Rolling MENA 2014 (Middle East)

xp ok, hope you're right, nb it's a v vague statement (would rather not get into topic of obama statements as expression or not of what he believes)

SV point taken, hope it's exaggeration (also 50% of "landmass" may be less dramatic than it seems)

i just meant that he's linking it to something that is presumably very sacred + near to his heart

iirc he makes that analogy pretty often when speaking on international issues, re many forms of injustice in different countries (especially when speaking internationally)

which doesn't mean he's cynical about it! or that it's not sacred & near to his heart (i believe it is). just that making analogy itself (to black civil rights in US) is not that telling of specific substantive policy beliefs

re many forms of injustice

& historical tribulations & struggles, etc

post-Ramadi changes...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/21/world/middleeast/us-to-send-rockets-to-iraq-for-isis-fight.html?ref=middleeast

The United States is rushing 1,000 antitank rockets to the Iraqi military to help combat the massive suicide vehicle bombs that Islamic State militants used in capturing the provincial capital of Ramadi

The immediate American objective over the past four days, the official said, has been to work with Iraqi political leaders and commanders to consolidate the retreating Iraqi forces — many of whom were physically and psychologically traumatized by car bombs roughly the magnitude of those used in the Oklahoma City attack in 1995 — and prevent any further retreat.

The training of Iraqi Special Forces would be an alternative to using American troops to accompany Iraqi forces on the battlefield to call in American and allied bombing attacks. So far, Mr. Obama is not considering using Americans to call in airstrikes, the State Department official said, although Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, has pushed the idea.

Mr. Abadi complained during his visit to Washington that it had been taking too long for the United States to carry out airstrikes on behalf of Iraqi forces.

Hard to do airstrikes in urban areas even if you have folks positioned within range and reporting promptly though.

if US ramps up bombing urban areas you're going to start seeing a lot more stories like this:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32840132

In the NY Times article on Palmyra, the other location ISIS has recently captured, there was this:

Residents videotaped airstrikes coming close to the town’s medieval citadel and wondered why the militants had not been bombed earlier — by the government or, for that matter, by the United States-led coalition waging a parallel air war against them — while they were traversing miles of open desert roads.

I cannot help but think that treating "the right of the Jewish people to have a homeland" as a settled principle and precedent opens a huge can of worms as soon as it is generalized to all other "peoples" who are trying to assert a similar right to a homeland. The Kurds and Uighars come swiftly to mind.

yeah, who decides who gets to have a homeland (Palestinians didn't leap immediately to mind Aimless?) - kinda the crux of the problem

The USA's announced policy (even if it is one very weakly supported by its actions) is a "two state solution" with a Palestinian state as a homeland. We have no such policy in regard to Kurds, Uighars, Basques, not to mention dozens more central Asian, African or other "peoples" who would be thrilled to know they have such a right.

The case of the Jewish people is fundamentally different than those, I've come to believe.

To say their case is fundamentally different is to say that there is a particular human right attached to Jewishness that does not attach to any other cultural, religious or ethnic identity not currently having its own dedicated homeland. How did that happen?

it is p different altho idk about fundamentally

i (as u can imagine) have a lot of thoughts on this issue but i think there's a way in which an ethical/rights reading and historical reading of the jewish people merge in a 'fundamentally' different way from these other ppls in the sense that since 70 AD (and really earlier) jews have lived in diaspora among other communities, not under just one thumb but under hundreds, and in varying ways, but as a nigh-constant, suffered for it. one of the answers to this was found in the enlightenment + the development of bills of rights for all humans, but even that trend in society didn't stop the shoah. there are still fewer jews alive in 2015 than there were in 1938. i think it's easy for someone to look at all that history and conclude that the world can't be trusted to protect their jewish communities*, that other nations will never be as invested in the safety of jews as a jewish state. there's really only one serious exception to that history and it is the home to a little less than half of world jewry. *i tried to find a way to soften this statement to make it more palatable but i think it's probably best stated plainly.

a book i'm reading at the moment has a section where the author visits Yad Vashem and writes:

Yad Vashem.

A representative of the museum greets the festival people, sharing some statistics with us. Before WWII there were 18 million Jews in the world, now there are 13.5 million.

Yad Vashem is shaped like a triangle representing one half of the Star of David. The other half, the missing half, represents the Jews that were killed. They are no longer, nor the second triangle.

We walk by the horrible pictures of dead Jews and all I can think of is this: some of the people here are – were – my own relatives and this is how they ended their lives.

I don’t want to see this. I would rather see a movie at the Cinematheque.

jews have lived in diaspora among other communities, not under just one thumb but under hundreds

yeah this occurred to me and I wasn't sure how to express it but it is obviously a big difference between Jews and Kurds, Uighurs, Basques, Tamils, whoever. the only real point of comparison is ... the descendants of African slaves.

xp

Or Roma?

do Roma aspire to a national home? i thought they were culturally committed to the transient lifestyle?

Most are settled but idk if there is any push for a nation state.

