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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^ in the context of "intellectual elites" I thought it clearly meant those with the advanced level of education, money and opportunity that allows them to insulate themselves from social change., and that thse elites easily run ahead of the people they serve. Hence my point re the Euro.
I truly don't disagree with you that Iraq was a stupid and dangerous thing to do, and we bear some(!) responsibility for what followed (and indeed, many young boys from the Us and Uk paid the price of trying to hold back the violence that ensued). But since noone's advocated another reckless excursion like that, where do you go from here ? I'm genuinely open-minded about that, and very open to persuasion on it.
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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^Fair enough 
The nature of debate is tyrannical in the sense that it's linear (written especially), but our thinking on things is much more fluid. Hence, we can easily look further apart than we really are.
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^ Amen to that, matey. I'm off to Shanghai for a week or so, so you can have a quiet week, this week !
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| Wokko wrote: | Almost everything that went wrong can be laid at the feet of whoever decided it would be a good idea to disband the Iraqi army post war. It's those guys who ran the insurgency because there were no jobs for young Sunnis and being a fighter at least supported them and their families. Those same Sunnis are now fighting for IS in Iraq. Of course there would still be a jihadist movement and Islamist agitation I'm sure, but a trained, effective, happy Iraqi army would've gone a long way to preventing or stopping this kind of thing.
It's my biggest gripe with the whole Iraq conflict. To so easily win a war with so much local and international goodwill then throw it all away with such a ridiculous and obvious **** up still amazes me. It's not just hindsight either, there were plenty of commentators at the time just astounded at that decision. |
Yes, but it was really of a piece with the naivete and hubris of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush et al. Incredible, really.
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watt price tully 
Joined: 15 May 2007
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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I can't vouch for the accuracy of the details in this post, but it might be a vaguely sober place to start, particularly as anyone who is aware that discourse concerning "religion" is a useless vantage point from which to analyse any social phenomenon already has something going for him
| Bloke from the Uni of Arizona in the Middle East Policy Council wrote: | Don't think of the "Islamic State" in Religious Terms
COMMENTARY
Musa al-Gharbi
Al-Gharbi is an instructor in the School of Government and Public Service at the University of Arizona, affiliated with the Southwest Initiative for the Study of Middle East Conflicts (SISMEC). Readers can connect to his work and social media via his website: www.fiatsophia.org.
It is disingenuous to claim that ISIS is not Islamic, in part because there is no true and false Islam objectively accessible to human beings. Would-be Caliph Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadis interpretation may be far outside the mainstream contemporary or traditional approaches to Islam, but that doesnt make it un-Islamic. In fact, making these pejorative declarations about others faith (takfir) is a highly-controversial practice of ISIS, which it uses to justify the persecution of religious minorities. Mainstream Muslims would be emulating their error to declare numbers of ISIS non-Muslims by virtue of their fringe views.
Nonetheless, it is misleading to focus on the religion of ISIS; it implies that the group is organized around some well-worked-out theological system that most of ISIS members subscribe to, having joined the organization for primarily religious purposes. There is absolutely no evidence to substantiate these premises.
Most ISIS members are indigenous Iraqis and Syrians. This is significant; Al-Baghdadis belief system is heavily inspired by Salafism, a movement only endorsed by a small minority of Sunnis and concentrated mostly in the Persian Gulf and North Africa. The beliefs and practices that define salafism are not widely accepted in Iraq or Syria, regardless of sectarian affiliation. Al-Baghdadi is not widely viewed as a legitimate theologian, even in salafi circles. Most prominent salafi intellectuals have decried his caliphate as ill-conceived at best and heretical at worst. Even most jihadist theologians have dismissed Al-Baghdadi and his caliphate, calling on those who are ideologically drawn towards ISIS to defect to more respectable groups.
