Rolling MENA 2014 (Middle East)

in the sense that shame does creep into the national self-identity and influences future events, i think you're right that it's probably useful. i'm not sure 'illegality' or 'immorality' from an international POV contributes much to this. ime the shame is more about failing to live up to one's own declared codes. i'm skeptical about the ability of this 'international' construct to make any significant intervention. also, the shame has to be specific - I can imagine that American horror at the Iraq failure has made us more reluctant to conduct that kind of military adventure again (though probably not reluctant enough). A general shame that your country is "bad," is a kind of immature sensation that I'm not sure links to any actual productive changes in policy. to that extent, American shame over sending Jewish refugees back to Germany might exist for some ppl, but certainly not on a serious enough level that it influences our actual immigration & deportation policies (maybe I'm wrong but I don't see this kind of sensitivity in the mainstream). whereas the Iraq war is fresh in our minds etc and maybe kept us for putting boots down in Syria or invading Iran or whatever. (and even w/ Iraq I believe that the US is much more concerned w/ the cost of the war than the shame of humanitarian violations - ie I'm more likely to hear someone say that Iraq is shameful bc threw away 'treasure and lives' on it, than bc of abu ghraib (here i'm speaking more about the general pop and not u know, your average ilxor).

i feel like this is a question that derrida might have dealt w/ - the meaning of a country feeling shame about itself

ie I'm more likely to hear someone say that Iraq is shameful bc threw away 'treasure and lives' on it, than bc of abu ghraib (here i'm speaking more about the general pop and not u know, your average ilxor).

― Mordy, Friday, 15 May 2015 18:16 (2 minutes ago)

the crime was the war itself not abu ghraib

isn't the blood and treasure claim founded on the notion that the war was for no good?

and the notion that the iraq war was for no good derives to a large extent from the arguments made by its opponents in 2002/3.....the failure of america in iraq derives from the same reasons that they cited at the time (democracy cannot be imposed violently from without)

i guess what i'm suggesting is that if you polled americans a large number would say that the iraq war is a mistake, but very few would call it 'criminal.

that's because a large number don't want to incriminate themselves

per ol' Jeb: "mistakes happen in foreign policy"

what role can shame possibly play if yr culpability is entirely "mistakes happen in foreign policy?" and if the US doesn't agree that invading sovereign Iraq was an illegal breach of international law, what hope is there that another country will feel shamed for not following international law for refugee absorption? (or is the idea that the US is uniquely w/out shame?)

idk why the US is even being referenced here have we tried to shame Israel

I mean apart from the four of us on this thread and the Washington Post

none of whom make policy

bc i'm using nakh to help me unpack what i believe about the existence + force of international law and whether it has actual value despite not being backed by actual power or force. ie: is this shaming mechanism from the 'international community' of real, demonstrable value?

i guess what i'm suggesting is that if you polled americans a large number would say that the iraq war is a mistake, but very few would call it 'criminal.

― Mordy, Friday, 15 May 2015 18:28 (1 minute ago)

that's probably true, although even if they might not say it was criminal, how many would say it was legal? presumably very few because it would be split between those who knew it wasn't, and those who rejected the notion of any law impeding america's right

so just as at the level of nations, there are implacable legal nihilists who act purely wilfully, and the remainder upon whom the notion of law has some normative force, whether directly or indirectly (shame etc)

the knowledge that the war was not sanctioned surely contributes in the reasoning of those who have come to doubt its validity (even if they read that only in instrumental terms)

can nations even feel shame tho? this mechanic by which states make decisions, which involves decisionmaking at an individual human level but convalesces into this larger non-human construct - does it take shame into account? or does shame only exist at the level of individuals who, once they feel shame about their nation's actions, are completely circumscribed from any role in that expression of power? well, i guess it does sometimes now that i think about it - ie German shame about WW2 has definitely changed the kinds of decisions it has made since then. Tho that seems like a particularly dramatic example that might be more of an exception?

that seems like a bit of a needless metaphysical complication, clearly shame acts upon particular groups within the nation, metaphysical 'shame among the nations' being the exception for particularly grave cases such as post-ww2 germany where nobody can escape being bound

the ashamed reaction of a large minority of its public to the war in vietnam evidently contributed to america's unwillingness to pursue large scale criminal follies in the ensuing three decades; its largest war in the interim was conducted only under a clear and restrictive UN mandate*

for the larger part of the american population who regret iraq, probably they don't feel shame but their misgivings about it surely act in some moral way.....not shame, which suggests something actively transgressive, but a sense that it was not /right/, which derives in some measure from that UN verdict

