Rolling MENA 2014 (Middle East)

my only problem w/ the Khorasan conspiracy is that obama has never needed an excuse to justify bombing a country before - why would this be any different?

A "new group" in a different country (Syria) that is only now suddenly about to imminently attack, versus Al Queda offshoot in Yemen or Afghanistan oh yeah whatev

but it's not like he needed to manufacture consensus. it's not a huge leap between bombing IS in iraq and doing so in syria, and that still seems to be where the majority of his effort is going. no one is demanding an explanation for moving the campaign to syria, and even if they were, this minor detour for khorasan wouldn't provide cover for the rest of the campaign.

then why say "an imminent attack was planned" when there is now no evidence?

(or anyone willing to say there was)

it seems like they had intelligence about an attack, but that 'imminent' might have been overselling it.

it could even be that they posed no threat and had no plan to attack the US but Obama directed the WH to oversell the menace to score some domestic points. even that seems iffy to me, but more likely than trying to build in an excuse for attacking syria. it just doesn't make sense to sell the syria attack based on this diversion since a) it doesn't justify the rest of the attack, and b) i've never seen them care that much about justifying an attack on IS to begin with. wasn't the attack already justified based on US stepping up war against IS in general?

in the UK much has been made of the difference between operating in Iraq at the behest of the maliki govt & going in to Syria unilaterally, not sure at what level this legal distinction operates and to what extent it would apply in the US. not that this shines any light on the motivations behind the khorasan biz.

yes, that's been an issue in the US too, but what kind of legal argument is it to make that bc Khorasan is a legitimate target, that legitimizes any targeting of IS in syria? even if it was legally okay to attack the former, that wouldn't be a sufficient legal argument for the latter. if anything, i feel like the argument Obama admin has been making is that choosing to open the war against IS in Syria opened up targeting of Khorasan, not vice-versa.

Khorosan doesn't make bombing of Syria any more legal. Bombing of Iraq is potentially legal within certain parameters with permission of Iraqi government. Legality has never been much of an issue for Obama though.

Idk, is the US using manned planes instead of drones this time? Could be preparation in case of US casualties.

it's not a huge leap between bombing IS in iraq and doing so in syria,

Sure it is. The US was in Iraq and Bush had gotten legal authorization (no matter how drummed up and fake it was) for being there. There is no such clearcut legal authorization for the Syria attacks. Yes, the White House is relying on alleged legal support for the current bombings, but many are hoping Congress will (after the elections at least) address it. Politically they realized they could do it now, and like you said score some domestic points.

As attenuated as it was, the attacks in Yemen were considered attacks against Al-Queda who were planning on attacking the US. This is a different entity.

This post-war poll was conducted one month after the end of the war in the Gaza Strip. This report highlights important changes in public perception compared to the findings we obtained in our previous poll which was conducted a month ago, immediately after the war end. Findings show a drop in satisfaction with the achievements of the war, probably due to the continued siege and blockade of the Gaza Strip. A drop was also found in the percentage of those who believed Hamas won the war, in the percentage of opposition to dissolving armed groups in the Gaza Strip, and in the popularity of Hamas and Ismail Haniyeh. Findings also show a rise in the popularity of Abbas and Fatah. Support for a third armed intifada went down in this poll as support for negotiations increased and a majority supported the two-state solution.

http://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/496

Thought you'd be talking about that Abbas speech at the UN. Condemmed by many but praised by some--http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Israel-Prize-laureate-Zach-backs-Abbas-claims-of-Gaza-genocide-376658

Plenty of blame to go around in US govt re ISIS

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/30/world/middleeast/obama-fault-is-shared-in-misjudging-of-isis-threat.html?_r=0

A reconstruction of the past year suggests a number of pivotal moments when both the White House and the intelligence community misjudged the Islamic State. Even after the group’s fighters stormed across the border into Iraq at the start of the year to capture the city of Falluja and parts of Ramadi, the White House considered it a problem that could be contained.

Intelligence agencies were caught off guard by the speed of the extremists’ subsequent advance across northern Iraq. And the government as a whole was largely focused on the group as a source of foreign fighters who might pose a terrorism threat when they returned home, not as a force intent on seizing territory.

hasbarists are all excited bc they're always arguing that abbas isn't the sensible moderate he's portrayed to be. for me, tho, grandstanding before the UN from anyone isn't really news...

also apparently he doesn't agree w/ the genocide language, he just understands it? or that it's no worse than other politicians? idk, that seems like a reasonable point to me.

When asked about Abbas’s use of the word “genocide” to describe Operation Protective Edge, Zach said: “Israeli politicians have said things that are even more awful, or no less awful, than what Abbas said about genocide.”

“To some extent, whenever someone is angry after having been strung along for over a year with fruitless negotiations, then one tends to use words that aren’t so effective,” he said. “For Abbas, that word was genocide, or a mini genocide.”

