Middle East Thread of Despair: More Broken Than Syria

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Nonsense: Jan 26, 2007

Blue Footed Booby posted:

I never said it was an insightful post, I'm just tired of dumb "so you're saying ethnic cleansing is OK?!" posts. No, no one is saying that. Whatever dumb or pointless posts they make no one is saying that poo poo is good, so it'd be great if folks wouldn't start slap fights.

Actually yes they are sorry, you're wrong.

# ? Oct 25, 2014 20:11

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# ? May 18, 2024 19:36

woke wedding drone: Jun 1, 2003; by exmarx; Fun Shoe

I still like the Kurds, don't cleanse people though, you naughty Kurds.

# ? Oct 25, 2014 20:14

A big flaming stink: Apr 26, 2010

Rosscifer posted:

ISIS is enthusiastically promoting genocide everywhere. Saddam was just using a tiny fraction of the chemical weapons arsenal the US gave him. Different situations.

something to remember though, on a pure bodycount ISIS is leagues behind Saddam right now. And the casualties of the Iraq war, even! The reason Daesh is seen as so disproportionately monstrous compared to their objective actions is the fact they glorify and publicize every atrocity they commit. I think it was willie tomg that said they are making the world's most realistic war documentary.

This is not to minimize the harm they're doing because obviously even in the most leftist anti-imperialist analysis they're loving monstrous, but it is important to understand what exactly the American state and public are reacting to.

e: gently caress it, I'm just going to quote willie's effortpost. This is loving required reading for everyone in this thread

Willie Tomg posted:

trigger warning: i'm going to do something very dangerous for good ol' forumid=46 and talk about aesthetics and intertextuality in regards to explaining a PR campaign that is nakedly not targeted at the prototypical D&D poster, while also mentioning bad things the US did. I'm sure its a waste of breath to point out that I'm not saying nonstate actor X is justified because State Actor Y did bad stuff, but this is also a thread where a dude straight up said we should invade Turkey for Reasons and hasn't been drummed out yet so I'm not sure how serious y'all are being.

Americans in Iraq, with terrifyingly honest and good intentions, will slaughter a couple journalists and their entourage in cold blood, then beg for the chance to paste the good Samaritans who stop by to clean you off the street real quick.

ISIS, with terrifyingly honest and earnest intentions, will slaughter a couple journalists eye-to-eye in order to goad a superpower into doing something stupid in a place it doesn't understand and historically has a lot of trouble communicating to and within. Then they will kill three dudes in the street for smoking cigarettes while taking the lord's name in vain, again all in earnest. Earnesty is the key term there, coming off a decade of American occupation whose praxis can be conservatively described as "schizophrenic" where it can even be called "praxis".

This is juxtaposed against a peculiarly Victorian sensibility of Americans toward actual violence IRL considering the place violence occupies in our popular media, because let's be real here pretty much everyone wants to see these motherfuckers die. I'm a sexually flexibile leftist atheist feminist alcoholic, by rights I should be first in line baying for some goddamned salafi blood. But we, such as the Americans can be said to be a "we", cannot allow ourselves to enjoy it. Sure there are some risque photos and footage of questionable poo poo US soldiers do, but generally speaking for mainstream consumption the most vivd footage Americans see of war is a few carefully cut and curated pieces of stock footage where soldiers are firing into the horizon, maybe they're swearing, maybe a bomb goes off nearby, but mostly its dominated by the omnipresent grainy nightvision or IR footage with redacted timestamps. We'll get our blood from ISIS but it'll be mediated through a few kilometers and a digital optic, then through military censors, then through newsdesk editors, then through our TVs or computers. We'll blow you to bits with a TOW because your ideology doesn't jibe with our geopolitical vision, but we'll only celebrate your death in interlaced infrared SD. We'll assassinate Bin Laden, snap a deadpic, then dump him over the side of a ship. We'll capture Saddam and show off his dental exam for the world, but leave the retributive killing to those barbarous Shia. Anything more would be tasteless and brutal, you see.

