This is one way of looking at things:
“A “coalition of the willing” that mainly comprises Anglo-American militaries that shatter Arab lands, along with Arab and Asian autocrats in whose jails the seeds of Al-Qaeda were incubated in the 1980s, is not a serious venture to fight Islamist military and extremism. Such a combination of states is the very force that has given birth and sustenance to them.”
Another way of looking at things is to ask if a militant and backward-looking form of political Islam has made things better or worse for the people who live in Islamic countries. They must, after all, contend with the world as it is, and the real world has global powers and multinational energy corporations, and a nuclear-armed Israel. We might fantasize about an alternate world where foreign non-Islamic powers don’t have financial and national security interests in the Islamic world, but that alternative world does not and never will exist. There are people who finance the growth of militant Islam, and people who preach it, and those people have agency. They have to take responsibility for their actions, too. They can’t just point at the Russians and Europeans and Americans and say “you made us do this.”
America, for example, may have broken Iraq, but we didn’t advise or encourage Sunnis and Shiites to kill each other in droves. That was a decision that other people made, some of whom may be in positions of power in governments that are formerly allied with the United States.
Frankly, America takes the blame when we intervene and we take the blame when we do not. When we help autocratic regimes maintain order, preventing their countries from shattering, we are hypocrites. When we stand by and watch Syria fall apart, we are heartless.
Rami G. Khouri is correct to recommend that foreign policy advisers stand back and think about the success rate of combating Islamic militancy. We absolutely should do that. We definitely need to do an honest assessment of what works and what doesn’t.
But the exact same thing is true of anyone who thinks that supporting this particular kind of militancy is the best way to defend Islam or create better societies in their own countries. If you’re going to tell me that it’s unrealistic to ask for this kind of introspection, I will respond that it’s unrealistic to think that the West and other global powers are going to stand by and watch the Middle East turn into a Sunni Caliphate that eradicates anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their fucked up version of their religion.
Some things that are unrealistic need to become realistic. On both sides.
“I will respond that it’s unrealistic to think that the West and other global powers are going to stand by and watch the Middle East turn into a Sunni Caliphate that eradicates anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their fucked up version of their religion.”
Again, I ask… who made you the authority on fucked up religions? Because, you know, I have a list of such things if you are going to do something about it.
And even if it were a fucked up religion, why the fuck do I care what those lunatics do to each other? I certainly don’t. In a world where justice is often lacking, the transformation of arab and muslim lands into a cauldron of religious hatred and oppression is surely a shining example of cosmic justice being visited upon some fucked up societies.
If you want to respond that there is a danger to Americans, then I recommend we reconsider our open borders. When a deadly virus is spreading, you contain it so it can burn itself out.
So sorry if that costs a few bankers some cash. Frankly, an oil shock might just be what the West needs to push it to deal with climate change. Never waste a crisis.
“why the fuck do I care what those lunatics do to each other? “
Because they’re not just doing it to each other. Do you think things like that remain in neat little packages on their own?
I’m not afraid of them. Are you?
No, I’m not afraid of them … yet.
Besides which,since when is my personal emotional state the criterion? From a purely rational perspective, I jduge that they are fucking things up royally over there, in totally “banzai” mode, so it’s going to get rapidly worse. In other words, I’m getting a red light signal. Sensing trouble is not the same as being afraid.
I guess if your personal safety isn’t a concern then you must have some other concern that makes the red light signal. Perhaps you think chaos there will affect your job or your financial investments. Neither, in my opinion, justifies the use of deadly force.
I think what you’re saying is, If it doesn’t affect me personally, then who the fuck cares?
Actually, that is not my attitude toward genocide.
How do you measure “genocide?” Absolute numbers killed or percentage of the targeted population on the order of 70+%? If the latter, other than N. American native tribes and Jews in various European countries, particularly Poland, not many mass killings of populations would qualify. Not the twenty million residents of the USSR that died as a result of Nazi Germany’s war machine. Not the ten to twenty million Chinese and one to two million in Indochina that were killed by Japanese. Not the two million Vietnamese that died from the US war on that country.
