Rolling MENA 2014 (Middle East)

even if it's true that a religious extremist movement didn't speak for me, if a non-adherent said "X isn't Jewish" or whatever I'd probably balk instead of appreciate it. like what the fuck does obama know about what is and isn't islam.

I might have missed the details, but I'm not sure what in that Atlantic article is new other than its relatively concise comprehensiveness. Even pre 9/11, weren't a lot of us attuned to the desire of some radical groups to establish a new caliphate? Vs. the more typically disruptive/destructive goal of the usual terrorist suspects? Like, the right wingers who fear monger about people coming to blow us up, they're talking about one strain of radical Islam. The ones worried about those coming to impose sharia, they're scared of another, and if anything conflating the two seems to be one of the major hiccups of the broader "war on terror." The horror stories coming out of IS don't seem really different than what was coming out of Afghanistan pre-9/11, iirc. Establishing strict religious law, public executions, etc. The big change just seems to be that the general chaos that has cloaked the region for years now has made it much easier for a philosophy dead set on and strengthened by spreading to do so.

i couldn't tell you precisely which aspects of the article qualify as scoops v. collation, but i read a lot about IS and i learnt things from the article that i didn't know before reading it. he clearly did a lot of groundwork and spoke to a lot of ppl.

I might have missed the details, but I'm not sure what in that Atlantic article is new other than its relatively concise comprehensiveness. Even pre 9/11, weren't a lot of us attuned to the desire of some radical groups to establish a new caliphate? Vs. the more typically disruptive/destructive goal of the usual terrorist suspects? Like, the right wingers who fear monger about people coming to blow us up, they're talking about one strain of radical Islam. The ones worried about those coming to impose sharia, they're scared of another, and if anything conflating the two seems to be one of the major hiccups of the broader "war on terror." The horror stories coming out of IS don't seem really different than what was coming out of Afghanistan pre-9/11, iirc. Establishing strict religious law, public executions, etc. The big change just seems to be that the general chaos that has cloaked the region for years now has made it much easier for a philosophy dead set on and strengthened by spreading to do so.

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, February 17, 2015 2:01 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not sure what you're getting at here -- as the article points out, Bin Laden very clearly saw his work as a precursor to establishing the caliphate, and ISIS propaganda discusses attacking the US, so it's not like there are these two separate schools of thought, one that wants to attack the west and the other that wants to create an empire under sharia.

also that, as the article notes, the taliban aren't revolutionary enough for IS bc they participate in politics

I guess I was confused then, because I did not think the aim of Bin Laden and his cohort was to spread the caliphate per se so much as target the west specifically.

I am still confused how IS can claim not to be political, unless they're saying everything they do is ... legal? As opposed to political? Which seems like splitting hairs, especially since I assume the Koran has some laws on how to govern.

this is the relevant bit:

Choudary’s colleague Abu Baraa explained that Islamic law permits only temporary peace treaties, lasting no longer than a decade. Similarly, accepting any border is anathema, as stated by the Prophet and echoed in the Islamic State’s propaganda videos. If the caliph consents to a longer-term peace or permanent border, he will be in error. Temporary peace treaties are renewable, but may not be applied to all enemies at once: the caliph must wage jihad at least once a year. He may not rest, or he will fall into a state of sin.

One comparison to the Islamic State is the Khmer Rouge, which killed about a third of the population of Cambodia. But the Khmer Rouge occupied Cambodia’s seat at the United Nations. “This is not permitted,” Abu Baraa said. “To send an ambassador to the UN is to recognize an authority other than God’s.” This form of diplomacy is shirk, or polytheism, he argued, and would be immediate cause to hereticize and replace Baghdadi. Even to hasten the arrival of a caliphate by democratic means—for example by voting for political candidates who favor a caliphate—is shirk.

It’s hard to overstate how hamstrung the Islamic State will be by its radicalism. The modern international system, born of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, relies on each state’s willingness to recognize borders, however grudgingly. For the Islamic State, that recognition is ideological suicide. Other Islamist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, have succumbed to the blandishments of democracy and the potential for an invitation to the community of nations, complete with a UN seat. Negotiation and accommodation have worked, at times, for the Taliban as well. (Under Taliban rule, Afghanistan exchanged ambassadors with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates, an act that invalidated the Taliban’s authority in the Islamic State’s eyes.) To the Islamic State these are not options, but acts of apostasy.

Right, they don't recognize "politics" in the sense of participating in earthly, non-Islamic political processes - elections etc. They don't recognize modern nation-states. A lot of their propaganda features group burnings/tearings of passports.

Thanks. I blame IS for my terrible cold and comprehension skills, the jerks.

eliminating all allegiance to fallible human-created nation states and living only in accordance with divine law == living the dream self-delusion

Well, no one would peg these chumps as rational.

Of course, god is not fallible, so as long as you follow his lead you're good.

ISIS is a truly radical millennialism movement, apocalyptic, post-rational, etc

doing the same thing for 67 years and expecting different results is also post-rational.

i find these imminent messianic movements (Communism too I guess - and it's probably no coincidence that they believe in a kind of socialist ideal for followers of the caliph) really fascinating in how they are post-historical, no longer striving for the apocalypse but actively producing it

xp i have no idea what that means except as another bizarre, unenlightening equivocation?

