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The West’s policies and actions in the Middle East have set the stage for tragedy. The destruction and destabilization of states and the creation of a new Cold War flash-point in Syrian (and one upcoming in the Ukraine) are spreading chaos in the world. The mass murder in Nice, France is an example, par excellence, of what Chalmers Johnson describes as Blowback. What is ‘Blowback’?
Blowback – is a term invented by the CIA, refers to the unintended consequences of American policies that are predicated on projecting its military power to every corner of the earth and using American capital and markets to force global economic integration on its own terms.
So this is what happened in Nice [from cbc.ca]:
The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria claimed responsibility for the truck attack on the French city of Nice on Saturday as French police arrested three people there in connection with the carnage that claimed the lives of at least 84 people.
“The person who carried out the operation in Nice, France, to run down people was one of the soldiers of Islamic State,” the news agency Amaq, which supports ISIS, said via its Telegram account.
“He carried out the operation in response to calls to target nationals of states that are part of the coalition fighting Islamic State,” the statement said.
We in North America tend to think (unless you happen to not to be white) of terrorism and war as something that happens ‘over there’. We sit with a manufactured placidity behind our oceans and vicariously experience the horror visited on people in foreign lands and, if moved enough, make a post about it on some social media platform (irony noted). What is difficult for North Americans is the teasing out the questions of “How, if at all(?), does this relate to us?”, while wading though the media slideshow of human misery and death. Our media is failing us by not providing context to the images we see, so we don’t know how to respond.
Blowback is coming. Through the direct result of our use of military and economic power we are fracturing countries and immiserating their people for our Geo-poltical gain. The people of North America are subject to a severe disconnect between the foreign policy goals stated at home and what those goals look like when actualized in reality. I am fairly confident that most of the policy initiatives that involve displacing people and murdering them wouldn’t get much popular support.
However, call it (murder et cetera) bringing “stability’ to a region, it sounds palatable to the citizenry, and thus their consent is ensured. How many lives hang in the balance or have been sacrificed because of word/not-words like ‘precision bombing’ and ‘democracy promotion’? Our use of opaque sanitized language cuts people off from the empathy we all possess and allows for the most pernicious of behaviours.
We in the West feel connected only when the chickens of violence come home to roost and vengeance is delivered to our innocent populations. The sympathetic news coverage begins immediately, more so if the victims happen to be Caucasian (because #whitelivesmattermore), and we can connect with the sorrow and horror being visited on the people in question.
Did believe in Islam play a role in the mass-murder in Nice. Almost certainly. Even traumatized desperate people need persuading to enable them to commit murderous acts. The ISIS brand of Islam is tailor made to undermine empathetic thoughts and feelings, to numb the fundamental kindness we feel toward each other (this applies to almost all organized religions, of course) and make atrocities such as what happened in Nice possible.
Fervent belief in ideology – religious or otherwise – helps make disastrous events possible, because as soon as we can start people as the ‘enemy’ and the ‘other’ it becomes so much easier to destroy their lives.
So, did Allah take the wheel and instigate vehicular homicide on a grand scale? Probably not, but he certainly put gas in the tank and keys in hand.
Great mysteries of empire are always shrouded in mystery. One idea that I have lifted from terrible military fiction is the concept of the 6P’s.
They are:
Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance.
Can you guess which imperialistic nation didn’t do their homework?
“Sky said the United States led the invasion of Iraq in 2003 to oust a dictator, Saddam Hussein, and to help establish a democratic beachhead in the Middle East. But after the invasion, it was the military that was left with the job of trying to keep the country together.
“They had been told to go in and take care of Saddam and that was it. They were completely unaware of the situation there. They had to make the best of the situation they found themselves in.”
According to Sky, the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush believed that democracy would take hold on its own; they had no roadmap for how to make that happen.”
Yah. You would think after a grand statue toppling the rest of the piece of the ‘nation-building’ exercise would just fall into place. What could go wrong?
“These plans drawn up in Washington were all wishful thinking,” she said.
At one point, Sky recounts in the book, Donald Rumsfeld showed up for a military briefing in northern Iraq, and didn’t know where neighbouring Iran was on the map.”
Yep, the US had the smartest guys in the room in on this one. Predictably, they royally screwed the country up, destroying vital civilian infrastructure, murdering a bunch of civilians and of course setting the state for the next terrorist flavour of the month, ISIL. You’d think there would be some questions of accountability being asked as to who laid the foundation of this megalith of stupidity.
