Nightmare Mid-East Theatre, Empire of Chaos edition

[kladner]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Some non-flag-wavingly-jingoistic reading this Armistice/Veteran's Day:

How Kissinger Made Bombing the Iron Fist of US 'Diplomacy' | naked capitalism

But hey, they gave him a Nobel Peace Prize for the loving kindness he showed in SE Asia. (The Kissinger-enabled fellow genocidalist Pol Pot was quite miffed a few years later at not being similarly recognized.)

Tom Engelhardt's introduction to this piece on his site is worthwhile reading.

As October ended, White House spokesperson Josh Earnest announced that the U.S. would be sending "less than 50" boots-on-the-ground Special Operations forces into northern Syria in an “advise-and-assist” program for Kurdish rebels and their (essentially nonexistent) Arab allies. Only days before, in yet another example of twenty-first-century mission creep, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter had told Congress that the intensity of U.S. air attacks in Syria would rise “with additional U.S. and coalition aircraft and heavier airstrikes.” For this, A-10 and F-15 aircraft were to be deployed to Incirlik Air Base in Turkey.


It was the sort of military promise from Washington -- more of the same -- that has grown increasingly familiar in these years and could be summed up by adapting that old DuPont ad line, “better living through chemistry”: a better world through bombing. Unfortunately for such plans, the verdict has long been in: air power as a decisive factor in American war in this century has proven a dismal failure. Even in skies that, with the rarest of exceptions, offer no dangers whatsoever (other than mechanical failure) to fighter jets, bombers, and drones, even in situations in which munitions can be delivered to any chosen spot with alacrity and without opposition by aircraft freely patrolling the skies overhead, air power has proven a weapon from hell in every sense of the world. Complete “air superiority” has been a significant factor, as in Libya, in the creation of a string of failed states (and so breeding grounds for terror outfits) across the Greater Middle East. In its post-modern “manhunting” form, grimly named Predator and Reaper drones have managed to kill thousands of leaders, lieutenants, sub-lieutenants, and rank-and-file militants in various terrorist organizations, as well as significant numbers of civilians, including children. Recently leaked documents on Washington’s drone assassination campaigns indicate that, in at least one period in Afghanistan, only 10% of those killed were actually targeted for death. And yet the president’s drone assassination campaign in several countries (based in part on a White House “kill list” and “terror Tuesday” meetings to decide whom to target) seems only to have helped foster the exponential growth of terror outfits across the Greater Middle East and Africa.


In these years, air power has, in fact, been closely associated with one fiasco or policy disappointment after another. To take a single recent example: President Obama began his “no boots on the ground” air campaign against the Islamic State (IS) and its “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq in September 2014. Now, more than a year and thousandsof air strikes later, though large numbers of IS militants and some of its leaders have died, the movement continues to more than hold its own in Iraq, while expanding into new areas of Syria. There is no evidence that Washington’s air war in support of well... it’s a little unclear who -- now being emulated by the Russians in support of Syria’s brutal autocrat Bashar al-Assad -- has met any of its goals.


And yet from all of this, the only conclusion repeatedly drawn in Washington is to do it again. That air power in its various forms has added up to both a war of terror (that is, on civilian populations below) and a war for terror, that it has become a recruitment poster for terror outfits evidently matters not at all. In Washington, no conclusions are seemingly drawn from the actual record of these last 14 years, nor from a far longer historical record of air power disappointments, of repeated times in which much was destroyed and countless people, especially civilians, killed to no decisive effect whatsoever. As Greg Grandin points out today, that phenomenon stretches back at least to Vietnam (if not Korea). In his second piece at TomDispatch on the eternal Henry Kissinger (92 and still writing op-eds for the Wall Street Journal), based on his remarkable new book, Kissinger’s Shadow: The Long Reach of America’s Most Controversial Statesman, Grandin reminds us of what a pioneer in the horrors of modernity the good "doctor" really was. Tom

[davar55]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

...
But who cares about facts when one can - and does - simply smear any critics as "anti-semites"?

Who does that? Are you objecting to smears, or just this particular type?

Granted some people are touchy when they get verbally attacked or worse,
which doesn't justify an offensive retaliation. But defensiveness is not always
wrong, it sometimes means they feel threatened but don't have the verbal skills
to adequately respond,

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by davar55

Who does that? Are you objecting to smears, or just this particular type?

Granted some people are touchy when they get verbally attacked or worse,
which doesn't justify an offensive retaliation. But defensiveness is not always
wrong, it sometimes means they feel threatened but don't have the verbal skills
to adequately respond,

You - again! - either didn't read the bloody article, or failed to comprehend it, or are deliberately ignoring key points made in it. And I highly doubt folks like Hillary, Bibi and the AIPAC lobby can reasonably be construed as 'lacking verbal skills.'