The sense in which Al-Baghdadi and ISIS have legitimacy among some Sunni of Iraq and Syria is as an opposition force to their respective governments (although the extent to which ISIS poses a threat to these governments is probably radically overstated). Their aspirations are local rather than global. Al-Baghdadis rhetoric notwithstanding, most ISIS recruits are not interested in some global or cosmic war.
While ISIS membership is exclusively Sunni, it is important to note that, within the Iraqi context, Sunni and Shia represent sociopolitical identities more than religious ones. The Sunni grievances against the government are not that it imposes Shia interpretations of sharia law, or otherwise interferes with Sunni religious practices. Instead, the Sunni are outraged by their political and economic disenfranchisement in Iraqs confessional political system (put in place by the United States) and the overbearing security apparatus that enforces it. One should be similarly wary of viewing the Syrian Sunni as homogeneous and as sympathetic towards ISIS. By the available evidence, most of them support the government, or, in any case, reject the armed opposition, including (perhaps especially) ISIS.
Rather than joining out of religious conviction, many recruits are driven to the organization for financial reasons. The economy of Syria has been decimated by the war, especially in the rebel-held areas, which receive little-to-no government assistance and are often under siege or assault. Many in the rural areas of Iraq are also in economic crisis and believe the central government is misusing the oil wealth of their own territories. ISIS exploits this desperation, offering superior wages for those who join, whether on a freelance or regular basis. In short, a good many ISIS fighters are essentially mercenaries rather than zealots.
But many ISIS staff are not fighters at all. As the organization expands and diversifies its enterprises and governance, a large and growing number of its members are tasked with administrative and industrial functions. Thus, not only do most indigenous ISIS members not join for the sake of jihad, many never even engage in the fighting, though they are reserves. This is why estimates claim ISIS can probably muster 20,000-31,000 fighters. This is not their active combat roster; it includes those serving other functions who could (theoretically) be called up to the front lines.
Exogenous ISIS recruits tend to be more fanatical than the indigenous ones and more focused on waging war, but even most of these are not driven primarily by religion. For those hailing from other parts of the Greater Middle East, they generally take up arms to fight against dictators, occupiers and their proxies. They have politicalgoals in mind. Others are in it for the money: ISIS pays foreign fighters $1,000 per month, a fortune for many from Africa or parts of the Mideast.
Western ISIS recruits are driven by a host of psycho-sociological factors, but religion does not seem to be the major one. Many join to be part of a group, to participate in some larger and successful cause, to make a difference and do something important. Others, because they seek cognitive closure and are thereby drawn to the straightforward ISIS good v. evil narrative. Many of them want to fight the system rather than purge infidels or pursue the political goals local Sunni are striving for. Still others are just thrill seekers, nihilists or psychopaths looking to dive into a bit of carnage. Many of these are not Muslims, nor do they or their families hail from Middle East. Others are recent converts who adopted Islam as an expression of their pre-existing support for ISIS, rather than supporting ISIS as a result of their religious beliefs.
It is clear that there is a problem with calling on Muslim leaders to denounce ISIS (which, for the record, they have done in droves). It presupposes that people inclined to join ISIS are devout, well-educated in Islam, seek out the opinions of these leaders and follow their advice. This is very far from reality. Two Arab-American youths, for example, were arrested trying to join ISIS in Syria. They had just purchased two books in preparation for their jihad: Islam for Dummies and The Koran for Dummies (there are similar stories in the UK). In a very telling recent poll, 16 percent of French citizens (27 percent of youth 18-24) seem to support ISIS. Now, as Muslims constitute just over 5 percent of Frances population, and French Muslims have been very vocal in opposing ISIS this means almost all of the respondents who indicated support for ISIS were not Muslims at all, (one sees similar trends in Europes growing anti-Semitism).