ILX is post-rational.

oh come now v few ilx posts are rational

flag-post-rational

pre-post-rational

Pee Post: rational?
http://media.petsathome.com/wcsstore/pah-cas01//300/11752PL.jpg

like what the fuck does obama know about what is and isn't islam.

all he needs to know is that making mealymouthed speeches about it is a shinier diversion from bombing 7 Muslim countries than his shiny Nobel is.

The notion that we should just let folks in those Muslim countries kill each other ( and I guess kill non-Muslims who happen to be there) without US involvment, is also embraced in part by Pat Buchanan types on the right. Lumping all the countries together without noting any differences is something Greenwald and righty isolationists alike also do

it is possible to be skeptical of further u.s. military involvement in the middle east w/o framing it as "we should just let folks in those muslim countries kill each other." the mixed record of past u.s. interventions suggests that we ought to be more skeptical than we currently are.

is also embraced in part by Pat Buchanan types on the right

stopped clock syndrome

historically speaking US intervention results in higher casualties, not fewer

and I can distinguish between Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, etc. while still maintaining that ISIL is more of a problem for them than it is for us, and one that would be better resolved by the regional powers with a vested interest in resolving the conflict.

I suppose it's a regional problem unless they get nukes. Do they want nukes?

who doesn't

altho the idea of them getting anywhere close to Israel or Iran's stockpile seems p farfetched

A stockpile seems political. They only need one.

ok fine well the idea of them getting anywhere close to inside Israel or Iran's borders seems p farfetched

So will any of these regional powers help the Yazidis?

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/aid-workers-help-yazidi-women-return-life-after-isis-nightmare-n307206

Although I guess minorities are dying around the world, so why should middle eastern ones be any different

yeah, it's not like they're being killed by jews

<sorry, inappropriate i know>

it's amazing how many regional and world powers are engaged--at different levels of commitment--in fighting ISIS (aside from Syria and Iraq's governments, we have Egypt, Jordan, Hezbollah, Iran, US, France, etc.). but none of them seem truly invested in routing IS, rather the goal for now--in the absence of broad coordination--seems to be to kind of "manage" them. the Atlantic article suggest that this might work, not to defeat IS militarily, but rather to slowly choke the novelty and inspirational power of the group, which is what he argues is shoring it up at the moment. i don't know enough about the situation to agree or disagree, but i can understand why hawkish types aren't satisfied with this "solution."

def. seems to me that the group is among the most ideologically and actually vicious since (at least) the Khmer Rouge. even the KR weren't explicitly genocidal in their ambitions. i'm not comfortable occupying the seat of cynical non-interventionism on this one a la Morbs and Pat Buchanan. that doesn't mean I favor some kind of 2003 pt. 2 invasion, of course, but "not our problem" rhetoric makes me queasy.

it doesn't really matter, and it certainly isn't /useful/, but i don't hesitate to lay the blame for this at the feet of the Bush Administration. that doesn't mean they are the ultimate or only cause--oppressive regimes from Cairo to Baghdad and beyond, not to mention the idiocy of Islamic radicalism and official Islam itself, share in that blame--but i really doubt that nearly the entire region would have become the charnel house it is without Bush/Cheney/Rumsfield/etc. and their invasion without a plan. if only we could trade those folks for the other hostages, we'd have a win-win. /angry

If I were cynical (god forbid), I might speculate that a strategy of managing and containing ISIS in Iraq and Syria would be a good way of concentrating large numbers of fundamentalist islamist extremists in one relatively open and exposed place, where they could be subjected to constant attrition at a lower cost than if they were to remain scattered throughout the world at very low density. The extremists would even pay their own way to go there.

But of course this could not be true. Utterly ridiculous idea.

xp I've been thinking a bit about the counterfactual where we don't go to Iraq and what it might look like today. I feel like the Arab Spring would likely still have happened (since our invasion into Iraq didn't destabilize Egypt or Tunisia or Libya really), but would Syria have become destabilized? Not totally clear but it might have. Would Saddam have been able to survive until now without any revolt / instability? It's easy to forget that under Saddam the region wasn't exactly stable either. If he had remained in power is it feasible that he might've intervened himself against Assad if he lived to see the Syria revolution?

Aimless otm

i can't see the rise of IS without (a) the propaganda value of the US invasion and misbehavior in Iraq; (b) the instability of Iraq as a cauldron for militant groups. IS has benefited enormously from the breakdown of Syria, but they were forged in Iraq.

Iran maybe would already have the bomb. They'd need it more w/ Saddam still next door.

That's the real question - can Syria become the mess it has w/out an open flow of militants from the Iraqi border.

and i sort of doubt that the Arab Spring would have had the same resonance across the region w/o Iraq; maybe it would have been limited to North Africa. am I wrong to suggest that the only place where the Arab Spring has gone the "right" way (e.g. in the direction of genuine democracy and pluralism) is in Tunisia?

xposts

No, that's my impression as well.

i meant "i.e." rather than "e.g."

imo

i don't hesitate to lay the blame for this at the feet of the Bush Administration [...] i really doubt that nearly the entire region would have become the charnel house it is without Bush/Cheney/Rumsfield/etc. and their invasion without a plan.

Some blame can certainly be laid there; but you'd have to follow up and place more immediate blame on Obama as well, and his decision to pull all US troops out of Iraq, leaving a power vacuum. (Of course Obama later said this was not "my decision" and blamed Maliki instead. Eyes roll.)

iraqis agreed on nothing except that the americans had to leave

the seat of cynical non-interventionism on this one a la Morbs and Pat Buchanan

oh no you don't.