[Xyzzy]

http://www.kait8.com/story/30528504/...es-in-arkansas

"…but I will not support a policy that is not the best solution and that poses risk to Arkansans"

[R.D. Silverman]

Originally Posted by Xyzzy

http://www.kait8.com/story/30528504/...es-in-arkansas

This is just political blather on the part of a Republican governor.
He does not have the authority. Federal law takes precedence.
He is just appealing to anti-muslim sentiment.


Unfortunately, my home state also voted in a Republican and he has taken
a similar stance.

For the REAL problems one should read:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a...in_europe.html


There is an old saying: When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

It is up to the SYRIANS to adopt the culture of their hosts, not the other way
around. Unfortunately, their religion gets in the way. The above article
is 100% correct IMO.

I recall an ruckus at Harvard a number of years ago. Female students from
the Middle East wanted the university to set aside periods of time when the
athletic facilities were for "women only", because they were not allowed to
wear gym clothes/bathing suits in front of men.

The final consensus was: You come to our country knowing what our culture is like.
It is up to YOU to adopt our culture and not the other way around.

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by R.D. Silverman

The final consensus was: You come to our country knowing what our culture is like.
It is up to YOU to adopt our culture and not the other way around.

I would like to second that.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by R.D. Silverman

The final consensus was: You come to our country knowing what our culture is like.
It is up to YOU to adopt our culture and not the other way around.

Yup.

And the other way round. I've no sympathy for the ~70-year old Brit who hit the news here over the last couple of months who was imprisoned and faced 1000 lashes for getting caught brewing home-brew booze in Saudi Arabia. Amazing how many others did ...

[ewmayer]

Drone Whistleblower: Pilots Often High on Drugs; Refer To Kids As "Fun Size Terrorists" | The Intercept

U.S. drone operators are inflicting heavy civilian casualties and have developed an institutional culture callous to the death of children and other innocents, four former operators said at a press briefing today (Nov. 19th) in New York.

Drone operators refer to children as “fun-size terrorists” and liken killing them to “cutting the grass before it grows too long,” said one of the operators, Michael Haas, a former senior airman in the Air Force.

Haas also described widespread drug and alcohol abuse, further stating that some operators had flown missions while impaired.

That sort of brutal dehumanization of 'the other' is a standard psychological coping mechanism for folks steeped in the actual horrifying reality or war-up-close, even if modern times, 'up close' often means on the viewing end of a drone-cam:

“He kept the targeting laser trained on the two lead men and stared so intently that each individual pil stood out, a glowing pointillist dot abstracted from the image it was meant to form. Time became almost ductile, the seconds stretched and slowed in a strange electronic limbo. As he watched the men walk, the one who had fallen behind seemed to hear something and broke into a run to catch up with the other two. Then, bright and silent as a camera flash, the screen lit up with white flame.

Airman First Class Brandon Bryant stared at the scene, unblinking in the white-hot clarity of infrared. He recalls it even now, years later, burned into his memory like a photo negative: “The smoke clears, and there’s pieces of the two guys around the crater. And there’s this guy over here, and he’s missing his right leg above his knee. He’s holding it, and he’s rolling around, and the blood is squirting out of his leg, and it’s hitting the ground, and it’s hot. His blood is hot. But when it hits the ground, it starts to cool off; the pool cools fast. It took him a long time to die. I just watched him. I watched him become the same color as the ground he was lying on.”

Of course genuine psychopaths would also be prone to engaging in such gallows humor, but not as a necessary coping mechanism.

[ewmayer]

Gwynne Dyer: Why Turkey wanted to shoot down a Russian plane | NZ Herald News

With 'allies' like Erdogan and the just-as-bad-as-ISIS Saudis ... while Russia's response has so far been restrained (economic sanctions - Turkey is, or better was, a major trading partner), one wonders what might happen if Turkey tries closing the Bosporus to Russian ships.

[kladner]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Gwynne Dyer: Why Turkey wanted to shoot down a Russian plane | NZ Herald News

With 'allies' like Erdogan and the just-as-bad-as-ISIS Saudis ... while Russia's response has so far been restrained (economic sanctions - Turkey is, or better was, a major trading partner), one wonders what might happen if Turkey tries closing the Bosporus to Russian ships.

I have long-standing respect of Gwynne Dyer's take on things.

[R.D. Silverman]

Originally Posted by kladner

I have long-standing respect of Gwynne Dyer's take on things.

Solving the ISIS problem is doable. But the world lacks the political will.

Send in a million troops. This would require a draft within the US and probably elsewhere.