* wasn't unwillingness to exceed this one of the factors in bush I's decision not to pursue the retreating iraqi army back over the kuwaiti border? the grave mistake in the eyes of 2002 era neoconservatives

what you'd really need for an ideal case study is an example where a country committed a great crime that turned out very well for it. bc it's too easy for me to believe that the impacts of Vietnam and Iraq were entirely bc they didn't turn out well at all, and not bc they were great crimes. ie you're not sorry you did it, you're sorry it worked out so poorly for you.

the two are not parseable -- their illegitimacy and instrumental failure both derive from the basic fact that they were not sanctioned by the people who america claimed to be fighting for

this is another way in which the just and the efficient tend to be bound up together....

the problem of shame is that in the hands of overreaching naifs, it creates a counterproductive reaction....weaponised shame, deployed by one group against other, seldom has the desired effect, it has to be felt and not foisted from without

hence the witless to-and-fro about the dogshit clint eastwood film.....people might have misgivings but they won't have their beloved armed forces shamed by being treated as genocidaires etc

https://twitter.com/coachjim4um/status/585980002648199168

obv it's easier to shame others than to feel shame yourself

an example where a country committed a great crime that turned out very well for it.

― Mordy, Friday, 15 May 2015 19:02 (5 minutes ago)

the armenian genocide -- ataturk's programme relied upon a sense of the unitary nation that would not have been possible had the greeks and the armenians not been killed or deported (the kurds are the exception proving the rule, but then they needed the kurds to massacre the armenians)

and moral censure never gets very far because major nations like america, under the auspices of the wise and the just like obama, always find turkey has enough geopolitical goodies to offer that it cannot be condemned

so again one legal nihilist (the genocidaires) is being supported by another (the realpolitikers)

even american critics of american crimes probably don't experience any level of personal shame but anger directed at those they feel shamed their country. a kind of disassociation from their membership in the country.

Morsi sentenced to death, unsurprisingly.

Western nations probably won't comment on it. US gives current Egyptian regime military aid.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/16/us-mideast-crisis-usa-idUSKBN0O10FP20150516

American special operations forces killed a senior Islamic State leader who helped direct the group's oil, gas and financial operations during a raid in eastern Syria, U.S. officials said on Saturday.

The White House said President Barack Obama ordered the overnight raid that killed the man identified as Abu Sayyaf. U.S. officials said his wife, Umm Sayyaf, was captured in the raid and was being held in Iraq.

This was the first known U.S. special forces operation inside Syria apart from a failed secret effort to rescue a number of U.S. and other foreign hostages held by Islamic State in northeastern Syria last year.

But elsewhere

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/isis-looting-destroying-ancient-syrian-sites-industrial-scale-n359461

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/16/world/middleeast/isis-fighters-seize-government-headquarters-in-ramadi-iraq.html

A U.S. military official described the mission, which was met with heavy resistance from ISIS, as a "hugely successful operation" and represents a "significant blow" to the terror network operating in Syria and Iraq.

"Despite the rhetoric, (ISIS) is suffering significant losses in leadership and the ability to conduct operations," the official told NBC News. "Through strikes in Iraq and Syria, the Kurdish offensive in northern Syria and military successes in Iraq, (ISIS) is desperate.”

In Washington, American officials sought to play down the significance of the fall of the government headquarters in Ramadi.

“We’ve said before that there will be good days and bad days in Iraq. ISIL is trying to make today a bad day in Ramadi,” a State Department spokesman, Jeff Rathke, told reporters.

“Ramadi is important,” Mr. Rathke added. “It’s been contested for some time.”

BAGHDAD — The last Iraqi security forces fled the provincial capital of Ramadi on Sunday, as the city fell completely to the militants of the Islamic State, who ransacked the provincial military headquarters, seizing a large store of weapons, and carried out executions of people loyal to the government, according to security officials and tribal leaders.

The fall of Ramadi to the Islamic State, despite intensified American airstrikes in recent weeks in a bid to save the city, represented the biggest victory so far this year for the extremist group, which has declared a caliphate, or Islamic state, in the vast areas of Syria and Iraq that it controls. The fall of Ramadi also laid bare the failed strategy of the Iraqi government, which had announced last month a new offensive to retake Anbar Province, a vast desert region in the west of which Ramadi is the capital.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/18/world/middleeast/isis-ramadi-iraq.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/05/19/why-the-iraqi-army-keeps-failing/

The answer given is not Jeb Bush's one, that the US somehow should have forced the Iraqi government into letting US military stay.