Contrast this with the ISIS releases which, cumulatively, are already as a collaborative effort the most comprehensive and brutal war documentary ever made in the history of film. I wont presume to know your leanings, but the poo poo in ISIS vids is why antiwar sentiment exists, because the real brutality of the fighting isn't in the field engagements but the structural violence visited upon the population, and if you want to get utterly stone-cold blooded using High Rational Process, then in absolute terms just as the Iraq War was a fraction as tragic on all fronts as the Vietnam War, the invasion and occupation of ISIS for all its attempted genocide and excess is a fraction as deadly as the American invasion (albeit a fraction as comprehensive as well). The key difference is that ISIS records every single event that under American occupation would be brushed under the rug or delgated to proxies with SLR's and lens adapters shooting 1080p with a paper-thin depth of field, and then puts it on the internet. ISIS will not bullshit with "debaathificiation" in liquidating the local government should they prove uncooperative, they'll kill you and put it on the internet. ISIS will not dicker around rolling up 50 men on a block who may or may not be conducting insurgent activities and send them to Abu Ghraib for ~~torture~~questioning because good golly gosh we're just Troops trying our best to keep the peace, upon suspicion they will find you and shoot you in the street and dump your body in a pit marked on Google Earth for everyone's convenience and put it on the internet. There is no shame to ISIS, there is no guilt, there are no ablative layers of genteel "oh goodness, how tragic it came to this surely these repeated incidents are just a few bad apples which I probably wouldn't say if I knew the second half of that aphorism" that pervade martial discourse in the West in general and the States in particular for the purposes of this discussion. ISIS is there to establish a sharia government in a place and time where nobody wants them there, and chew bubblegum, and bubblegum is haraam and against Allah, sooooo...

We watch in judgement. We watch because in adopting a pro-sumer production value, ISIS has done something very very profound which is adopting the hallmarks of a Serious News Documentary Program which we are conditioned to take seriously, far more so than the public access clownshow that is Zawahiri's Al Qaeda, and we watch because it shows an aspect of war that we usually only hear secondhand. "Forces in Ukraine have entered city X, Y dead on both sides, Z civilians thought killed or missing" etc. Adopting that visual taxonomy does a whole world of things to your brain and virtually none of them occur on the level of rational thought process! I'm sure you've noticed at some point in the last few years that in the Internet Age it is far, FAR easier to lie or obfuscate than it is to debunk a lie or establish the truth. Because of this, ISIS' decision to bypass the rational and traffic almost entirely in well-produced images is a Big loving Deal, because it signals that they're actually quite well equipped for the contemporary era because like most successful corporations they bypass your cortex and grab you straight by the damned brainstem, your limbic brain. Both individuals and groups get really really loving malleable when a PR campaign starts prodding you on the levels of sexual/aggressive/fear/hunger/safety instinct. So we watch in judgement, these videos showing acts that either Americans have done or have accomplished through proxies and say "we need to kill the people doing this, or something, just do something other than nothing to these monsters".

And that is very sad because every time an American says that, Sayyid Qutb reassembles an approximate corpus in the backyard mass grave of an Egyptian black site and gives a big ol' thumbs up, because those actions are straight-up Jahiliyyah in his definition, validating his ideology and embodying the dissonance between our ideals and how quickly we discard those ideals not out of malice but because we simply don't know poo poo and act erratically yet reliably when presented with new information penetrating a fortress of stable geopolitical and cultural ignorance. There's some pretty salty language that applies to ISIS, but "ignorant" ain't one of the terms. ISIS knows exactly what it is, what its doing and what it's trying to do.