Understanding these realities, we can also see the glaring error in Obamas anti-ISIS strategy. It assumes that, for the sake of building a coalition among Sunnis, the people of Iraq and Syria will welcome the bombings and turn against ISIS. This kind of explicitly sectarian strategy will certainly do more harm than good. It will do nothing to endear America to the local populations, in part because the coalition is drawn from longstanding geopolitical adversaries of Iraqis and Syrians and is, moreover, composed almost entirely of repressive monarchies. Those who are sympathetic to ISIS would be more inclined to take up arms against these governments than partner with them against al-Daesh. In a further irony, it is these moderate Sunni allies who, themselves, are largely responsible for proliferating the very ideology from which ISIS is derived.
The idea of partnering with these powers to cultivate overtly Sunni militias as proxies in Syria is similarly ill-formed. It is based, once again, on the erroneous idea that people are joining ISIS and fighting Assad for primarily sectarian religious reasons (and also that empowering these sorts of proxies is effective almost never the case). By failing to understand the sources of the uprisings against the governments of Iraq and Syria or the appeal of ISIS, the Obama administrations problematic narratives and indefinite military campaign are likely to bolster its legitimacy both in the Mideast and abroad.
The media is complicit, insofar as it discusses ISIS primarily as a religious movement rather than a political one. It then ignorantly and condescendingly speculates ad infinitum about the merits of the groups supposed theological views in relation to those of the broader Muslim community. This provides oxygen to a dangerous distraction from more serious and well-formed questions about how to undermine and ultimately overcome ISIS. |
http://mepc.org/articles-commentary/commentary/dont-think-islamic-state-religious-terms
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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| NYDailyNews earlier this year wrote: | In Central America, women killed with impunity just because theyre women
'Femicide,' the crime of murdering females because of their gender, is a leading cause of death among young women in countries including El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. Machismo and impunity from prosecution are to blame. |
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/femicide-rise-central-america-article-1.1552233
Hang on, I didn't know Central America was Islamic...oh..whoops...I see.
Okay, I studied this in development geography in about half a dozen decidedly non-Muslim countries back in the early 1990s, so it's not like there's not enough information in the world to start forming a more complex picture of things.
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think positive 
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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I've always said, religion is just an excuse for terrorists or mad men to get away with blowing things up, in their endless hunger for power.
Like everything, it's how you read it. Comprehension is not an absolute, and Nicks sure as hell proves that.
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Jezza 
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| watt price tully wrote: | | David wrote: | Not sure you can blame Bush for Syria at all. That's an at least three way conflict between a ruthless government, Islamist groups and progressive revolutionaries, all of whom would have quite capably existed without US intervention in the region.
Iraq, however, and any further spread of IS? I blame that squarely on the "Coalition of the Drilling". |
Syria didn't occur in a vacuum. There may be significant intra Syrian factors of course but the neighbouring destabilisation / war In Iraq of course impacted on Syria. Islamist groups have taken various forms & have cross fertilised, split & re-formed. For me there's a definite role there.
The stupid Americans have unintentionally allowed the Shi'ites in Iran to prosper, develop & grow. They have had an instrumental role in the conflict in Syria. |
The Syrian conflict directly came about from the events of the Arab Spring in late 2010 which was also evident in other countries such as Egypt and Libya for example. The Arab Spring began in December 2010 and the Syrian conflict perpetuated and became a full-on Civil War in March 2011.
The West has had a little or no involvement in Syria and while the events of Iraq may have had a little impact on its conflict the root cause of it mainly originates within Syria from the Syrian government led by Al-Assad and his grave human rights abuses and oppression towards the Syrian people, especially towards Syrian Kurds and Sunni Muslims which has been existent in the country for many years.
Like Iraq, Syria is a country that has been in the midst of sectarian tension and this has been a major factor as to why the likes of ISIS are thriving not only in Iraq, but also in Syria in gaining territory and support amongst the radical Sunni populations who live in Northern Syria and Iraq, however I do believe that the emergence of ISIS has benefited Assad in a strange way because the Free Syrian Army have been struggling ever since this emergence occurred in the past six months to a year.