“No one has ever been held accountable for the decisions, for the false intelligence that led them to invade Iraq,” she says. “They should be. The people at the top should be held accountable for what went wrong.”
Sky was blunt in her assessment to General Odierno, telling him that America’s blundering in Iraq was the, “worst strategic failure since the foundation of the United States.”
I’m guessing that if you arbitrarily declare victory at some point during the shit-show it somehow allows the drivers of the clown-car to be exculpated for all their sins. Of course having the biggest war machine on earth allows you to do pretty much as you please – Nuremberg and Geneva Conventions be damned.
But let’s not focus too much on the big picture yet, more cock-ups are yet to happen:
“But the biggest missed opportunity happened following the first national elections in 2010, when the sitting Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, failed to gain a majority.
“Iraqis had become convinced that politics, not violence, was the way forward.” she says. “All the various groups came out to vote, and the bloc that won ran on a platform of ‘no to sectarianism.’
“Sky believes this presented an opportunity to oust Nouri al-Maliki, a man who was consolidating his own power base, in favour of a true – or at least fledgling – democracy.
“But it was a close result. Maliki refused to accept the results,” she said.
The U.S. decided that backing al-Maliki, even with his faults, was the best chance for stability. This wasn’t something the military supported.
“The ambassador at the time, Chris Hill, had no experience of Iraq and didn’t really want to be there.”
Sky writes that Hill spent most of his time trying to make the embassy in Baghdad “normal.” He even brought in rolls of sod to make a lawn where he could practise lacrosse.
“General Odierno was adamant that the U.S. should protect the political process, allow the winning group 30 days to form the government. Hill didn’t have the same feel for Iraq and he said ‘Maliki is our man, the strong man the country needs.’ In the end Biden went with the ambassador’s recommendation.”
Sky believes it was a huge mistake.
“Maliki’s politics were poisonous,” she said.”
Well he looked like Saddam Hussein 2.0 ( the one we liked and actively supported, economically and militarily)and that was a good thing! Oh wait…
“Sky was disheartened as she watched the Iraqi people lose confidence in the country’s leaders, especially groups such as Sunni Muslims, who felt there was no place for them and no chance to be part of the government.
“If you were Sunni, you made the unfortunate decision that supporting ISIS was a better option than supporting the central government in Baghdad,” she says.
Current Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has been trying to reform the government. This week he cut the cabinet in an attempt to oust some of the old guard, and dropped quotas for government positions that were based on ethnicity.
Sky is cautiously hopeful that the new government may help turn things around, but says it will not be easy.”
Well and that brings us up to today – Can we get a ‘Mission Accomplished’ ?! Anyone? Anyone??
Is this thing even on?
There is no morality to be found in religions and their scriptures. It is a human being who interprets the words and it is human being that makes the decision to x or y – no religious magic involved. So what is happening in Palmyra with ISIS is a testament to how religion enables truly shitty human behaviour.
“ISIS militants have blown up two ancient tombs they consider sacrilegious in Palmyra, a 2,000-year-old UNESCO World Heritage site in central Syria, the ultra hardline Sunni Muslim group said on Tuesday.
The report was the first of any damage being done by the militants to buildings in Palmyra since they seized control of the city, also known as Tadmur, in May. Syrian forces have bombed the city, and the militants camped within it, since then.”
Destroying world history because someone interpreted the tombs to be sacrilegious. This is some zany shit we are dealing with here – the lesson here is quite clear, and quite obvious: When the religious are in charge all bets are off and nothing is safe, not even history from the perverse ideals of radical religious thought.
Boiling down all the hoo-haa we can see that, at least in the case of ISIS, the religious piece is there for the sole reason of keeping people in line and most definitely not thinking for themselves. What reason can be supplied for destroying tombs that isn’t irrational?
Of course, destroying archaeological, is small potatoes in comparison with the recent acts of violence in France and Tunisia. How much more evidence is required before the West will decisively act and put an end to ISIS and their extremism?
Canada has sent CF-18’s to participate in the bombing of ISIS. I think this is a very bad idea and I need to tell you a story from my childhood to illustrate why.