Obama has cheesed me off for various reasons irrelevant to the scope of this thread, but if there's an upshot to his administration its the almost perfunctory and transactional way he's addressing this challenge, trying to stifle the blaze of oxygen and trying to get the thing burnt out of its own accord. He's also tremendously unpopular for it with 75% of the country opposing either because he's killing too many people or too few, which means he's probably hit a nice middle ground of just enough murder for the occasion. But as if to prove on some cosmic level that even if there isn't a God the Universe undeniably has a sense of poetry to it, just as Obama's administration has now defined the literal policies of Ronald Reagan as unconstitutional and mandatory gay national socialism and shifting the terms of "acceptable narrative" accordingly, so has ISIS affected the conversation in the Middle East to be one of breaking at last the borders of their colonial period and realignment along broadly religious and (sort of but not really relatedly) cultural grounds. I sincerely doubt, with their penchant for martyrdom, that ISIS has any real staying power as a territory beyond occupying the negative space between other countries but if the success of a nonstate actor can be judged on their ability to affect discourse then ISIS is running the table with their PR right now.

---

Sorry if that post ranged on a bit, but a picture really is worth a thousand words and ISIS has shot over a thousand hours of footage in at least 720p30, and nearly all their words address the subconscious limbic brain so a conversation about their PR aesthetics in a forum predominated by (mostly) rational written text is going to get a little janky.

A big flaming stink fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Oct 25, 2014

# ? Oct 25, 2014 20:23

fade5: May 31, 2012; by exmarx

Adar posted:

If the mid-case outcome from supporting the Kurds is a slightly more religiously tolerant Libya-style tribal anarchy region and the mid-case from not doing it is literally mass crucifixions posted on Youtube, you know what, for once there's actually a greater evil and I'm okay with arbitrarily grading it as such.

This, exactly this. The Kurds have their own problems, but the fact that it was the Kurds who did a lot of the heavy lifting in rescuing the Yazidis, and the fact that said Yazidis are still alive and (relatively) safe in Kurdish territory shows that the Kurds are mostly willing to leave ethnic/religious minorities in their own territory alone. (Unlike ISIS.)

tekz posted:

How are things in Libya these days anyway?

Not all that great, honestly.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/10/libyas-benghazi-sees-battles-control-20141015175237264895.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/10/24/is-libya-a-proxy-war/
There's also quite a bit of interesting background fuckery: basically, the fighting in Libya is not just about Libya itself, it's also acting as a proxy war between Qatar and Egypt/the UAE with Qatar backing Islamist groups, Egypt and the UAE backing anti-Islamist groups, and Libyan government tying to limit the hostilities from becoming (another) full-blown civil war. Recently, what passes for the Libyan government has allied with Gen. Khalifa Hifter against the Islamists in Benghazi( :supaburn:

quote:

In May 2014, Hifter announced the launch of Operation Dignity, a coalition of eastern tribal militias, federalists and disaffected military units, which began shelling the positions of Ansar al-Sharia and Islamist militias in and around Benghazi. In both tone and action, Hifter tried to align himself early on with Egypt�s military regime, which has been fighting its own Islamists in Egypt. Hifter also directly called on Egypt to use �all necessary military actions inside Libya� to secure its borders. At the same time, he declared Operation Dignity to be aimed at preventing Islamists from threatening �our neighbors in Algeria and Egypt,� further emphasizing the regional aspect of his campaign. There were echoes of neo-Nasserism in his rhetoric. He claimed that he and Sisi agree that fighting terrorism is a way to �emphasize our Arab identity.� He pledged that he would not permit any anti-Egyptian militants to exploit Libya�s eastern border as a safe haven.
--
Ironically, Hifter�s anti-Islamist campaign in the east, while originally intended to reduce the threat to Egypt, may have actually heightened it. The campaign has compelled Islamist militias in Benghazi to combine their firepower into a single coalition, undermining the political space for the more pragmatic Islamist factions. It sparked a counter-mobilization in Tripoli, the so-called Operation Dawn, a coalition of militias from Misrata, Amazigh factions, western towns and Islamists. This coalition attacked Tripoli International Airport, which was controlled by Zintani militias allied with Hifter. Having seized the airport, certain Dawn factions have taken their campaign into the western Nafusa mountains, even reportedly going so far as to conduct airstrikes of their own on Zintan.