While that article blames the US Bush admin for the dissolution of the Iraqi military and recent and current Iraqi governments for failures to unite the people and unite the military, more conservative folks are still pushing a different option:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-fall-of-ramadi-was-avoidable/2015/05/18/37bb2df6-fd6e-11e4-833c-a2de05b6b2a4_story.html?hpid=z3

Even at this stage, however, the Islamic State remains unable to stand against even a limited deployment of U.S. military forces if those forces are properly resourced and allowed to operate against the enemy. A few thousand additional combat troops, backed by helicopters, armored vehicles and forward air controllers able to embed with Iraqi units at the battalion level, as well as additional Special Forces troops able to move about the countryside, would certainly prevent further gains. They could almost certainly regain Ramadi and other recently lost areas of Anbar, in cooperation with local tribes. They might be able to do more.

"No matter how many billions of dollars you spend you cannot buy experience. You cannot buy legacy. You cannot just manufacture that out of nowhere," Marine First Lt. Dave Jackson, who fought alongside Iraqi troops on two deployments, told Al Jazeera last year after the fall of Mosul.

otoh the french army that got its ass so badly kicked at dien bien phu had already fought in numerous theaters of WW2 (north africa, italy, south france, germany) and for almost a decade in Indochina. a conventional army needs to be extremely aggressive to adequately repress guerrilla/unconventional attacks. this is pretty damning: "The army don’t have the fighting spirit. They were there waiting for the Islamic State to attack. They are poorly equipped compared to the Islamic State. We are fighting with guns and pistols while the Islamic State has Humvees and IEDs and suicide bombers."

i do believe that even a limited deployment could make an immediate impact on ISIS' ability to make gains however, a) it won't be enough to push ISIS back, b) ISIS can wait indefinitely and we are not prepared to keep a deployment in Iraq indefinitely, and c) the US is historically unable to embed in foreign armies and train them up enough to fight adequately

v significant victory (real & symbolic) for isis

The answer given is not Jeb Bush's one, that the US somehow should have forced the Iraqi government into letting US military stay.

tbf (not to bush but for the record), when it was convenient for obama, this was presented as obama’s (not iraqis’) decision

https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/260415484674068481

FACT: President Obama kept his promise to end the war in Iraq. Romney called the decision to bring our troops home “tragic.”

(imo to now claim iraqi govt alone was responsible for non-renewal of sofa is at least a bit disingenuous)

agree that (after invasion) disbanding iraqi army & bad mishandling of sectarian realities/ consequences were huge mistakes

what should be done now is separate (albeit related) question (from apportioning blame for isis takeover in middle east)

i don’t know

:(

the problem with coming up with a solution is that whenever you plug one of the holes in the dam another dozen open up. start rapprochement w/ iran, saudis invade yemen. minimally speaking at this point, the prerequisites to dealing IS a substantial blow would require reconciling the situation in Syria - which either requires a serious sustained effort to topple Assad, or negotiations that would keep Assad in power. neither of which are things i think the US/NATO want to do. Shiite government in Iraq needs to either be replaced by a popular Sunni government (which carries the risk of sympathy for IS), or Iran needs to agree to make it a bireligious government and include Sunnis in it, which I don't think they want to do. like when you're strategy for containment involves making the Shiites and Sunnis get along -- it's probably not a great strategy and v unlikely to succeed.

i don't think a direct confrontation between US/NATO and Daesh can work tho, or certainly can't work alone. even if the US could bring overwhelming force to Iraq (which sounds politically impossible to me), who would they leave in charge once they left? the same shiite government that alienated the majority sunni population? a sunni government defended by an iraqi army that flees at the first sign of danger? and if we aren't willing to bring an overwhelming force to bear on IS, what is going to push them back? they aren't looking for a negotiated agreement. and clearly Iraq army alone can't do anything.

fwiw bob gates was on charlie rose last night. he blamed bremer and the provisional authority for disbanding the army and an overly-broad debaathification campaign that emptied out what civil society iraq had. he also blamed maliki for, he said, replacing the US trained officer corps with "hacks"

if only there was a strong presence in iraq that the sunnis could look up to and provide a counterweight to iran.

not only does a solution seem impossible but it's hard to even think of a way to ameliorate the situation at all.

multi-xp

Armies historically fight well only when there is something they value that they are fighting for. It can be as intangible as pride and patriotism, or else as tangible as preventing an enemy from killing your family and burning your house, but there has to be something the soldiers think is worth putting everything on the line to gain. The Iraqi army probably doesn't feel fiercely enough about the outcome of their battles with ISIS. You can't manufacture that by sending in a few hundred advisors. Certainly the Iraqi government doesn't inspire those sorts of feelings.