This whole sending planes overseas to bomb people reminds me of one Christmas I had the pleasure of spending in Hawaii. Oh let me assure you gentle readers, it was a very merry Mele Kalikimaka for my Mom and I. We saw many wonderful sights, swam on many beaches, drove around for the first couple of days in a standard car that my dear Mum couldn’t reliably drive (which I nearly fell out of on the highway), turned my back on the ocean and was promptly slammed by a monster-wave that sent me cartwheeling underwater up a thirty-foot sandy incline losing my glasses and nearly my life in the process. Like I said, good times. But there was a side story that went along with our little Hawaii get-away and it involves attempting to acquire a certain toy that I reeeeeeeealy wanted.
You see, back at the time I happened to be young and had a certain proclivity toward the latest and greatest toys available at the time – Transformers. Specifically for some reason lost to me now I wanted to get Soundwave – an evil Decepticon robot that could transform into a tape deck. Witness (If you’re really curious, you can see Soundwave in action on youtube):
Whoa! So tricky, hiding as a radio/cassette player. My 10 year old mind didn’t do physics at the time, but how does a 12 foot multiple tonne robot “transform” into a human sized, human portable – boom box?
Daaaamn, Soundwave was cool. In the cartoon he spoke in a heavily vocoded monotone voice.
As I recall, our dynamic mother and son team spent a good deal of time on our vacation looking for the authentic Soundwave toy. Now being that Tranformers were all shiny and new back then, they had not made it to the Big Island yet; and if they did the branded toys were snapped up by savvy Hawaiian shoppers before the likes of our pasty Canadian tourists had even thought about buying them.
What was available were many imitation toys that mimicked the brand name toy precisely. The knock-offs where everywhere in the Hawaiian toy stores. And yes, in retrospect, I’m completely embarrassed at how spoiled I was for dragging my mother to so many malls in Hawaii looking for Mr.Soundwave – only child – I had no choice in the matter :)
Anyhow, we eventually had to settle on getting the very good Soundwave knock-off. It was under the Christmas lamp and promptly opened and played with on that sunny tropical Christmas morning. I remember though, that as much fun as I had with said toy it just wasn’t quite right. It was almost everything I wanted, yet there was a keen edge of disappointment because we had to settle for something wasn’t exactly what I wanted. It was a gift that involved a settlement – the best we could do at the time.
I’m sure we’ve all been in that situation in one form or another. We’ve all wanted “X” soooo bad for so long but then “Y” comes along and we jump at the opportunity to get what we almost wanted because we figure it will do and make us just as happy.
Hint: Settling doesn’t make us as happy.
So why is Canada going in with the Royal Canadian Air Force, when we know that bombing is not the solution to the ISIS problem?
“Air strikes alone are really not enough to defeat Isis in Kobani,” said Idris Nassan, a senior spokesman for the Kurdish fighters desperately trying to defend the important strategic redoubt from the advancing militants. “They are besieging the city on three sides, and fighter jets simply cannot hit each and every Isis fighter on the ground.”
He said Isis had adapted its tactics to military strikes from the air. “Each time a jet approaches, they leave their open positions, they scatter and hide. What we really need is ground support. We need heavy weapons and ammunition in order to fend them off and defeat them.”
Hmm…consider the words of US Army officer who sees a slightly different picture.
“For example, what would happen if the President took Mr. Kristol’s advice and bombed targets “for a few weeks” and then waited just to “see what happens”? The first few iterations of air sorties would have a good chance of taking out numerous ISIS vehicles and personnel. But in short order ISIS would adjust its methods of operation to disguise vehicle movements, reposition troops and embed command and control centers more deeply into civilian areas, becoming indistinguishable from the civil population.
Now, despite having successfully destroyed a few targets, we would have pushed the enemy deeper underground, hardened his resolve, and seen his troops burrow in like ticks among the innocent residents of the cities he occupies. Further targeting from the air becomes next to impossible without killing noncombatants or sending in ground troops to flush the fighters out. Unless the President will entertain deepening American engagement by deploying ground combat units to root ISIS members out of their dug-in positions, house-by-house – decidedly not recommended – those successful bombing runs will have led to dismal failure.”
So our goal is stop the massacre of innocents and the spread of radical islamic notions. It would seem that given our tactics, neither of those goals would be accomplished. So here we are at that fateful time do we get the knock off toy – we have to do something to stop ISIS – and get not quite the result we’re looking for or do we wait for what we authentically want and commit to to bring that ideal to fruition?