The Iraqi Air Force mistakenly dropped food, water and ammunition to militants from the Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIS), thinking they were their own soldiers, US television NBC reported Tuesday.

http://rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/30092014

legit lol

impressive

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/t31.0-8/p600x600/10273405_944533125561433_8756276361560008064_o.jpg

caption this plz ^

"I was reading David Brooks' new column..."

"The trick is to get elected as an anti-war candidate. Then you can drop all the bombs you want."

downloaded any good albums recently?

So this camel walks into a bar, and the bartender says

http://jewishphilosophyplace.wordpress.com/2014/10/01/arab-jewish-reconciliation-counterfactual-counter-history-feisel-weizmann-agreement/

Interesting historical item there. Meanwhile in the present I heard Netanyahu on NPR trying to defend defend the below settlements as being in South(east) Jerusalem and noting that a few of them will house Israeli Arab residents:

And Mr. Obama in his meeting with Mr. Netanyahu kept the spotlight squarely on the settlements, raising objections to Israel’s recent approval of plans for 2,610 housing units on geographically sensitive land in East Jerusalem. If the construction advances, a White House press spokesman said after the meeting, it would not only impede peace talks but poison relations with the very Arab countries with whom Mr. Netanyahu said Israel now had a “commonality of interests” against the militants.

....Mr. Obama, who has long had fraught relations with Mr. Netanyahu, did not invite him to stay for lunch after their meeting and seemed more focused on the threats than the opportunities from the chaos convulsing the region.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/02/world/middleeast/obama-netanyahu-israel-white-house.html?emc=edit_th_20141002&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=37355772

WTF: ‘Ethnic cleansing for a better world’ — Richard Cohen says Palestinians brought the Nakba on themselves

I am just amazed Richard Cohen has written a book. His Washington Post column always seems sloppy, dashed-off and poorly researched. He has also been criticized for offensive language in his column for years.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/twin-fronts-in-syria-and-iraq-struggle-to-drive-by-islamic-state-advance/2014/10/02/b8e86f66-4a26-11e4-891d-713f052086a0_story.html?hpid=z3

Isis still on the move despite bombings

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/02/moazzam-begg-contact-mi5-agents-papers

Embarrassing for MI5

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/02/world/meast/isis-air-strikes/index.html

So it looks like Turkey might help save the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani. They don't want a Kurdish homeland, so after absorbing so many additional Syrian Kurdish refugees, now they may go after ISIS there which has surrounded that location (after being unconcerned to a degree earlier as long as the action was away from the border).

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/10/03/Turkey-will-do-whatever-to-stop-ISIS-taking-border-town.html

(CNN) -- A short video released by ISIS on Friday shows the apparent beheading of British aid worker Alan Henning. In the same video, the terror group threatened the life of an American aid worker.

A taxi driver from near Manchester, England, Alan Henning was part of a team of volunteers that traveled to Syria in December to deliver food and water to people affected by the Middle Eastern country's devastating civil war. He was abducted the day after Christmas by masked gunmen, according to other people in the aid convoy.

Last week, the British foreign office released an audio file of Henning pleading for his life. His wife made a public plea for ISIS to spare his life.

seems like this kind of thing is going to go on for awhile

I don't know if anyone here has actually watched any of these things, but, against my better judgement, I did, and none of them actually "shows the apparent beheading" of anyone.

They all follow the same formula: speech by the guy in orange denouncing own government, pantomime neck chopping by guy in black featuring zero blood or suffering and quickly fading to black. Then cut to, I guess, the corpse lain down in the sand with its severed head propped up on its chest - gruesome for sure. But there's something weird about how folk could be mean enough to behead people but too squeamish to show it in their videos. Why make beheading videos that don't show beheading?

My guess is that these guys get shot or otherwise quickly killed, and the head's just cut off afterwards. I dunno why I'm even thinking about this. This is a bad thing itself, obviously.

Maybe the beheadings are carried out as described, but the ISIS guys edit out the worst bits to make them less likely to get deleted from Youtube?

It's hard to find anyone talking about this without running into conspiracy people who think the killings are entirely staged by the CIA or whoever, with the supposed victims off to new identities, never to be heard of again. (If I were a conspiracy guy, I wouldn't be so quick to assume the CIA wouldn't just the kill the guys for verisimilitude.) In the conspiracy version, the corpse shots are CGI/other special effects: from what I've seen, technically, this wouldn't be very hard to pull off.

There have only been a few mentions of the fakeness of these videos in the press. A few variations of this http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/bill-gardner/11054488/Foley-murder-video-may-have-been-staged.html, in which it takes a "forensic analyst" to point out that the video clearly doesn't show what it purports to.

I'm inclined to think that the people making these videos just don't have it in them to behead a live person, and so fake it a little, and the people reporting it to us fudge the faking because nevertheless awful murders have been committed, and maybe we don't want to encourage the terrorists to make more authentic videos. And it suits both sides: ISIS look badass / we need a war. I dunno.

