive perspective of humanity (even if it is uncomfortable to "most civilized"), and inspire ideas that have more chance to be accepted smoothly.
BTW:
Q: Is Minke's nemesis, the sinister Robert Surhoff, based on a real person? A: I got him from a newspaper article about a Eurasian gang the Dutch had organized to terrorize the people of Jakarta. The Dutch devised a racial classification system similar to the American and South African apartheid scheme. "Indo" was the name for offspring of Dutch and Javanese. The Indos were born into a complex psychological problem, and Surhoff symbolizes the psychological and social confusion felt by many of this ancestry. He felt he was a true Dutchman, but the Dutch did not see him as such, and he thinks of the natives as dirty and low. This causes him to take extreme measures in expressing his racism.
http://www.umich.edu/~newsinfo/MT/99/Sum99/mt9j99.html
That said, there still remains the issue of Neo-colonialism. I don't want to get into a whole discussion about that here (perhaps on another occasion).
Actually, to address the issue as to whether there may exist cases of benign or even beneficial colonialism (or perhaps "neocolonialism" is the better term), my "country" - Puerto Rico is arguably such an example. Puerto Rico's colonization by the United States, following the "Spanish American War", evolved into something that can only be categorized as sui generis because of certain historical actors and leaders that seized the historical moment afforded by US President Roosevelt's New Deal policies to (eventually) launch Operation Bootstrap. In short, it was an experiment with "socialist" overtones that succeeded to some degree in lifting the island out of dire poverty. However, such a case can almost certainly not be reproduced today [under current (US) circumstances, anyway]. "Beware of the man who does not talk, and the dog that does not bark." Cheyenne
Somehow contrasting groups of hundreds of millions has not turned out to be the (imho) most productive thing we have done around here. Amazing. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