Here is a strategy I think that Canada could actually play a role in; specifically point 3,4, and especially 5. Canada’s role in the world used to be synonymous with Peacekeeping as opposed to the murderous imperialistic role that our current PM thinks is a-fucking-okay.
“To protect American and allied interests in and around ISIS, the United States would design and lead an aggressive regional diplomatic campaign to first isolate, and over time defeat this group of thugs; the military would play a supporting role. To accomplish this objective, the United States would isolate ISIS economically, financially, and geographically, while eroding its support from within.
To accomplish this strategic objective, the U.S. should:
1) Work with the states around and near ISIS territory for the purpose of closing the borders leading into and out of ISIS areas including those in Syria as well as Iraq, thus depriving the jihadists of materiel that could support military operations;
2) use aggressive border control to pin ISIS to its current positions;
3) at the same time, separate ISIS from its external financial and material support;
4) conduct a social media campaign that truthfully exposes the grotesque nature of ISIS ideology in ++terms that would-be jihadists can understand;
5) conduct a sustained humanitarian aid effort to ensure the people currently under ISIS bondage will survive; and
6) institute a coalition-supported “no-go zone” between ISIS territory and that of friendly nations. If ISIS vehicles or ground personnel venture into this zone, they will be destroyed.
In short, we would make it clear to the world and the potential recruits that ISIS has fatally overstepped its capabilities. Faced with the stark reality that they have isolated themselves physically, diplomatically, and morally from the rest of their own region, unable to repair broken equipment, provide fuel for their vehicles, unable to replace expended ammunition, and incapable of performing even the basic functions of a state, it will be clear to all both inside and outside the blockade: ISIS is a regime of losers whose singular accomplishment has been butchering the defenseless, and the impoverishment of the civil populations under its domination.”
Jesus-fuck! Isn’t it nice when someone with a whit of sense speaks clearly to the issue at hand. Full marks go out to this individual and his thoughtful take on what needs to be with ISIS. For a handy compare and contrast lets hear our twit of a PM on why Canada should go bomb people…
“If Canada wants to keep its voice in the world…and we should since so many of our challenges are global…being a free rider means you are not taken seriously. Left unchecked, this terrorist threat can only grow and grow quickly.”
Ah, so not participating in breeding more terror and terrorists in Iraq mean that you are “free rider” and are not going to be taken seriously. All I can say is:
Seriously?
Is France not being taken seriously for not contributing to the airstrikes that will serve only to push our goal further way? But wait, there is more apparently bombing people in Iraq is all about saving Canadian Families…
“As a Government, we know our ultimate responsibility… Is to protect Canadians, and to defend our citizens from those who would do harm to us and to our families.”
*sigh* Ratchet up fear and we’ll our darnedest overseas to protect the homeland. You’d think by now we would understand this most basic of propaganda principles. Baa..sorry for the tangent folks, but Steven Harper and the rest of his merry conservative crew of the RCN Clueless forced me to scribe about their relentless vapidity.
So, back on message – Let’s not be disappointed Christmas morning with a knockoff toy, but rather let us have Canada act in the way she knows best – humanitarian aid and assistance – and get the real toy and the real results that will bring us the ending we are anxiously hoping and expecting.
Our imperial conquests in the Middle East are, of course, busily blowing up in our face. The new normal is a murderous state of higgledy-piggledy brought on by us wiping out the quasi-stable societies that had kept the peace (of sorts). Because nothing says we love peace like bombing the shit of a country we now have religious extremists attempting to establish a new Caliphate in the ruins of our bastion of democratic freedom imperial conquest.
So anyhow, once you cripple the umbrella of supports (infrastructure and otherwise) that keep a civil secular society running it comes as no surprise that the radically religious and their magically-shitacular beliefs will step up and fill the gap left, cue ISIS.
Now, back here in secular society the moderate religious factions (read: kept in check by secular society) are distancing themselves from the ISIS’s murdery-behead-a-thon, clear evidence of what happens when you let the radical religious run society.
However, the moderates ensconced in secular society are unsatisfied with their usual level of bollocks and feel the need to up their game.
Apparently, suckering children into going to war zones is on Islam’s approved list of shitty things to do to people.