What’s your point?
Genocide is genocide. If you don’t stop it, it goes on.
The Rome Statute of the ICC defines genocide. (Not that the US is a signatory to the ICC.)
What it specifically doesn’t include is “politicide.”
No civilized person views the mass killings of innocent people for ethnicity, religion, gender, etc. and all desire that it be stopped. But that’s usually not so easy to do without others, equally innocent, paying a huge price. No nation could stop the US from slaughtering an untold (at least 100,000) number innocent people in Iraq, displacing and injuring even more. The people of the US could have stopped that mass killing, but we didn’t. We prefer to point a finger at other monsters in the world as we deny our own monstrous nature.
“Let us be honest, they are doing massive institutional work. It is impressive,” one activist from Raqqa who now lives in a border town in Turkey told Reuters.
Some Sunni Muslims who worked for Assad’s government stayed on after they pledged allegiance to the group.
“The civilians who do not have any political affiliations have adjusted to the presence of Islamic State, because people got tired and exhausted, and also, to be honest, because they are doing institutional work in Raqqa,” one Raqqa resident opposed to Islamic State told Reuters.
Since then, the group “has restored and restructured all the institutions that are related to services,” including a consumer protection office and the civil judiciary, the resident said.
http://nypost.com/2014/09/04/isis-builds-government-in-northeast-syria/
The population of pre-war Raqqa was around 800,000. Most of the PR pieces that the Western media has been running about Raqqa’s administration is very short on details and leads me to believe that it is something of a Potemkin village for ISIS’s media relations. Just as the Saudi-style executions and “justice” are grist for US propaganda.
And Raqqa seems to be their base of operations at the moment.
Reading between the lines, the civilian mood seems to be “new boss, same as the old, just different rules”.
(CNN) — ISIS has Americans worried. Two-thirds of those surveyed in a recent Pew Research poll said they consider the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria to be a “major threat” to this country. But are such fears really justified?
Despite the impression you may have had from listening to U.S. officials in recent weeks, the answer is probably not really.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/05/opinion/bergen-sterman-isis-threat-hype/index.html
Oh my – more “I’ve got mine, f you”
Exactly.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=I%27m%20all%20right%20Jack!
The United States and its European allies do not possess the wit nor the will nor the might to fix whatever it is that ails much of the Islamic world. This is the principal lesson that the long Iraq war has to teach. The beginning of wisdom lies in recognising that fact.
So yes, to address the plight of innocent people at immediate risk, let us airdrop lifesaving bundles. If nothing else, doing so allows fatuous pundits like Richard Cohen of the Washington Post to preen about the United States doing `the right thing’, thereby `saving many lives and our honour as well’. But let us not confuse moral imperatives with the obligations and complexities inherent in national security policy.
No doubt the `Islamic State’ poses a danger of sorts. But for the United States and for Europe, that danger is negligible. Regional powers such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran are both more directly threatened and far better positioned to deal with it. Offering whatever indirect assistance might be helpful, the United States would be better served simply to butt out. We’ve done enough damage.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9287882/no-we-shouldnt/
“Some things that are unrealistic need to become realistic. On both sides.”
Yes, but in the mind of a religious fanatic, there is nothing realistic – reality is an illusion.
The material world doesn’t matter.
Through faith, you will reach a better world.
And, sadly, in too many religions, martyrdom buys you a free pass to Heaven, and its many gifts and rewards.
Whatever version of Heaven that person’s religion and sect, believe in.
Religion – imo – is a mental condition.
No worries… BooMan has the cure for that mental condition. It is, curiously, the same one that our old friend the duck freak advocates: “convert them or kill them.”
http://time.com/3261225/duck-dynasty-kill-convert-isis-phil-robertson/
Nice job. Where can I find the liberal party? Anyone? I seem to have lost it.
I would modify this statement somewhat.
Real religion is more of a spiritual condition. Another kind of knowledge.
