Rolling MENA 2014 (Middle East)

the US /can/ negotiate a deal w/ Iran (tho for a number of reasons I think it's very unlikely). i don't think they will though, and i don't think it has anything to do w/ them being trustworthy or not. iran has stated numerous times that they're not willing to compromise anything on their nuclear program, and that they don't believe they should have to. i'm just saying that i don't think obama can sell a deal to the US where Iran doesn't actually do any dealing.

what in those links do you disagree w/? do you think obama doesn't have a strategy to create some form of alliance w/ iran? (i think the evidence is pretty persuasive on that front.) is it that you don't think his strategy is misguided? (obv reasonable ppl can disagree.)

i just realized you thought i was saying that the US isn't trustworthy enough to keep a deal. that was not my point - my point was that the head of a State negotiates on behalf of that State. if the State doesn't give the head legitimacy to make a deal (what's FP ppl like to call 'selling the deal' to their constituents) there is literally no deal.

Well, it would probably be more correct to say that I disagree with you saying they are 'persuasive'. I find them tendentious and poorly argumented. I think the word 'alliance' is way too strong. I do think it's correct that Obama wants a less confrontational relationship with Iran, which I find perfectly reasonable, if the nuclear problem could come under control. And I agree that the warmer relationship with Iran would come at the expense of the US' 'allies' in the region, though I think it's mainly about realizing the folly in being allies with the extremist wahhabist regime in Saudi Arabia.

The problem, of course, comes with other ally, Israel, which has a very very reasonable distrust of Iran, but also (imo) a very unreasonable guy leading the country at the moment.

even if the US could bring Iran into some sort of alliance/partnership/whatever word you want to use, i fail to see what it gains from doing so if it ends up alienated the saudis and the israelis. a rapprochement w/ iran won't mollify wahhabists or ISIS or really anyone in the Sunni world. and the iranians are not exactly sitting on any strategic resources - maybe the US could lean on them a little to conduct military operations in Iraq + Syria, but even that is a recipe for conflict as they antagonize Sunnis in those places and Israelis by sitting on their border in Golan. it all seems very wrongheaded & naive to me.

also i think to believe that obama's main strategic objective is not creating a partnership w/ iran opens up a lot of questions about his middle east policies (esp vis-a-vis assad)

the sad part of all this to me is apparently iran was willing to accept some rapprochement and to help out with the campaign in afghanistan after 9/11 and we blew them off and followed up with blowing their next door neighbor and destabilizing the entire region.

"apparently" i don't think it's clear that this is true

also iran is thrilled that we blew up their neighbor and destabilized the region. they're now on the threshold of possessing the 4th largest oil deposits in the world.

in fact, i think many ppl would argue that the main driver of ISIS success has been the shiite government's alienation of sunnis in baghdad

you're welcome middle east

signed,
usa

Alienating the saudis is close to a good thing in and of itself, they are problem-makers not -solvers, who should be held in check rather than supported. And Netanyahu is doing plenty to alienate the US as well, so I don't think his voice carries so much importance as well. At the moment.

Basically, a multipolar relationship is needed in the middleeast. Supporting Sunni fanatics because they have the oil, while attacking the Shia-regime in Iran for being too radical, just undermines the status of US and the west, and creates more and more combatants in the asymmetric war we've kinda been in for decades, whether we admit it or not.

if O just wants to cool off the relationship w/ the persians, and he can end up making some kind of deal (like ottomons wrote in his post - some kind of inspections regime) i think that'll be a victory. i think giving up the henhouse to the iranians out of the hope that they --- idk --- will magically stabilize the middle east as a favor to us (as they arm assad, hezbollah, hamas, etc) is super naive.

