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

[ish mailian]

The Empire of Chaos: An Interview With Noam Chomsky
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/33519-the-empire-of-chaos-an-interview-with-noam-chomsky

On Tue, Dec 22, 2015 at 6:18 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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