“Two Austrian teens got way more than they bargained for when they abandoned their homes and families to become “poster girls” for ISIS terrorists, and now they desperately want to come home.
Samra Kesinovic, 17, and friend Sabina Selimovic, 15, would love to press the undo button on the last six months, during which they traded their comfortable existence in Europe for a life of evil engineered by terrorists.
Hmm. I wonder who could have persuaded these two children to renounce their families and go to a war zone.
“The teens apparently were lured to ISIS by propaganda preached at their local mosque.
Clerics told them that the only way to know true peace was to head to Syria and take part in the holy war, officials said.
The girls had started lecturing schoolmates about their lifestyle and were even suspected of being behind a vandalism attack at their school calling for jihad.”
Was there any surprise? Pushing extremism in the ‘religion of peace’ (except when it’s not) was the modus-operendi – at least in Australia. But let’s hear from the children in their own words:
“That’s a change of heart from the April note they left behind for their parents that read: “Don’t look for us. We will serve Allah, and we will die for him.”
Because a focus on the afterlife as opposed to the only one you’ll have here in reality, is always a great go-to strategy.
“Now Kesinovic and Selimovic have had enough and are eager to return to their families, according to CEN. The girls reportedly managed to get word to their families they want to come home. But reports also said the teens don’t feel they can flee because too many people now associate them with ISIS savagery.“The main problem is about people coming back to Austria,” said Austrian Interior Ministry spokesman Karl-Heinz Grundboeck. “Once they leave, it is almost impossible.”
You knowthat feeling when you are well and truly being screwed in the deepest, blackest, pit of shit imaginable? Take that feeling and multiply it by 10, or heck even go logarithmic. Imagine now being a pregnant child in a war zone surrounded by (and married to) people who want to die for their bearded imaginary friend in the sky.
Made of Awesome? You betcha!
All of this, made possible by religion.
[H/T to Bleatmop for bringing this article from the New York Post to my attention.]
Who could ask for anything more. A great beach, a good discotheque and an opportunity for martyrdom for the win!
Over a million tourists from around the world visit Sousse, Tunisia every year. And, while the coastal city boasts pristine beaches and world class hotels, recently, hordes of local young men have been leaving fun and sun behind them in favor of joining ISIS in Syria.
Fascinating reading about some of the circular nature of events that are playing out in the Middle East as of late. This excerpt from the Counterpunch article titled Once More, Into the Quagmire.
The Middle East Needs Our Military Might
One can hear, in the reverberating noise of mainstream justifications, a series of claims. Among them is the idea that the Middle East is united in opposition to ISIS. Indeed it is, if you confine your poll to the rotten monarchies of the Gulf, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. Adding Jordan to the mix, this fulsome collection of anti-democratic and largely puritanical theocrats is by some stretch of the imagination supposed to provide Arab and Muslim legitimacy to America’s war.
Fancy that, legitimacy conferred by five of the most authoritarian governments in the Middle East. Thus we are ostensibly defending the cause of freedom by assembling a coalition of five treacherous freedom deniers. One human rights violator is leading a coalition of human rights violators against a new human rights violator whose actions deeply offend it. We are appalled at the sight of beheadings and intend to destroy those who practice it, supported by the leading beheader on the Arabian Peninsula. We bomb ISIS oil depots, claiming they have been criminally seized. This barely a decade after we criminally seized major Iraqi oil contracts, while our troops “guarded” the oil ministry (from ‘insurgents’).
Then there’s the dutifully ignored footnote, a poll conducted by the Arab America Institute, which found that:
“Strong majorities in every country favor U.S. policies that support a negotiated solution to the conflict, coupled with more support for Syrian refugees. Majorities in all countries oppose any form of U.S. military engagement (i.e., “no-fly zone,” air strikes, or supplying advanced weapons to the opposition).”
And most Arabs found President Obama most effective in ending the U.S. presence in Iraq. Perhaps the true patriot could efface all of this were it not for the additional fact that our partners in extermination are the leading financial backers of extremists across the Arab world. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are nothing if not open-air markets for arms merchants, money launderers, and angry mullah mosque builders. You could be forgiven for wondering if half our coalition is helping attack ISIS and then immediately re-arming it when it emerges from the rubble, as it invariably will. This is what’s known in arch capitalist circles as “creative destruction.”
bleatmop
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