The relations with the Saudis are gonna take a hit publicly if the 9/11 lawsuit picks up more steam and people might realize that the saudis actually did 9/11.

then again we already know this more or less and nobody cares/ =(

That mosaic article does a little too much mind-reading without factual support for me regarding Obama's intentions regarding Iran.

create some form of alliance w/ iran?

alliance seems like much too strong a word. the most I can envision would be a cautious and limited cooperation against ISIS, since ISIS is totally unfit for either the usa or iran to use as a tool to its own benefit and therefore represents a danger to the interests of both.

http://newpol.org/content/syria-and-left

Besides, what prevents them from seeing the victims of Bashar, when they see perfectly well ordinary people in Kobanê? Why wasn’t there the slightest interest in the slaughter of 700 people at the hands of ISIS thugs themselves in Deir Ezzor last August? One is forced to ask: Do victims have different values based on who their murderers are? Why, as the regime is bombing many regions in the country every day, killing dozens of people every day, are the leftists in the West as silent as the rightists? Could the reason be that the public killer Bashar and his elegant wife are symbols of the First World inside Syria, a couple with whom those in the First World identify easily?

I think this high-politics, Western-centered worldview is better suited for the right and the ultra-right fascists. But honestly I’ve failed to discern who is right and who is left in the West from a leftist Syrian point of view. And I tend to think that these are the poisonous effects of the Soviet experience, fascist in its own way. Many Western leftists are the orphans of the late father, the USSR.

http://pando.com/2015/02/12/the-war-nerd-islamic-state-and-american-narcissism/

Moyers’ sermon on how a guy burned in Syria is nothing compared to our American sins is actually worse than Chauncey’s, because at least Chauncey doesn’t imagine he’s some kind of prose-meister. Moyers, as you can see from that title “The Fiery Cage and the Lynching Tree,” actually imagines he’s a great writer, as he pulls the same lame move, wrenching the topic back to America in the early 20th century, away from Syria in the 21st in a flood of maudlin drivel about a Deep South Baptist college where Moyers once interviewed for a job.

Try imagining Chauncey or Bill minimizing an IDF phosphorus bombing in Gaza the way they trivialize this IS pyro video. Phosphorus burns people alive just as horrifically as kerosene, but would Moyers or de Vega trivialize Palestinian kids burnt alive with phosphorus by saying, “Remember the KKK! We’re just as bad!” Never. Because everyone would scream, quite rightly, that they were trivializing the IDF’s atrocity.

But both these fools spend thousands of words trivializing IS snuff movies, because…ah, it’s too stupid to paraphrase, but it goes something like this: “The US is the root of all evil, so IS is only acting out because it’s a victim. We did something bad to it somehow.”

and darling of way too many idiot Western Leftists

i keep seeing this accusation floating around. admittedly i stay away from your counterpunches etc but i've never encountered even a vaguely pro-ISIS individual in the wild.

moyers doesn't write for counterpunch

I don't think Brecher's criticism is about pro-ISIS attitudes, it strikes me as more a criticism of the "who are we to judge?" mentality, which is a different thing imo

that said, I don't agree with his paraphrased conclusion, I don't see any "poor ISIS victims" rhetoric in that Moyer article at all.

i don't think his argument about "recently imperialistic" european countries infecting their muslim populations with more will to kill makes much sense. if anything his analysis that it's a class thing does tho. australia and belgium are doing ok in the age of austerity; spain and italy are fucking broke.

i think his broader point is that it's such a small group no matter what the explanation is

i think i heard/read a lot more "poor little jihadis" pieces after charlie hebdo than re IS

I've never seen anyone lefty express sympathy for ISIS although I have seen a lot of ill founded theories that we somehow created ISIS

We being the US

i've read many many comments on news stories about how mossad funds ISIS

you read comments

Naomi Wolf posted some bullshit recently (innuendo about the US not Mossad)

reading comments is the best way of accessing the collective unconscious

the collective unconscious of crazy people

That well-trained Iraqi army is still not quite ready yet to move against Isis

Iraqi commanders, soldiers and police officers who could play a central role in any offensive are raising doubts about the readiness of Iraq’s ground forces. The army has struggled to recapture even smaller towns that pose less of a challenge than Mosul — Iraq’s second-largest city, which is still full of civilians and heavily defended by the militants, they say.