It's hard to determine what the aims and ideology of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) are but from we can see and them having alliances with groups like the Al-Nusra Front (a group with a well-known connections to other Islamic Sunni terrorist groups) and the Islamic Front, I think it's fair to establish that the FSA's aims is to be 'free' from Bashar Al-Assad, but whether that means they want a liberal democracy is another question all together. That's why I've been quite critical of the US' involvement in supplying arms to the Syrian rebels who are fighting Assad's forces and also ISIS surprisingly enough even though the FSA thought ISIS was fighting with them initially, rather than agains them as they soon found out.
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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^ I think the US are just trying to find the least worst option they can. Personally, I'd love to see some combination of secular leftist revolutionaries, capitalist neo-liberals and moderate Muslim democrats come out on top, but there's just not enough of them. Even if Assad falls and the Islamist groups are vanquished, there's no guarantee that Syria would end up as a functioning democracy.
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Jezza
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| David wrote: | | ^ I think the US are just trying to find the least worst option they can. Personally, I'd love to see some combination of secular leftist revolutionaries, capitalist neo-liberals and moderate Muslim democrats come out on top, but there's just not enough of them. Even if Assad falls and the Islamist groups are vanquished, there's no guarantee that Syria would end up as a functioning democracy. |
Sadly it'll either be a case of Assad or the Islamic extremist groups are left standing at the conclusion of this conflict whenever it may be. I can't see both of them being toppled in the one conflict.
Early indications suggest that Assad may remain standing and defiant as he still has heavy backing from many Shia muslims and his army hasn't been dismantled the way the rebels would have liked to have anticipated. Also the map below provides us with strong evidence to support the idea that the FSA has been greatly affected by the emergence of ISIS in the northern Syrian region.
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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Yeah, it's tough when you're fighting on two fronts. Must be some extraordinarily courageous people in Syria right now, but perhaps many more courageous dead.
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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^Indeed.
It's the same with all of these issues; once you lie to people and tell them "there's no money, and in any case the people who are asking for it are undeserving", they start playing zero-sum games in their heads: One more for them is one less for me.
And this, of course, is how most brain damaged psychopaths also view the world. Lacking the physical capacity to see other humans as worthy of a good life, psychopaths find no joy in the happiness of others; only loss to themselves.
As happened with the Iraq War, this brain damaged government has left zero good will and empathy in the social bank. Now, people won't engage the world unless there's something in it for them, like kickbacks from corrupt oil and security contracts which boost their investment funds. It's a pitiful and psychopathic psychology brewing in Australian society, and it started when some lowlife creep threw the first child overboard, trampling agreements put into place fifty years prior to stop refugees from being massacred because people thought helping them would be too costly.
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In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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watt price tully
Joined: 15 May 2007
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| Jezza wrote: | | watt price tully wrote: | | David wrote: | Not sure you can blame Bush for Syria at all. That's an at least three way conflict between a ruthless government, Islamist groups and progressive revolutionaries, all of whom would have quite capably existed without US intervention in the region.
Iraq, however, and any further spread of IS? I blame that squarely on the "Coalition of the Drilling". |
Syria didn't occur in a vacuum. There may be significant intra Syrian factors of course but the neighbouring destabilisation / war In Iraq of course impacted on Syria. Islamist groups have taken various forms & have cross fertilised, split & re-formed. For me there's a definite role there.
The stupid Americans have unintentionally allowed the Shi'ites in Iran to prosper, develop & grow. They have had an instrumental role in the conflict in Syria. |
The Syrian conflict directly came about from the events of the Arab Spring in late 2010 which was also evident in other countries such as Egypt and Libya for example. The Arab Spring began in December 2010 and the Syrian conflict perpetuated and became a full-on Civil War in March 2011.
The West has had a little or no involvement in Syria and while the events of Iraq may have had a little impact on its conflict the root cause of it mainly originates within Syria from the Syrian government led by Al-Assad and his grave human rights abuses and oppression towards the Syrian people, especially towards Syrian Kurds and Sunni Muslims which has been existent in the country for many years.
