Re: Seymour M. Hersh · Military to Military: US intelligence sharing in the Syrian war · LRB 7 January 2016

[ish mailian]

Complicated that America is, so many competing interests, so many people
with power, with a card to play. In The Consequentialist essay we can see
how competing ideas clash in the white house, how differences may be set up
along factional lines that run deep into who and what people are, that, for
example, members of the decision making staff even take gendered political
stances that, while seemingly stereotypical, and therefore, easily
dismissed as such, are factional factors  that we need to understand if we
are to understand how the politics operates.

In the Cole book, Charles Wilson, merely a congressmen, is shown to have a
big impact. The film has brought this to the public. But read Cole and you
learn of hundreds of players, minor players by most measures, but
significant policy drivers, movers and shakers. And we never hear of them
because they are never made the subject of a Hollywood film and because
they were never elected to any office.

There are people in the US government that supported the Arab Spring. Some
are significant voices in the Obama Administrations. Some have left the
Administration and are still working on that project, others are still
there. Some have been working with and for several US Presidents to promote
democracy in the Middle East and elsewhere. Some are zealots. Some are
realists. There are others that think them fools, idiots, or bit players.

This is America. It's a messy system, not so easily described by terms like
plutocracy or oligarchy or democracy or whatever.

But Joseph has a goof point. And obvious one to anyone who has studied
America's policies abroad and at home, and the two are linked in
significant ways: the US is fearful of democracy, as Chomsky points out, at
home and abroad.

But this is not news. Democracy is frightening to those who have an
interest in maintaining and increasing power, the multinationals, as
Chomsky says, for example, but far more important elements are fear
democracy, the establishment, the democractic party, the republicans....the
list in long (want a list?).

On Tue, Dec 22, 2015 at 4:03 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> well, the truth is ultimately credible no matter how much we disbelieve it.
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> > On Dec 21, 2015, at 9:07 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> >
> > It is not credible to me that Obama has supported the Arab spring. His
> support for the military in Egypt seems to bring that into question along
> with the silence about the crackdowns in Turkey, the general behavior of
> Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, India etc.. Please, Ishmalian, no long lectures
> about realpolitik and how naive I am to think that leaders can exhibit
> humane and democratic values.
> >
> > The
> >> On Dec 21, 2015, at 3:57 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Obama himself seemed to place (too much) hope in the unfolding of the
> >> spirit of the Arab Spring in Syria....
> >>
> >> On Mon, Dec 21, 2015 at 11:49 AM, Peter M. Fitzpatrick
> >> <petopoet at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>    Excellent, if not alarming, reporting on the quagmire. There are
> times,
> >>> (Tito, Saddam Hussein, and yes, Assad) seem to be "acceptable"
> dictators
> >>> that hold back the forces of civil war and massive bloodshed that
> follows
> >>> their removal. Always a deal with the devil, I guess, just a question
> of
> >>> which is worse, removal or letting them be. I think most Americans had
> vague
> >>> notions of another manifestation of the "Arab Spring" taking place in
> Syria
> >>> a few years ago, unaware of the Isil and other terroristic forces
> waiting to
> >>> fill in the vacuum and re-instate oppression with Wahhabi and worse
> >>> Islamism. Everything I read here only solidifies my opposition to what
> >>> Republican candidates are touting as the solution to Isil. We have been
> >>> drawn into these third world conflicts before, i.e. Viet Nam, only to
> pay a
> >>> high cost for little result.
> >>>
> >>> -Pete
> >>>
> >>>> On Sun, Dec 20, 2015 at 8:17 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> He's back.
> >>>>
> >>>> http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-military
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Sent from my iPad
> >>>> -
> >>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> >>>
> >>>
> >> -
> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> >
> > -
> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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