“Our assessment shows an offensive against Mosul is not imminent,” said Masrour Barzani, the head of the Kurdistan Region Security Council.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/14/world/middleeast/amid-talk-in-iraq-of-anti-isis-push-doubts-about-troops-readiness.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

if u haven't read this yet it's next level:
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

ISIS theology is hauntingly familiar in many ways to anyone who has listened to the Book of Revelations inspired stylings of various American evangelical preachers. There is a grand plan and a detailed blueprint and they are being followed faithfully and exactly, but it is like someone who builds an exact scale replica of the Chartes cathedral out of toothpicks and white glue. The whole enterprise is methodically, totally batshit crazy.

I suppose there are valid analogies to be made between ISIS and American evangelical preachers (as there probably are among a multitude of hardcore religious adherents, of all kinds, and particularly those whose religion has a strong element of eschatology). But I don't see any kind of relevant analogy, relevant to the essential or unique character of ISIS, relevant to the present moment. Of course I know you don't mean to suggest any kind of equivalence; but these kinds of facile analogies (which inevitably-- I know not intentionally, but are too easily understood to) suggest some kind of equivalence, really really set my teeth on edge. Maybe that's my problem.

Might as well analogize Mormonism to the Khmer Rouge, or Scientology to Jacobinism, or whatever-- of course there are valid analogies to be made; but in historical context it seems absurd.

OK up front breaking Godwin's Law here. One of the creepy things about ISIS (obviously at the very bottom of an endlessly long list) is the persistence of a kind of "sophisticated" "Western" apologia for ISIS (at least to the extent of tu quoque-- for example Obama's college freshman "historical" version of an apologia, re the Crusades etc.). Lots of very sophisticated people "understood" or "sympathized" where Hitler was coming from, too, for a long time. (By the way Heidegger is one of my favorite philosophers; I somehow maintain a kind of intellectual negotiation and/ or denial about his politics. Ugh-- this is unresolved for me.) Analogy somewhat breaks down here because Nazis were (or appeared) more "sophisticated" than ISIS (i.e. appealing to "Western" intelligentsia as recognizably "Western"/ "European"); but in the present historical moment there are reasons why ISIS would be (if not appealing, at least somewhat excused) by current Western intelligentsia and its current biases-- precisely because of ISIS's non-Western, non-European, Third-World, anti-capitalist exoticism. A topic of another day. And as Wood's article concludes:

I could enjoy their company, as a guilty intellectual exercise, up to a point. In reviewing Mein Kampf in March 1940, George Orwell confessed that he had “never been able to dislike Hitler”; something about the man projected an underdog quality, even when his goals were cowardly or loathsome. “If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon.” The Islamic State’s partisans have much the same allure. They believe that they are personally involved in struggles beyond their own lives, and that merely to be swept up in the drama, on the side of righteousness, is a privilege and a pleasure—especially when it is also a burden.

Fascism, Orwell continued, is

psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life … Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people “I offer you a good time,” Hitler has said to them, “I offer you struggle, danger, and death,” and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet … We ought not to underrate its emotional appeal.

Nor, in the case of the Islamic State, its religious or intellectual appeal. That the Islamic State holds the imminent fulfillment of prophecy as a matter of dogma at least tells us the mettle of our opponent. It is ready to cheer its own near-obliteration, and to remain confident, even when surrounded, that it will receive divine succor if it stays true to the Prophetic model. Ideological tools may convince some potential converts that the group’s message is false, and military tools can limit its horrors. But for an organization as impervious to persuasion as the Islamic State, few measures short of these will matter, and the war may be a long one, even if it doesn’t last until the end of time.