Think of knowledge is a finite substance. All knowledge, from how to tie a good knot to how to hook into a piece of the consciousness of the universe. For every real sailor who can tie a bowline knot in his sleep there are thousands of recreational boaters who can barely tie their own shoelaces. Like dat, only as above so below.
Every real “religion” is the product of an enlightenment experience by a singular human being who has been following paths that have been laid down by other singular human beings. That set of paths goes from one human being’s enlightenment experience through relatively small groups…small enough that said knowledge is not so diluted that it becomes useless…to other singular enlightenment experiences. In that process the knowledge…and it is always literally miraculous knowledge on some very profound levels, or at least it appears to be so to those who do not understand what is happening…inevitably leaks out into the general populace and becomes a stick figure cartoon of itself. Heaven and Hell, Paradise with plentiful virgins for the picking and so on. Then the fun begins. Fun like the Inquisition that was waged in the name of Jesus, the many and various genocidal wars against rival religions/rival races and cultures that have soiled the entire history of humanity, wars of power between and among “religious” groups like Muslims, Hindus, Jews and Christians that are presented as holy wars, etc. An enemy who does not care if he lives or dies because he is confident of a life everlasting if he does the right thing is a very powerful enemy. Bet on it. So it goes and so it has gone, from war to war to war to war to war.
Meanwhile that singular knowledge continues its progress from human to human. The real “religion.” Bet on that as well.
I am.
Later…
AG
Mass religion is not a mental condition; it’s an advertising agency problem easy produced with enough money and opinion leaders.
Strictly speaking, Tarheel, that is not true. We have had this problem since long before modern advertising. Old-fashioned “advertising” consisted of a sword and a neck. Old school. Like ISIS. Word gets out, one way or another. Bet on it.
Now and then….end of story.
Just different means of propagating the same message.
Bet on it.
AG
Thanks for the insight.
What was the Iran-Iraq War that the Reagan administration stirred up about? Why do we continue to subsidize Saudi and Qatari sectarianism?
This tack is a poor defense against what angryarab is actually arguing.
The argument in the Daily Star and angryarab is based on the predicate that the United States has learned absolutely nothing about handling foreign relations in the Levant in 35 years. I think they have a right to be concerned.
Samantha Power is trying to assert that Syria did not come clean on chemical weapons in order to drum up a causus belli for air strikes in Syria. Congress wants to see more US and coalition troops in Iraq and Syria regardless or where their boots are. The US seeks the ability to do airstrikes in cities and in Syria. Those are not insignificant bits of mission creep.
And the US is telling citizens of the area to “Just trust us to do the right thing.” Really?
And Americans are lecturing the citizens of the area on realism. Really? Realism says that the US must move as quickly as possible to mend fences with Iran and Russia, allow Russia to restabilize Assad’s Syria, cut off destabilizing aid to Israel and Saudi Arabia, and tell the oil interests to hold their fricking horses. Realism says that US energy policy must move quickly away from fossil fuels in the ways that European countries like Germany and Denmark have done.
Realism says that the countries that brought huge stocks of weapons there can eliminate the advantage that they bring to ISIS but must not delude themselves that they can dictate a political solution for the region. Stable political solutions never come from force of arms alone. And realism says that a Sunni Caliphate that works will likely turn out to follow a path similar to that of Iran instead of one similar to Saudi Arabia. The problem is that ISIS is far from being realists about governance.
America takes the blame when we intervene and take the blame when we do not because (1) we self-describe our indispenability; (2) we don’t have the good sense to know when intervention will be helpful nor non-intervention harmful (non-intervention in Gaza on the side of Gazans is a case in point); (3) when the US does intervene, it wants to go with flags flying, PR humming, and a shock and awe “we’re the most powerful military in the world” bigfooting set of strategy and tactice; (4) Americans are very hurt that their efforts for the past 60 years have not been “appreciated” by the rest of the world that has to suffer the continual degraging of the global infrastructure and the US inability to get its domestic politics in order in times of peace.
Foreigners don’t have agency. The reason, the real reason, why things happen in their country, or don’t happen, is always to be found elsewhere, probably a conference room in Foggy Bottom, or in a TEMPEST-secure workspace in Langley.