I thought of the Roma too but I'm not sure where they were initially displaced from, a point which no one seems to agree on

a few ppl over the last couple years have noted the irony of seeing graffiti saying 'jews out of palestine' on european walls that had earlier said 'jews get out.' you can't stay here and you can't go home.

let's all move to Mars

Mordy otm on the fundamentally different part. The point about African slaves is also good; I'd like to hear Obama elaborate on that.

I know this isn't the expected reaction, but I don't see the force of the argument that being in a hundred different places, and therefore under a hundred different thumbs, one for each place, is fundamentally worse than being in just one place and therefore under one thumb. The oppression in each case probably feels pretty similar.

i think it's more that those peoples continue to exist in their current situation. when israel was founded there was - again w/ one major exception - a major crisis for world jewry. it looked like the possibility for survival in diaspora was very low. like you see how people speak out about the situation in gaza - they call it genocide, ethnic cleansing, nazi war crimes, etc - and there are more palestinians in gaza today than there ever have been in history. by contrast all of european jewry was liquidated all at once. it's an argument from need - there was nowhere else to go, so the existence of a nation state for the jews became mandated by history itself. they needed a place to put themselves, so they put themselves there.

now maybe you feel like the world has changed and the need for a nation state for world jewry is no longer necessary. i look at the world and think that conclusion is crazy but you're not alone in thinking it. lots of people (well, comparatively very few, but not a zero-number of ppl) think the jews should leave israel and go back to europe, or go to florida, or just turn israel into a binational state. the majority of jews are not ready to give up that nation state. maybe at some point in the future world jewry will decide israel is no longer necessary. i don't see that happening today though.

(um, probably not comparatively few people believe that - but few among jews, americans, etc, i'd think)

Arendt argues in the Eichmann book that the Shoah was a crime against human diversity, and thus against the nature of humanity itself. the other cases we're addressing do not involve the liquidation of a people; of cultures through assimilation yes, but the Jews of Europe were not given that option.

imo mordy & euler otm

You are making a different argument now. I was responding to your specific argument about the jews being "fundamentally different" because of the diaspora putting them under "a hundred thumbs". The holocaust under the Nazis was a case of oppression by being under one thumb, but it was a thumb that dealt in genocide. I still think that your "hundred thumbs" argument is weak.

To clarify, I am not making an argument that the jewish state ought to be abolished, I am saying that if a jewish state exists as a right that inheres in the need for a people to have a homeland, or to protect itself from oppression, or even genocide, then this right is not exclusive to the jews and this inherent right opens up a huge number of questions about who does or does not have such a right to a homeland and how this right is to be observed or honored.

I think the two arguments are linked. Zionism was invented before the Shoah bc "there's nowhere safe for us" was already operative. The Shoah just made its conclusions undeniable.

more than one thumb involved in the Shoah imo fwiw

The reasons for a people to desire a homeland are powerful and plentiful. It is no surprise that Zionism arose without requiring the impetus of the Shoah to summon the idea.

The question is not whether it is desirable or practical to seek a homeland, but is it a right to have one? Under the conventions of modern diplomacy, a nation has a right to maintain its borders, so by virtue of its existing as a nation and being recognized as such, Israel has acquired a right to exist. This is a bit of a paradox, in that until Israel existed, it had no inherent right to exist under those conventions. Butu now it does. Diplomacy can be strange, but it has its reasons.

What Obama was saying was different than this as far I could see. He was invoking a right of a people to a homeland, and since various peoples exist in the world without a recognized homeland, this seems a novel way of expressing matters and one with a lot of ramifications.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/05/22/isis-brings-the-war-to-saudi-arabia-qatif-mosque-bombing/

Apparently the Saudi ISiS guy who shot two police officers in Riyadh last month started his downward spiral into terrorism after having been deported for vaping on a plane.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-endorses-general-idea-behind-arab-peace-initiative/

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — A suicide bomber blew himself up in the parking lot of a Shiite mosque in eastern Saudi Arabia during Friday prayers, killing four people in the second such attack in as many weeks claimed by the Islamic State group.

The attack, which set vehicles alight and sent a cloud of black smoke into the air, came after a suicide bombing a week ago at another Shiite mosque killed 21 people, heightening sectarian tensions in the Sunni-majority kingdom.

Both attacks took place in the oil-rich east, which has a sizable Shiite majority that has long complained of discrimination. The Islamic State group and other Sunni extremists view Shiites as apostates deserving of death.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/35c31d41d00241ea8ff2f6f78a798fe8/suicide-bomber-attacks-shiite-mosque-saudi-kills-4

this is so fucking stupid. are the shiites oppressing sunnis in saudi arabia making life so difficult that ppl can't help but resort to suicide bombing their holy places to express their rage?

https://news.vice.com/article/grandson-of-hamas-founder-says-he-faces-certain-death-if-canada-deports-him-back-to-the-west-bank
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/please-help-me-i-dont-want-to-die/

excerpt from NY Times editorial:

The best chance of quickly responding to the Islamic State would be to get weapons and training directly into the hands of Sunni tribal fighters in Anbar. But the Shiite-led central government, which wants to control the weapons, has resisted that, just as it has resisted integrating those Sunni units into a provincial-based, government-paid national guard. It has instead relied increasingly on Shiite-based militia, some backed by Iran, to fight against ISIS, thus worsening the country’s sectarian divisions and expanding Iran’s influence. Given the urgent threat, the Americans should consider working more directly with the Sunni tribes if Baghdad continues to refuse.

