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

[Joseph Tracy]

I Would think simple revenge also has to be part of the draw, both in Europe and in the gulf.  To be celebrated for an heroic assault on the Western Empire even among ISIS or other Salafists.  It is a mistake to think this appeal of an uneasily falsifiable group identity is unique to Islamic groups. The bullshit about defending America( Britain, Canada, France) getting revenge still works to send many to battle in places that pose no threat to them. The peer pressure among US troops has lead to killing for sport, cutting off body parts for trophies and lying to cover rape.
   There is a hunger for a heroic identity that seems to be part of human culture and needs to be met with other roles than killer, propagandist for….The entire gist of my contentions in these matters is that it is not enough to identify the false heroism of other groups, we must make it clear within our own culture how false is the allure of war and fear-based cultural conformity. If that deconstruction is not a central part of the power of V, GR, ATD, VL, in T Pynchon’s work, then I have clearly missed much.




Dec 22, 2015, at 7:03 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote
> 
> 
> 
> > How do you explain the fascination that a completely barbaric and savage organization like the Islamic State holds for many young Muslim people living in Europe?
> 
> There has been a good deal of careful study of the phenomenon, by Scott Atran among others. The appeal seems to be primarily among young people who live under conditions of repression and humiliation, with little hope and little opportunity, and who seek some goal in life that offers dignity and self-realization; in this case, establishing a utopian Islamic state rising in oppotake to sition to centuries of subjugation and destruction by Western imperial power. In addition, there appears to be a good deal of peer pressure - members of the same soccer club, and so on. The sharply sectarian nature of the regional conflicts no doubt is also a factor - not just "defending Islam" but defending it from Shiite apostates. It's a very ugly and dangerous scene. <
> 
> This is not wrong but incomplete. For many young Muslim people living in Europe, among them also converts, fundamentalism is a powerful pop culture. Jihad is the new cool! And that's a big problem. 
> 
> 
> On 22.12.2015 12:23, ish mailian wrote:
>> 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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