American exceptionalism is bi-partisan.
Ah!
Remember, this is a universally valid proposition. All those people you saw in the snow, in Maidan Nezalezhnosti this past winter, were paid to be there.
As were the people tossing out the last Maidan holdouts in August.
There’s no other possible explanation. Ukrainians have no more agency than Iraqis, or Egyptians, or Syrians, or whomever.
Forget not the gospel: “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your
FatherThree Letter Agency.”I didn’t read the attached article, but the quote is dead on.
US foreign policy in the middle east has, for nearly a century, been based on one simple principle: maximize the security of the delivery of fossil fuels from the region to the US. The corollary is: while we’re doing that let’s make sure to maximize the profits of the big corporations paying off our generals and politicians.
A secular, democratically-elected Iran government may sound like a dream now, but when it happened we considered it too destabilizing – especially when they nationalize the oil companies – and replaced them with a monstrous dictator. And so it went, again and again.
A women-friendly Saudi Arabia sounds like a dream now, but we did everything we could to make Saudi Arabia as extreme as they are, supporting the royal family’s imposition of an extreme form of Islam as we saw it as more stabilizing than secularism and democracy.
A secular Afghanistan that promotes women getting medical doctorates seems like something only a crazy person would imagine, but in the mid-1970s it actually existed. Yes, the Soviets get first blame, but when the US enlisted, trained, and paid people like OBL to fight the Soviets the US was also killing off any chance for democracy in those people’s lifetimes – something the US was glad to do as democracy is unpredictable and messy.
Boo, you write:
America, for example, may have broken Iraq, but we didn’t advise or encourage Sunnis and Shiites to kill each other in droves.
I suppose that is technically correct if you stick to a very legalistic definition of the terms. But in fighting against democracy and secularism and supporting dictatorships which used religion to keep people in line – and made it so that only extreme religious movements were able to get enough power to fight their US-backed overlords – we created the environment that now exists. The religious factions are now killing each other in droves because all their people were born and raised in an environment that encouraged that – and we created that environment.
Yes, the Soviets get first blame, … — technically, that’s not quite correct. The Afghan government requested Soviet military assistance in 1979 to counter the militant rebels. In the years before them, from History Commons:
The Iranian Revolution took out one means/source of US/western funding and arms for the Afghan rebels; so, we worked through our good friends in Pakistan for another decade.
The primary architect of US-Afghan policies from 1977 through 1980 was Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski who to this day still infects US FP along with that other war criminal Kissinger.
You’re beating a strawman.
First of all, if it’s unacceptable to have an antidemocratic Sunni fundamentalist regime that routinely beheads people, denies women basic human rights, and uses oil money to support worldwide terrorism – what are you doing about Saudi Arabia?
Second, nobody’s saying that it’s fine for the ISIS lunatics to form a Sunni caliphate. There are lots of local agents able to and interested in stopping ISIS – including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel, Iran, and Egypt. The first three even participated in making it. Let them clean it up.
If ISIS were some NeoHitlerian menace that truly threatened the world and that surpassed its local opponents, there’d be reason to step in. But it’s not.
Saudi Arabia would be at the top of my distribution list for this post.
Your problem is that you only hear the parts of this post that clash with your preconceptions and you don’t hear the parts that you agree with.
That’s why you can say I’m fighting a straw man and then ask me about what I plan to do about that straw man.
Turkey? I don’t think so. didn’t they just finally close their border that ISIS was ignoring? and wouldn’t label ISIS a terrorist org?
They were supporting, via the border policy, humanitarian aid, and even military aid, pretty much all the rebel groups in Syria. They are changing their tune on ISIS now, but without Turkish support the rebellion would have failed some time ago.
Do USians ever ask themselves if the rise of backward-looking form of political Christianity since 1980 has made things better or worse for the people? The $3.10 federal minimum wage in 1980 is equivalent to $8.96 in 2014. Or the current $7.25 minimum wage was equal to $2.51 in 1980. (That $7.25 today was equal to $6.53 in 2009 or had it been adjusted for inflation, the rate would be a cheesy $8.05 today.) How income/wealth equality fared over those thirty-four years? Women’s reproductive healthcare is more of a state and national political issue today than it was in 1980. And these RWNJ have killed and injured women’s healthcare providers.
