Tag Archives: Isis

Political Rants

Land of the (not so) brave.

It’s happening again. A terrorist attack occurs somewhere in the developed societies and right-wingers are falling over themselves to prove that terrorism works. They start railing against Islam writ large, slamming the door shut on refugees from the Arab world, calling for bloody vengeance, and so on. The level of hysteria is almost shocking, given the fact that the attacks they’re obsessing about happened in France, not America. (They don’t seem perturbed by the Beirut bombing, as it was targeted on Hezbollah, which they hate worse than ISIS.) MSNBC’s Morning Joe has become a bullhorn for invading Syria. I can only imagine what Fox News is like these days. Facebook has blown up with people defending (I kid you not) the crusades. This thing plainly goes up to eleven.

Some asshole's good old days.It’s hard for me to see how these calls for military action and pulling up the drawbridge aren’t simply appeals to cowardice. Seriously – the vast majority of the loudest hawks and anti-immigrant fanatics are also fierce defenders of an over-broad interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. Given that many, many more Americans are killed by heavily armed family members, neighbors, or strangers than by terrorism, this is an almost astonishing level of hypocrisy. Even more disturbing is the ludicrous background assumption, expressed most consistently on Morning Joe and by career hawks like John McCain, that if we had simply invaded Syria in 2012, all would be sweetness and light in that sorry nation today. Is there any factual basis for that assumption? The question never arises.

We really need to stop reacting to retail, non-state terrorism in precisely the way the perpetrators hope we will: by sending in the money, the guns, and/or the Marines. Our outsized support for the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s spawned both the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Our sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s and our invasion in 2003 launched Al Qaeda in Iraq, which morphed into ISIS in more recent years. Our “rat line” to the Syrian rebels fed ISIS and facilitated the non-man’s-land that is now the territory of the nascent Islamic State – a consequence our DIA was well aware of, according to declassified documents. Hundreds or even thousands of U.S. troops on the ground will fuel their growth and spawn other, more virulent movements, following on the line of radicalism proselytized by the Saudi Kingdom, our closest ally in the Arab world. ISIS wants us to invade Syria because they know how that works. Do we?

I don’t think we do. From what I’ve seen over the last week, I’m growing more convinced that the American people will tolerate a wider war. (The fact that most presidential candidates are talking about that is proof enough.) So … more war. That will be our legacy to the world.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Bad old days.

I’m beginning to dread the next administration, whoever wins the upcoming election. It’s hard to dispel the notion that we are heading into a period of increasingly bellicose foreign policy, in response to circumstances that are the direct result of our previous decades of bellicose foreign policy. Ugly as these circumstances are, they do not justify the further application of American military power in places like Afghanistan, where we’ve been blowing things (and people) up for 14 years, and Syria, where we appear to be fighting on both sides of the ongoing conflict. And yet virtually every presidential candidate sounds ready to keep the imperial ball rolling, even though the policy is an obvious failure in every sense of the word.

What 40 years of bad policy looks like.The trouble with approaching these issues with an imperial mindset is that we are blind to our own failures while expressing righteous indignation over the failings of others. Russia’s military action in Syria is a good example. They are perhaps the fifth or sixth power to drop bombs in that unfortunate country. Their strategy, while militaristic and morally bankrupt, is not difficult to understand – they view Islamic radicalism as an extreme threat, and they make the not unrealistic assumption that the fall of Syria’s government would result in a failed state something like Libya or Somalia or Iraq (all of which are beneficiaries of our aforementioned bellicosity). So, like the U.S.’s support of Saudi’s murderous campaign in Yemen, they are applying force in support of Assad’s crumbling regime.

Of course, when we or our allies commit crimes (as we so often do), it’s presented as understandable, even noble. When official enemies commit crimes, it’s reprehensible. That’s vintage imperial statecraft. The offense taken at Russia’s actions fits this template, but also speaks to another dynamic – that of a kind of longing for the simplicity and drama of the Cold War. I’m not entirely referring to the administration here – they encourage this to some extent – but the corporate media, the pundits, the opinion-makers are all fully vested in this enterprise. The more elderly among them, those who lived through the actual Cold War, want to get the band back together again, so to speak. The younger pundits and journalists were brought up to revere the fairy tales told by their elders and want to join in the melodrama of facing off with an “evil empire”.

We are in such a cultural moment, I believe (just look at the current crop of blockbuster movies). At a time in human history when it is absolutely imperative that the nations of the world work together, we cannot afford this poisonous brand of nostalgia.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Next up.

I can’t decide whether the Syrian conflict is becoming more like the Afghan war of the 1980s or the Lebanon civil war (1975-90). It certainly has elements of both. Great and regional power proxies. A U.S. ally that is also a conduit for extremists (Pakistan in the 1980s Afghan war; Turkey in today’s Syria). Multiple armies running up against one another in a relatively small space (Lebanon when the Israelis, Syrians, and U.S. were all operating there at once). Rich Saudis bankrolling fanatical foreign fighters (Afghanistan). Now Syria has the misfortune of having drawn the interest of two great powers, one the global hegemon (us), the other its former and increasingly current rival (Russia).

When THEY do it, it's wrong. Got that?It is a bit maddening to see Defense Secretary Ash Carter denounce the Russians for being the gang that can’t shoot straight (which they apparently are) when only days ago our forces in Afghanistan blew up a Medecins Sans Frontieres hospital – an accident, of course (we seem to have a lot of them). While we’re railing against Putin, we might pause to remember that we have been in Afghanistan for fourteen years, and that the place is still ungovernable. We’ve been in Iraq for 12 years at some level or another, and large swaths of it are under the control of a group we profess to hate – ISIS or ISIL, nurtured in the government-free zone we carved out in the cradle of civilization, supported by Saudi and Turkey. (I guess the friends of our friends are somehow our enemies. And the enemies of our enemies … also our enemies. Have we no friends?)

When you invade countries without cause or a thought to the consequences, you shouldn’t expect to make any friends. When you pursue policies that undermine the stability of an entire region, you shouldn’t be surprised when the whole place starts caving in. I’ve said it before but it bears repeating – sometimes things are broken so badly that they cannot be put back together. As Americans, we can’t get our heads around that concept. We always think there’s something we can do. Basically, the one thing we can do right now is to stop actively making things worse. Once that’s pursued, other solutions may present themselves.

Speakerstakes. Speaking of ungovernable, there will be no Speaker McCarthy and, hell, maybe no speaker anybody for a while. The bug-fuck-nuts conference in the House must be high-fiving one another over yet another victory. Word to the wise: when you put government haters in charge of government, bad things will happen.

luv u,

jp