PS Also cf intellectuals sympathetic to/ or apologetic for Stalin way too long. Who often adduced the tu quoque.

is the persistence of a kind of "sophisticated" "Western" apologia for ISIS

lol this doesn't exist bruv

lol this doesn't exist bruv

yeah I think you're probably right. (No doubt almost entirely overall anywhere and certainly here, at ILX.)

But why do I still feel this way? It's confusing. (As I said, it may have more to do with me or where I'm at. Politically, in many respects I'm at odds with the general political orientation at ILX-- but in many or most respects find y'all intelligent and nuanced and overlapping with my views. There's so much terrible stereotyping and overgeneralization in politics. (But, if I may speak in parables, I'm like a small-l libertarian living in Berkeley, CA. The motes in others' eyes are always much more conspicuous and irritating than one's own.) And I've encountered too may people who-- to speak in parables-- find say Scott Walker more hateful than Zarqawi. (This is a topic for a totally different thread which maybe I'll have the chutzpah to start someday, though I'm not much more than a lurker here.)

But I don't want to minimize a lot of disgust I've felt, either, toward things/ viewpoints I've experience in my environment (e.g. Berkeley, or a lot of college campuses).

Uh, is that you, Mordy?

Don't tar anyone other than me with my tarring and tarrible views.

I suppose there are valid analogies to be made between ISIS and American evangelical preachers (as there probably are among a multitude of hardcore religious adherents, of all kinds, and particularly those whose religion has a strong element of eschatology). But I don't see any kind of relevant analogy, relevant to the essential or unique character of ISIS, relevant to the present moment. Of course I know you don't mean to suggest any kind of equivalence; but these kinds of facile analogies (which inevitably-- I know not intentionally, but are too easily understood to) suggest some kind of equivalence, really really set my teeth on edge. Maybe that's my problem.

Might as well analogize Mormonism to the Khmer Rouge, or Scientology to Jacobinism, or whatever-- of course there are valid analogies to be made; but in historical context it seems absurd.

― drash, Tuesday, 17 February 2015 06:56 (5 hours ago)

there are plenty of idiots whom there will always be a dead abortion doctor to erase any sense of difference, this aggregate of sins analysis being the only insight necessary to understanding the unfamiliar, nevermind that the squalour of isis is the least unusual and singular aspect of what they are doing (and it isn't moral nullity)

obama's lakers quote there is almost as bad as the guilty homiletics of last week, two forms of western solipsism erasing any meaningful sense of a highly distinct and antithetical culture on the terms of its adherents, and now an anthitheist lunatic has murdered three palestinian abortion doctors there is another anoydyne consolation to add to the list

even the serious western coverage has focused too much on the most familiar aspect; the expatriate soldiers of fortune rather than understanding them in terms of last resort nationalism on behalf of the local sunni population under baathist/shi'ite persecution or in terms of the form of salafism that is animating them (though the new cockburn book amply covers the former and hassan/weiss/woods the latter)

Realizing that there's no possible wholly satisfactory way of framing ISIS (or any similarly complex phenomenon), I think it's better understood as a prospective empire using whatever regional conflicts it can to its advantage (antipathy for Assad, resentment of the recent US presence in Iraq, ex-Baathist disgruntledness and/or suffering at the hands of the Shi'a majority, fear of Iranian power, Israel/Palestine, etc.), rather than the outgrowth of a single conflict.

I find it very western-centric to believe that imperial ambitions would never independently arise in the region (hasn't been very long since they did) and can only be a reaction to western imperialism.

it's a very leftist thing to believe only the west has imperial ambitions as if the Weltanschauung only has room for one sinner and not many; plenty of Middle East minorities would obv disagree with such a characterization

that is just the usual unwitting racism of the intifada left, any act of enfranchisement by anyone historically disenfranchised by the west is only understood in reactive terms rather than as having any autonomous ideas or motives

I like the sound of that Cockburn book, it seems precisely what I have been looking for. I haven't read anything about the Arab region since The Looming Tower.

i find myself always underestimating what a POS Netanyahu is

lol