Do to the US systems of governance what we did to those in Iraq, and it wouldn’t be surprising if our preexisting racial and religious divides led to us “killing each other.” Therefore, it’s offensive to say America, for example, may have broken Iraq, but …. Sort of like “whitey” saying, what about black on black violence!
Personally, I don’t support right-wing Christians who involve themselves in our politics. And I do condemn them and oppose them.
I don’t really care if it’s offensive for me to say these things. No one forced anyone to join an organization dedicated to killing or forcibly converting anyone who doesn’t believe in their unique version of Sunni Islam. Whatever responsibility my country has for creating those conditions does not alleviate others from their responsibilities.
Nor does it alleviate the responsibility of American citizens for the continued failure of US foreign policy exactly with regard to these countries.
Or are we going to be “realistic” about that as well?
The current Vicky Nuland-John McCain policies are not what people who voted for Democrats in Congress or for the President had in mind when they voted. They just suspected that John McCain and Mitt Romney’s policies would be much worse than what they were themselves advocating, just as the Tea Party actions in the House are much worse than what any of them were advocating in 2010.
Every time you use the words “Vicky” and “Nuland” I feel less inclined to read your comments or take you seriously.
At this point, it’s like a tic.
If you haven’t at least read Mearsheimer’s Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West’s Fault, then unlike Tarheel Dem, you don’t know what you’re talking about. (You do know that McCain has been moonlighting since the early 1990s don’t you? That, and not his status as one of a hundred in the Senate, is why he’s a constant presence on the Sunday talk shows and Obama says nothing as he gallivants around the world meeting with AQ types and rightwing coup leaders or figureheads.)
It’s worse than a tic, BooMan. I am profoundly angry that her excellency the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs got the opportunity to so screw up US foreign policy on behalf of her hubby’s buddies that I could spit. For a Democratic President and a Democratic Secretary of State to put someone like that in that position of power is mind-boggling. And the results so far speak for themselves. A completely useless distraction for what needs to happen in US foreign policy. Another female foreign service officer trying to earn her “toughness” spurs to please the guys who control her career.
As profoundly crazy as the media letting John McCain on endlessly or taking Lindsay Graham as the second coming of Douglas MacArthur.
I’d add that the Obama Administration is NOT executing “John McCain policies.” That should be retracted as well.
Retraction not needed unless one buys that the State Dept funded IRI doesn’t play a role in US FP through the State Dept.
Somebody within the administration has been arguing for them enough to divert the Administration’s attention from what clearly needs to be done in foreign policy.
We do not need another Cold War to goose the US economy.
“John McCain policies” would have had us in a number of new hot wars by now.
Look, I’m unhappy that there are people within the Administration who are fearmongering re. ISIS, Russia and other global problems. But look at what the President himself is doing: avoiding getting us into any major troops-on-the-ground actions, personally racheting the rhetoric back, tossing the hot potato onto Congress which, given the modern GOP’s need to oppose Obama on everything, has the effect of slow-walking us into avoiding further escalations. And, the successful deal we have cut with Iran is invaluable right now.
Obama = McCain on foreign policy? Get real.
is John Kerry on board with the Nuland faction, or is he facing opposition from the PNAC dead enders that makes everything doubly difficult ?
Consider that there are no degrees of separation between Nuland and the PNAC and Kerry. Each of them only disagree along the margins of the same page.
Kerry connected with PNAC – do you have some links for that?
Kerry takes instructions from the President well. What he says publicly and what he actually does will be interesting for historians to watch. Not sure that he is with any faction at the moment, but does not resign over PNAC-driven policies likely out of concern for who his successor might be.
It will be interesting to find out exactly who was providing the information that the President was acting on in greenlighting his policy on Ukraine. I smell rats in the intelligence community. (Yes, that’s another tic I have.)