Even so, neither side in Libya is going around slicing people's heads off and indiscriminately slaughtering mass numbers of people deemed to be not on their "side". This isn't to say that the situation in Libya is good (it's pretty much a low-level civil war at this point), but if I was forced to choose, I'd sure as gently caress rather be dropped in Libya than in ISIS-controlled territory.

E: Ah, multiple giants walls of text on this page. Effortposting is what makes this thread still better than most ME discussion places. I mean that sincerely.

fade5 fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Oct 25, 2014

# ? Oct 25, 2014 20:47

Torpor: Oct 20, 2008; .. and now for my next trick, I'll pretend to be a political commentator...

HONK HONK

tekz posted:

Kurd cleansing of an arab village, reported by the Dutch government press.

Here's a lovely machine translation:

The Kurds were relocated out of towns and arabs were relocated to kurdish towns as a campaign of ethnic cleansing/dilution after the Kurds rebelled against Iraq seeking independence.

The town of Barzan is where the current KRG president, Barzani is from. Furthermore, Barzan is where the Kurd's historic hero, Mustafa(?) Barzani is from.

So, yeah, that is the ethnic dimension to this conflict; and the danger of supporting the Kurds.

War crimes happen in every war, so that is not in itself surprising. It will be more telling how the KRG government reacts to the allegations.

# ? Oct 25, 2014 20:59

Grem: Mar 29, 2004; It's how her species communicates

There's not a faction in Iraq that wouldn't resort to those kinds of actions. I guess we just side with whoever killed the least Americans and go from there.

# ? Oct 25, 2014 21:10

kustomkarkommando: Oct 22, 2012

Torpor posted:

The town of Barzan is where the current KRG president, Barzani is from. Furthermore, Barzan is where the Kurd's historic hero, Mustafa(?) Barzani is from.

Apparently there is another Barzan. I intially thought they must have got the name of the village wrong because the Barzani Barzan is way up in the mountains and very far from the front-lines.

This is apparently the Barzan in question. It's barely even marked on Google maps.

# ? Oct 25, 2014 21:12

Nonsense: Jan 26, 2007

Grem posted:

There's not a faction in Iraq that wouldn't resort to those kinds of actions. I guess we just side with whoever killed the least Americans and go from there.

This is highly accurate, and day-to-day one doesn't really consider the plight of the people on the ground who have to live with the consequences of these actions. The Kurds aren't angels, but I bet they're pretty mad they've been poo poo on for a century, and now Uncle Sam is *respectfully nodding towards them*.

# ? Oct 25, 2014 21:27

Horseshoe theory: Mar 7, 2005

Nonsense posted:

This is highly accurate, and day-to-day one doesn't really consider the plight of the people on the ground who have to live with the consequences of these actions. The Kurds aren't angels, but I bet they're pretty mad they've been poo poo on for a century, and now Uncle Sam is *respectfully nodding towards them*.

What can go wrong? :shrug:

*ignores Israel*

# ? Oct 25, 2014 21:31

Spoke Lee: Dec 31, 2004; chairizard lol

CharlestheHammer posted:

That is the case for whatever the outcome, the only difference is who it is going to happen too.

Though that statement was more towards Vernii and his wallowing in the crimes committed by the kurds.

Trying to pretend there is some good guy (or less evil its the same thing) is the most sanctimonious thing possible so don't get high and mighty with me.

The Kurds/Iraq are going to eradicate all fighting age Sunnis and sell their women and children into sexual slavery if they repel ISIL?

That Stalin was a sack of poo poo doesn't make an alliance against Germany a bad move. Even the status quo is probably better for everyone in the region than ISIL controlling Iraq and establishing a state.

It's not sanctimony to point out that intervention has a possibility of negative outcomes, but doing nothing has a definite negative outcome in extinction of cultures and slavery.

# ? Oct 25, 2014 21:40

CharlestheHammer: Jun 26, 2011; YOU SAY MY POSTS ARE THE RAVINGS OF THE DUMBEST PERSON ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH BUT YOU YOURSELF ARE READING THEM. CURIOUS!