After the Ramadi debacle exposed more weaknesses in the regular Iraqi security forces, American officials say they will have to rely more heavily on a combination of elite Iraqi units, Kurdish forces, the Sunni tribes and some Shiite militias to fight ISIS.

The Iraqi state has been fragile since the Americans overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003, in part because the Shiites have excluded Sunnis from a fair share of the country’s political and economic power and fostered grievances that extremists exploit. Now, under the new threat of ISIS, the politically dysfunctional state is under more strain, and may be in greater danger than ever of splitting apart into Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni sectors. That would make defeating Islamic State forces even harder.

the myopia that preserves the unshakeable faith that security can always be restored if you just arm the right people remains one of the more insidious influences in the middle east

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/06/02/bombings_in_aleppo_the_u_s_accuses_assad_of_helping_isis.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/world/isis-making-political-gains.html?ref=middleeast

But little has been done to give Sunnis a greater role in their own governance. Mr. Assad remains in power, backed by Iran and the militant group Hezbollah. And American officials are fighting an uphill battle to persuade Sunnis in Iraq to fight ISIS alongside the Shiite-led central government and Iranian-backed militias.

That, Mr. Hamidi and other analysts said, has left some Sunnis willing to tolerate the Islamic State in areas where they lack another defender, especially in conservative communities like the ones in western Iraq and eastern Syria, where the group is strongest. The analysts emphasized that most Sunnis do not support the Islamic State’s harsh interpretation of Islam, or its brutality, but that some were becoming more susceptible to its political talk about protecting oppressed Sunnis.

“Now, with the sectarian polarization of the region, under the skin of every single Sunni there is a tiny Daesh,” Mr. Hamidi, a Sunni, said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.

By attacking ISIS in Syria while doing nothing to stop Mr. Assad from bombing Sunni areas that have rebelled, he added, the United States-led campaign was driving some Syrians into the Islamic State camp. “The coalition is scratching the skin and making this Daesh come out.”

Americans should consider working more directly with the Sunni tribes if Baghdad continues to refuse.

Sure. Why not? Violating Iraqi sovereignty has become the calling card of US foreign policy in the 21st century.

http://0334a46.netsolhost.com/WordPress/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/spinning-plates.gif

A slang word has even emerged, aid workers in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon say, for someone who supports ISIS just a little bit. Some people say, with a hint of sheepishness, “I’m a Dawoosh,” using an Arabic diminutive that suggests “a cute little Daesh.”

ISIS playing v sophisticated & surprisingly (depressingly) effective political game

With the recent gains by the Islamic State, Washington is tinkering with tactics and weapons. Anti-tank missiles are on their way to Iraq, to destroy American tanks that the group took from fleeing Iraqi soldiers.

yeah, it’s a serious arsenal:

https://news.vice.com/article/iraq-might-have-lost-2300-armored-us-humvees-to-the-islamic-state-in-mosul

dawoosh

nazilein
fascistellino
klanling
khmer rougekins
maoette

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-06-04/israelis-and-saudis-reveal-secret-talks-to-thwart-iran

i doubt this outcome was an n-th dimensional chess plan of obama's but if his iran negotiations force israel + sunni nations to have better relations (read this alongside bibi warming up to the arab peace initiative), that would be a pretty great result

Israel has established itself as a leading hub for weapons makers, capitalizing on the constant state of conflict the country is in and the close coordination between the military and the weapons industry. At the ISDEF opening ceremony, Ziva Eger, the Israeli Ministry of Economy’s director of the division for foreign investment and industrial cooperation, boasted about how Israel takes “technology from the defense sector and just implements it to the civilian sector.”

In Israel, nearly 6,800 individuals deal in weapons exports at over 1,000 companies, according to Defense Ministry data from 2013. The country’s weapons industry brought in about $5.6 billion last year, making Israel the eighth largest weapons exporter globally, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Former Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has said that 150,000 Israeli households rely on the weapons industry for income. While last year’s earnings were actually a drop from a high of $7.5 billion in revenue in 2012, a decrease attributed by Israel’s Defense Ministry to budget cuts in the U.S. and Europe, Israel is among the world’s top arms exporters per capita. In fact, the U.S. effectively provides a subsidy to the Israeli weapons business: While about 75 percent of the $3.1 billion in U.S. military aid to Israel must be spent on American weapons, 25 percent can be spent on domestic Israeli arms makers — a situation unique to Israel. Even when Israel buys U.S. arms, it sometimes requests that those weapons be built with Israeli components.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/05/war-israel-booming-business/

who are the top 7