i don't know / understand the situation with the Iraqi army. presumably it's drawn from places like Ramadi so you'd think they'd have their families + homes to fight for, but apparently not. is it bc the command structure of the army is so incompetent? or bc they actually sympathize w/ Daesh over the current government? or are they like the rest of the Sunnis and apathetic? actually i could imagine a Sunni preferring ISIS since apparently if you are the right kind of Muslim you get all kinds of stuff like free healthcare, the feeling of righteous superiority, etc. maybe it's a combination of all the above - ideologically uninspired, militarily underfunded + undertrained, etc. maybe the horrific solution is just letting ISIS have Iraq (maybe cutting out pieces for Kurdistan, Shiite minority, etc). what do you think? are ISIS a group you can negotiate with?

"So you also want to come to Europe?" Todenhoefer asked him.

"No, we will conquer Europe one day," the man said. "It is not a question of if we will conquer Europe, just a matter of when that will happen. But it is certain ... For us, there is no such thing as borders. There are only front lines.

"Our expansion will be perpetual ... And the Europeans need to know that when we come, it will not be in a nice way. It will be with our weapons. And those who do not convert to Islam or pay the Islamic tax will be killed."

Todenhoefer asked the fighter about their treatment of other religions, especially Shia Muslims.

"What about the 150 million Shia, what if they refuse to convert?" Todenhoefer asked.

"150 million, 200 million or 500 million, it does not matter to us," the fighter answered. "We will kill them all."

mmm i'm going to say no

That interview is a good example of a soldier with a fierce pride in his army and their ability to conquer. That is a soldier who will throw himself wholly into a battle.

maybe house of saud can modernize and use the largest military budget in the middle east for a conventional army and not for maintaining strict control over their own populace.

ISIS Finances Are Strong

The Islamic State has revenue and assets that are more than enough to cover its current expenses despite expectations that airstrikes and falling oil prices would hurt the group’s finances, according to analysts at RAND Corporation, a nonprofit that researches public policy.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/05/19/world/middleeast/isis-finances.html

The Shia are a large majority in Iraq, not a minority. Xps

The problems with the Iraqi army are numerous and include non-payment of wages, massive fraud, terrible equipment and even worse command. Even if there was a basic degree of motivation there once, it has been eaten away. Morale couldn't be lower.

There is no long-term military solution unless there is something on the table for Sunnis to unite around. It's not going to be ruling the country again so some form of enhanced federalisation might be an option. There are Sunni militias who can probably stem the spread of IS but they aren't going to do so if they are fighting for the current structure. Even now, the fact that Iranian troops are pouring into Anbar is a massive kick in the teeth.

The Shia are a large majority in Iraq, not a minority. Xps

Didn't realize -- are they mostly concentrated in particular areas in the east?

It's about 40 years since the Fall of Saigon now. I just watched that doc, Last Days in Vietnam. It feels awfully real right now.

Xp Yes and no. The south east is overwhelming Shiite (Najaf, etc) but quite a lot of the country is mixed. The west is mostly Sunni but it isn't as densely populated.

There are roughly 3x as many Arab Shiites in Iraq as there are Arab Sunnis. The total Sunni population is only bumped up by Kurds.

anybody read "Arabs at War"?

http://www.amazon.com/Arabs-War-Military-Effectiveness-1948-1991/dp/0803287836

no, looks interesting but i think i'm a little biased against arguments about the quality of the personnel. military histories i've read tend to emphasize things like supply, geography, military size, technology, unconventional tactics, etc. does the book discuss at all why the personnel are generally bad? like is it a deficiency in the way they train officers, or the organizational structure of the army? is it a cultural issue in the broader populaces?

never read it! Wondering if you guys have.

Nope.

More discussion of what is going wrong in Iraq. Boehner blames Obama and then there is this re internal Iraq blame-game:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/fall-of-ramadi-reflects-failure-of-iraqs-strategy-against-islamic-state-analysts-say/2015/05/19/1dc45a5a-fda3-11e4-8c77-bf274685e1df_story.html?hpid=z1

Nearly a decade ago, with an insurgency raging in Anbar, Sunni tribes there switched sides and joined the American-led effort to defeat al-Qaeda in Iraq, the precursor of the Islamic State. But the Sunni “Awakening” forces lost government support after the U.S. withdrawal in 2011.

This time, a number of tribes in Anbar held out for months against the Islamic State. But they complained that neither they nor the security forces got support from the central government.

Rami Abdurrahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, says ISIS controls 50% of Syria

jfc

Always worth keeping in mind that the Syrian Observatory For Human Rights is one guy living in a semi-detached house in Coventry so a pinch of salt is required.