Spoke Lee posted:

The Kurds/Iraq are going to eradicate all fighting age Sunnis and sell their women and children into sexual slavery if they repel ISIL?

Maybe, Arabs for sure within Kurdish territory.

# ? Oct 25, 2014 21:46

fade5: May 31, 2012; by exmarx

ThirdPartyView posted:

What can go wrong? *ignores Israel*

Nah, the Kurds aren't need to literally kickstart the apocalypse, and the US has already proved that it won't unconditionally support the Kurds no matter what (we already left them out to dry at least once in 1970's). We also aren't giving the Kurds any where near the level of aid, weapons, and money we routinely give to Israel, although that may start to change the longer the fight against Daesh drags on.

Also, the Kurds legitimately like us (amazingly enough):
http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/grateful-for-us-strikes-syrian-kurds-name-baby-obama-611617

quote:

Sultan Muslim, a Syrian Kurd, had no doubt what to name her seventh child when he was born, safely in Turkey, after a harrowing month-long flight from her home in Kobane: Obama. Desperate to flee the flashpoint Syrian border town, the heavily pregnant mother, her husband and six other children made it across the frontier just in time for the boy's arrival.
--
"I gave my son this name from my heart. I will never change this name," the shy 35-year-old said in a refugee camp in Suruc, just inside Turkey. "He dispatched planes, aid for us. Because of his help maybe we will get rid of this cruelty and get back to our homes," she said, cradling her three-day-old son.

The family started their exodus almost a month ago, following some 200,000 Kurds who have already entered Turkey to escape the IS onslaught on Kobane. "We were stranded at the border for days, without water or food," said the young mother. "We did not take any clothes to wear. We did not have any blankets ... I was pregnant and had no chance of taking a bath." Though not the world's first baby named after US President Barack Obama, the choice reflects the relief of many locals who thought help would never come.
--
Near Suruc, both Turkish and Syrian Kurds watch from hilltops, breaking out in cheers, whistles and chanting, "Obama, Obama" at each airstrike. "Like the Americans, the whole world should help the Kurds in Kobane. We have no true friends other than the Americans," said Selami Altay, a Turkish Kurd, sitting on a rock watching the battles.

That type of real support for the US is nearly impossible to find in the Middle East, the last time I can think that the US had that kind of popular support is ... Libya.

Well, I did just say that I'd rather be dropped into Libya than ISIS-controlled territory a little while ago. :colbert:

# ? Oct 25, 2014 21:58

Torpor: Oct 20, 2008; .. and now for my next trick, I'll pretend to be a political commentator...

HONK HONK

fade5 posted:

Nah, the Kurds aren't need to literally kickstart the apocalypse, and the US has already proved that it won't unconditionally support the Kurds no matter what (we already left them out to dry at least once in 1970's). We also aren't giving the Kurds any where near the level of aid, weapons, and money we routinely give to Israel, although that may start to change the longer the fight against Daesh drags on.

Also, the Kurds legitimately like us (amazingly enough):
http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/grateful-for-us-strikes-syrian-kurds-name-baby-obama-611617

That type of real support for the US is nearly impossible to find in the Middle East, the last time I can think that the US had that kind of popular support is ... Libya.

Well, I did just say that I'd rather be dropped into Libya than ISIS-controlled territory a little while ago.

Are there any western reports about what happened in barzan?

Edit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxgIR4LhLAU
]

Torpor fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Oct 25, 2014

# ? Oct 25, 2014 22:15

woke wedding drone: Jun 1, 2003; by exmarx; Fun Shoe

See what would be a brilliant move is for the KRG to do a thorough investigation and put some people in prison. It's not like the kurds don't have lobbyists, they need to put Howard Dean on the Sunday circuit (he'd as gladly take money from them as he would from MEK) talking about how "the Kurdish government deplores this brutal savagery" and put a guy on trial, William Calley poo poo. Then pressure the administration behind closed doors.