Thanks for expanding on this. to whose policy and when are you referring “greenlighting his policy ” are Kerry/ Obama is being undercut by the PNAC crowd? did the PNAC crowd try to take foreign policy into their own hands?
Boy-oh. I wish I knew the answer to that question. My suspicions are that the PNAC’ers use the instincts of the liberal hawks (Clinton) and R2P folks to push an essentially PNAC agenda. And then there is the influence of Henry Kissinger and Zbig Brezinski as the “old wise men” of US foreign policy for the “very serious people” in the Beltway.
The nature of bureaucratic infighting on issues is the one who can shape the information that the boss operates out of can generally shape the boss’s decisions. Obama’s sharp enough to have prevented being played by McChrystal and Petraeus, to name to public cases, but the entire intelligence community is functionally an adversary to the policies that he came in with in 2009. And in addition they are on thin ice because of the CIA torture behavior and NSA overreach. But they or someone in the White House got the President to sign off on the Presidentially-ordered drone killing of an American citizen. So the intelligence community has succeeded in getting the President complicit in extralegal, extrajudicial, and extra-Constitutional behavior that they can use for blackmail.
The nature of the US military industrial complex and the precedents that have extended the legal authorizations of Presidential action build in an institutional bias toward PNAC-style solutions. That has been the intent of the folks moving national security legislation for over 68 years–give the President more unilateral power and the national security operative more independence from oversight.
When your agents on the ground are folks who have been running neo-Nazis as agents against the Soviet Union and Russia for most of their careers, they are not likely to tell the new chief executive, “Hey did you know that these guys are essentially neo-Nazis?” And they are going to build up Putin as a big enemy to justify their positions and bureaucratic power. So what you get for intelligence is basically more Curveball bullshit.
How does a President sort all of that out? When all of the memoirs are written, maybe we’ll have a better idea, but Vicky Nuland should have gotten the McChrystal and Petraus “show me the commitments” treatment. I wonder how far Ukraine’s feckless government has to go before she resigns to spend more time with her family. Having the Kiev government’s offensive stopped in its tracks after the allegations of Russian aid were proved a lie is pretty embarrassing. Now the media debate is whose Russian equipment is more modern–Ukraine’s or the rebels’. Forgetting that the the locals always fight harder to defend their homes from attack.
Thanks for your detailed reply, very interesting and informative. Thank you.
How’s that working out to reduce the RWNJ political influence? Are covert ops and SWAT teams sent into their breeding grounds to take them out? That would be no — they’re too busy taking care of non-violent protestors and African-Americans. As you have nothing other than your words of condemnation and opposition to the indigenous religious nuts that presumably you have at least some familiarity with since they are your neighbors, who are you to tell people in other countries that you have zero first hand experience with and knowledge of how to deal with their crazies?
You’re comparing an evangelical neighbor who watches Fox News and votes Republican with the people in ISIS who are slaughtering and enslaving their neighbors and even people who aren’t their neighbors while trying to force them to adopt their particular version of their religion.
This is not a good comparison.
The decision to murder your neighbor because he won’t adopt your religion isn’t something that ought to be tolerated by anyone.
Notice that I agreed that we ought to be contemplating changes in how we go about combating terrorism, and that I said that we need to do some things that most people would rightly consider unrealistic. Your answer to this is that I have no right to criticize.
Well, I do have that right, and I will exercise it.
“The decision to murder your neighbor because he won’t adopt your religion isn’t something that ought to be tolerated by anyone.”
If IS rules true to black letter Islamic law, Christians and Jews will be excluded from civic life and taxed at a higher rate but will be tolerated and not be forced to convert. Shi’ias and other heterodox (from the wahhabi point of view) Muslims would not be part of the state, but the method of their exclusion is not certain. Yazdis are considered pagans and are given the choice of converting or dying.
These are wartime conditions. Your assumption may not prove accurate in IS-consolidated areas. Careful swallowing 100% of the anti-Muslim “information” going around.
Do you listen to yourself think?