Why make beheading videos that don't show beheading?

The body is not dead at once and neither is the head. Showing the full death throes would increase the viewer's awareness of the victim's suffering.

I should also mention that both carotid arteries would be spurting immense amounts of blood until the supply was depleted.

Showing the full death throes would increase the viewer's awareness of the victim's suffering.

Well, again, what is the point of making a video of a beheading if not to increase the viewer's awareness of the victim's suffering? It's not like there aren't plenty of ISIS-produced videos of actual beheadings in all their gruesomeness.

I should also mention that both carotid arteries would be spurting immense amounts of blood until the supply was depleted.

This is my point. There is no blood. These videos show someone pretending to carry out a beheading. Completely phony. It may be that after the video fades an actual beheading takes place, who knows? If the hostages wind up dead anyway - which I assume they do - then it doesn't make any difference, I suppose. It's just weird that these things are being taken at face value.

These are recruitment videos for European jihadists, with their revenge fantasies for all the alienation, racism, and curtailed opportunities they've experienced. Perhaps the actual sawing through arteries and gristle is omitted as it humanises the infidel, and doesn't serve as propaganda.

Within any body of 10k volunteers, ISIS would have little difficulty finding some eager to enact their fantasy. I imagine those that want to do it twice are viewed with a bit of disdain by cojihadists. Amateur hour with small knives can't be pretty.

what is the point of making a video of a beheading if not to increase the viewer's awareness of the victim's suffering?

xp

This is very carefully calibrated propaganda in my opinion. Here's how I see it.

You may have noticed that the very fact of beheading westerners has given ISIS near-instantaneous worldwide notoriety for a much smaller outlay than al Qaeda required to gain a similar notoriety. By showing the severed head (minus the worst gore) the video is sufficient to establish the beheading as factual. The world's emotional reaction to this fact of beheading is strong enough to achieve all their propaganda aims.

The ultimate aim of the video, far from trying to make the viewer aware of the victim's suffering, is to cast ISIS as utterly fearless warriors fighting against the hegemony of the godless Great Satan of the USA and NATO countries. The westerner is meant to feel fear, while the sympathizer is meant to feel elation.

The bloodless nature of the video (no spectacular gore and writhing) reduces the beheading to a symbolic act more than a physical one. This reduction to symbolism is what allows them to achieve both their aims simultaneously. Forcing the viewer to wallow in the victim's suffering would provoke a reflexive visceral disgust. This might amplify the fear in one part of their audience, but it would suppress the elation they want their sympathizers to feel.

Otm

Turkey...

Last week, Turkey pledged to prevent Kobane from falling to the militants and its parliament authorised military operations against militants in Iraq and Syria.

But it appears to have taken no action so far to prevent the fighting.

Correspondents says Turkey is reluctant to lend support to the Kurdish forces in the town because they are allied to the PKK, banned as a terrorist organisation in Turkey.

it's the Uncle Joe Two-step!

Vice President Joe Biden on Sunday called the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates to clarify that he did not mean to imply in his remarks last week that the Gulf ally was supporting al-Qaida fighters in Syria, the White House said.

Biden spoke with Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and a key Emirati leader, the White House said.

It was the second time in two days that Biden had to call a key partner in President Barack Obama's coalition to walk back comments he made on Thursday, when he said that U.S. allies - including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the UAE - had funded and armed extremist groups linked to al-Qaida.

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_268743/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=AW8cKXSh

Gee whizzums!

In its campaign across northern Syria and Iraq, the jihadist group Islamic State has been using ammunition from the United States and other countries that have been supporting the regional security forces fighting the group, according to new field data gathered by a private arms-tracking organization.

The data, part of a larger sample of captured arms and cartridges in Syria and Iraq, carries an implicit warning for policy makers and advocates of intervention.

It suggests that ammunition transferred into Syria and Iraq to help stabilize governments has instead passed from the governments to the jihadists, helping to fuel the Islamic State’s rise and persistent combat power. Rifle cartridges from the United States, the sample shows, have played a significant role...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/06/world/isis-ammunition-is-shown-to-have-origins-in-us-and-china.html

Turkey still holding to demands before it will help in border town Kobane, it appears.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-frustration-rises-as-turkey-withholds-military-help-from-besieged-kobane/2014/10/08/311cb190-4f0e-11e4-babe-e91da079cb8a_story.html

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29570734

The UN special envoy to Syria has warned that up to 700 people, mainly elderly, are still trapped in the Syrian border town of Kobane.

http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/islamic-state-officially-admits-to-enslaving-yazidi-women/

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/10/14/how_to_squander_home_field_advantage_islamic_state_turkey_ebola_climate_change

my feeling about obama these days is that his exemplary work on some domestic issues (economy + healthcare) eclipses the horror that has been his foreign affairs policies which can't possibly appeal to hawks, doves, or realists.