Like Iraq, Syria is a country that has been in the midst of sectarian tension and this has been a major factor as to why the likes of ISIS are thriving not only in Iraq, but also in Syria in gaining territory and support amongst the radical Sunni populations who live in Northern Syria and Iraq, however I do believe that the emergence of ISIS has benefited Assad in a strange way because the Free Syrian Army have been struggling ever since this emergence occurred in the past six months to a year.
It's hard to determine what the aims and ideology of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) are but from we can see and them having alliances with groups like the Al-Nusra Front (a group with a well-known connections to other Islamic Sunni terrorist groups) and the Islamic Front, I think it's fair to establish that the FSA's aims is to be 'free' from Bashar Al-Assad, but whether that means they want a liberal democracy is another question all together. That's why I've been quite critical of the US' involvement in supplying arms to the Syrian rebels who are fighting Assad's forces and also ISIS surprisingly enough even though the FSA thought ISIS was fighting with them initially, rather than agains them as they soon found out. |
Iranian Shi'ites are the biggest backers of Assad (as well as the Russians). Hezbollah (Iranian Shi'ite proxies in Lebanon) have thousands of troops in Syria fighting Al Nusra & now ISIS amongst others. That is why the conflict in Syria is inextricably linked to US actions in Iraq all those years ago.
The Arab spring was a symbolic impetus for taking on Assad. However their regime was just as murderous as it was under Assad's father.
The actions in Iraq by the US & others also assists Assad, Iran & Hezbollah.
Iran has now gained strategic control in a number of areas including parts of Yemen that is, areas surrounding their enemies in Saudi & the Emirates. Iran (it used to be Syria) controls large parts of Lebanon. What goes on in Lebanon only does so in the main with the permission of Iran (through their proxies - Hezbollah)
The Arab spring was always an illusion. Tunisia where it all began may turn out to be least worst outcome.
US & the coalition of the willing's actions back in George Dubya's time has had many unintended consequences.
I think there is a danger of explaining causation in Syria directly to the Arab Spring. It is in my view, too narrow an interpretation to say that Syria "occurred" because of the Arab spring. I think it is a part of the reason but by no means the only reason to explain the goings on.
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Jezza
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I generally agree with you WPT!
You are correct that the Iranian Shi'ites are the biggest backers of Assad, as both of them are of the same religious sect, albeit slightly differently as Assad is an Alawi Muslim which is a sub-section of the Shia Islamic sect.
Russia has also been assisting the Assad regime which you're also correct in saying, however this may be detrimental towards the Russians and Putin as ISIS have seized some military bases in the northern parts of Syria where Russia had supplied weaponry to Assad's forces. In turn, ISIS has made some threats toward the Russians, especially from Chechen ISIS fighters who show a great disdain toward Putin and the Russian government for the ongoing history between Russia and Chechnya. The question now remains is whether Putin will back off from Syria or if he will continue to assist Assad and the Syrian government. At the moment, the threats don't seem to concern him from what we can gather.
If we're talking directly speaking, then I can't conclude that the US or its allies is directly responsible for the escalation of a civil war in Syria, but I'm definitely open to the idea that the events of Iraq especially from 2003 may have created conditions for Syria to become the way it is today, but Assad's gross human right abuses towards certain citizens of his country and the ongoing sectarian problems that has hampered Syria for many years along with Iraq is one of the major causes of such a conflict.
The Arab Spring was a demonstration that resulted in the toppling of leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen and was clearly the thing that certain Syrian people were striving for with attempting to overthrow Assad who he and his family have been in power for generations. The FSA weren't founded until the mid-part of 2011 which was after the first battles and conflicts ignited in March 2011 in Syria following the Arab Spring which started in December 2010.
I think there are multiple reasons as to why this conflict has perpetuated and the US' involvement in Iraq is definitely one of those viable reasons on top of others which mostly consists of internal Syrian politics.
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