WTF?
No it shouldn’t. But do you think the people in the country would have been as complacent slaughtering two million Vietnamese if they had been the “right type of Christians and capitalists” instead of “godless commies?” If Iraq were a “Christian nation” instead of predominately Muslim, would we have destroyed their country for imaginary WMD?
Given the opportunity, I have no doubt that the well armed “christian” RWNJs in the country wouldn’t hesitate to kill as many liberal atheists and other minorities they could find.
Criticize anyone you want — we have free speech (sort of) — but with so much recent blood on the hands of this country, recognize that Muslim RWNJs view us as bloody hypocrites.
I am now believing we destroyed Iraq for oil, not so much WMD. That was a good excuse.
It was never about WMD — if I could figure out from available public information and a bit of logic that there weren’t any, then the PTB knew it was false.
OTOH, oil was but one objective. For GWB it was personal — he would show his daddy who had the bigger cajones. For the neo-cons it was about destabilizing the region with the ultimate goal of toppling Iran. Next stop Russia.
Scotland offered increased powers as parties unite to rally no voters:
Would such an offer tip the “pragmatist” vote to no? Are the Tories trustworthy enough not to renege on a deal? They’ve only been a united Great Britain for five hundred years.
I know if I was Scottish I’d tell England to go to hell and vote “Yes”.
three hundred years, not five.
>>Are the Tories trustworthy enough not to renege on a deal?
I wouldn’t think so.
Oops, four hundred years. (Although Henry VIII’s sister a hundred years earlier was responsible for the continuation of the Scottish royal family.) James I — right after the death of QEI. Although all the legal paperwork took some time and not fully completed until Queen Anne. Just in time for the ascension of Germans to the UK crown.
i would still assert that the starting date is the Act of Union, 1707. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acts_of_Union_1707
The king that the British properly call James VI and I ruled two separate countries.
and for this highly recommend movie
Mary Queen of Scots
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067402/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm
with Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=mary+queen+of+scots+movie+youtube&FORM=VIRE11#view=detail&am
p;mid=F48E9F30BC16E0EBA15BF48E9F30BC16E0EBA15B
Formerly or formally? Heh heh.
Your Freudian typo reveals what you wish was the case vs. what is the actual problem. The US has narrow influence among its “allies” let alone its adversaries, yet it demands to troubleshoot all the world’s problems all the time forever.
How many lives have ever actually been positively affected by being born “Syrian” or “Iraqi” as opposed to more closely knit ethnic or religious identities? Yeah, yeah, tolerance and empathy and fraternal love are great and whatever, but how much defense of these strange nation states is really to the peoples’ benefit vs. our own convenience and disinterest?
Now a standalone post.
Go there.
Read it.
The Problem With Centrism
Plesae.
AG
Your argument switches back and forth between being a one about morality and one about pragmatism. It argues neither well.
If your questions is “if a militant and backward-looking form of political Islam has made things better or worse for the people who live in Islamic countries,” then the answer is that Iraq was a brutal dictatorship which ran a fairly functional modern economy. The Americans came in and, despite allegedly spending billions on nation-building, destroyed the functioning economy. Saddam Hussein oppressed the Shi’ites and Kurds, and with a functioning secret police and effective army, kept the three main communities’ hands off each others throats. The Americans came in and immediately disbanded the Ba’ath Party and the Iraqi Army and destroyed the ability of the Iraqi government to keep order. No, we “we didn’t advise or encourage Sunnis and Shiites to kill each other in droves.” We just made it possible and, given the artificiality of Iraq’s borders, inevitable.
IS is busy rebuilding civil society in the places they have taken over, from courts to potable water and trash pickup. In that sense, they are making things better than after the American attack on Iraq. Thanks to American stupidity in disbanding the most competent army in the region, IS has a talented and experienced officer corps which is probably better than our half-assed replacement version. An organization of throwback Sunni extremists has replaced the secular Pan-Arab Ba’ath Party. In terms of brutality and competence, it is probably a wash for the Sunni civilian in the street. In terms of modernity, it’s not close: we destroyed the modern state of Iraq.
The people “supporting this particular kind of militancy” are creating their version of a proper Islamic State. They are not asking on behalf of all of Islam if this “is the best way to defend Islam or create better societies in their own countries.” It’s not unrealistic to ask for this kind of introspection as long as you agree that IS acts for all Muslims and all Muslims can be held responsible for their actions, and that the same applies to Likud and world Jewry or the Conservative Party in the UK does for the world Anglican Communion.
As to what “global powers and multinational energy corporations, and a nuclear-armed Israel” will do regarding their own interests, it seems to me best not to introduce any moral dimension and discuss any of these entities. All of them have long since proven they will act in the region without regard to law or morality. They will do what looks politically, economically and militarily expedient to them at any given moment and demand immunity from law and morality – and even from disastrous consequences for themselves from their own prior actions.
You really give the Western Powers a huge pass. Because not only is most of the Arabic hatred for the West a direct result of our pandering to Israel while pretending to be neutral and our practice of propping up dictators in order to assure ourselves a steady flow of oil, it also stems from the original sin of colonialism: The creation of colonies made up of three or more disparate groups and the elevation of the minority group to power. That way the British (who made an art of this practice) had a group of locals who were as vested in their rule as they were. When colonial rule was no longer tenable, they left often using their power to prop up their former retainers. The West has long understood that free, democratic and pro-west were contradictions in terms in the middle east, and it makes perfect sense that Arabs would loathe us.
What’s more, you need only look at Yugoslavia, as it was once known, to see what happens to nations that have no common history as a country, once the strongman is gone.
Yes, you’re right that the British set up Iraq that way and the French set up Syria that way. Other than Lebanon (to an extent) and maybe Bahrain, I’m not sure we can find more examples of propping up a religious minority in the Middle East.
It’s true that the way the Ottoman Empire was divided up has driven a lot of the dysfunction in the Middle East.
But, I don’t hear Arabs longing for the Ottoman Empire. I don’t see the logical boundaries that would make everything peaceful and manageable.
And I also don’t think that it’s necessary for people to love us who have many reasons to resent us. Leave us out of it for a moment. What do they need to do to help themselves live in peaceful and prosperous societies? The answer is not to have religious leaders take to the pulpits and preach the destruction of other sects and ethnicities and religions.
I’m not giving the West a pass at all. There is a lot of responsibility to go around. What I’m saying is that the West didn’t create this all by itself. Even with the Saudis, we never told them to make a deal with the Wahhabis. We accepted that they had that arrangement, but we never liked it.
And we had policy makers like Z-Big and William Casey who cynically exploited that relationship to make trouble for the Soviets, but that doesn’t mean we’re tied to that kind of policy in perpetuity.
The bottom line is that we have had a lot of influence over the Middle East, but we were dealing with a pre-existing region with its own values and its own agency. Even our most cynical foreign policy hands couldn’t open a pipeline of jihadists to Afghanistan if those kids hadn’t been prepped for the job all their short lives.
Certainly the right local question. And the first answer is not to destroy anymore infrastructure. And to try to restore the infrastructure that allows the people to begin to work back toward some degree of economic prosperity.
The cross-sectarian tolerance you advocate for the Middle East should extend to all of the Middle East. And the United States could use a little of that tolerance as well.
The problem with the West’s policy is that even with peak oil and global climate change, the US economy is still in a death grip on Middle Eastern oil–if not for ourselves, to backfill the oil that goes to China and Europe. (The global market deals in fungible supplies of oil anyway.) And the “Drill, baby, drill” folks still have the US population by the throat.
As well, our domestic stalemate prevents policies that would create global prosperity and rebuild infrastructure worldwide.
You look at picture of Kabul, Damascus, Aleppo, and Baghdad today and pictures from the 1960s in all of them. Like looking at 1920s London and 1948 London or 1910 Berlin and 1950 Berlin. And I don’t hear anyone talking about where the funds for reconstruction are going to come from–just more threats and more preparations for more war. And that is very much a Western failure of imagination.