# ? Oct 25, 2014 22:34

Cat Mattress: Jul 14, 2012; by Cyrano4747

kustomkarkommando posted:

The Dutch one is the first substantial claim I've seen, I've seen some piecemeal tweets/dodgy reports focusing on reprisals targeting Sunni's in Saladin province (where the Peshmerga have joint control with Shia militias which makes accusing the Peshmerga directly a bit harder, Reuters did a piece on this and firmly pointed the finger at the Shia militias) and some un-sourced claims about reprisals in Nineveh as well.

There have been some very detailed reports done on the dodgy situation in Makhmour and Gwer were the Peshmerga have been accused of blocking the return of Arab refugees, with some accusing them of conducting an indirect campaign of ethnic cleansing (the pesh insist it is for security purposes):

http://projects.aljazeera.com/2014/green-mosque-road/

https://news.vice.com/article/we-will-kill-them-as-soon-as-the-cameras-arent-here-anti-arab-sentiment-on-rise-in-iraqi-kurdistan

The way I read his "we will kill them as soon as the cameras aren't here", all we gotta do is send hundreds of journalists over there.

# ? Oct 25, 2014 23:08

Cole: Nov 24, 2004; DUNSON'D

A big flaming stink posted:

something to remember though, on a pure bodycount ISIS is leagues behind Saddam right now. And the casualties of the Iraq war, even! The reason Daesh is seen as so disproportionately monstrous compared to their objective actions is the fact they glorify and publicize every atrocity they commit. I think it was willie tomg that said they are making the world's most realistic war documentary.

This is not to minimize the harm they're doing because obviously even in the most leftist anti-imperialist analysis they're loving monstrous, but it is important to understand what exactly the American state and public are reacting to.

e: gently caress it, I'm just going to quote willie's effortpost. This is loving required reading for everyone in this thread

Sorry but anyone who says "because the real brutality of the fighting isn't in the field engagements but the structural violence visited upon the population" and believes it is an idiot.

# ? Oct 25, 2014 23:55

Phlegmish: Jul 2, 2011

CharlestheHammer posted:

Maybe, Arabs for sure within Kurdish territory.

What the gently caress. You do realize there are already plenty of Arabs living under Kurdish administration?

# ? Oct 26, 2014 00:09

Snipee: Mar 27, 2010

One of my good friends is Kurdish, and from what I know about his community, they are still impressively tolerant despite all of the bullshit that happened to them. The dehumanization of daesh among Kurdish people still in the Middle East is almost inevitable; I cannot imagine the West acting any differently if we were in their position.

# ? Oct 26, 2014 00:53

Volkerball: Oct 15, 2009; by FactsAreUseless

Phlegmish posted:

What the gently caress. You do realize there are already plenty of Arabs living under Kurdish administration?

This thread is really fond of taking a quote from one guy and using it to cite the claim that everyone in that guys ideological group is a genocidal maniac. Fully expecting the new narrative to become that the Kurds are terrible, awful cannibals who we can't support without enabling a genocide. So we'll twiddle our thumbs while ISIS overruns them because that's the moral thing to do you see.

# ? Oct 26, 2014 01:44

ascendance: Feb 19, 2013

Absurd Alhazred posted:

They killed less than 2000 civilians?!

I think some of the estimates have it around that many.

# ? Oct 26, 2014 01:47

Dilkington: Aug 6, 2010; "Al mio amore Dilkington, Gennaro"

V. Illych L. posted:

Yeah, the Kurds are going to be committing atrocities as well. The big difference is that the Kurdish strategic objectives are not, you know, inherently hostile to civilisation and life. ISIL's mostly are.

It�s not clear to me how this is true. Both groups will engage in ethnic cleansing to carve out their enclaves. What does it mean to be �inherently hostile to civilisation and life?� Emphasis on �inherently.�

ReV VAdAUL posted:

I'm not sure why you are unable to grasp the fact that IS are attractive to disgruntled young Muslim men across the world because recent events have shown there is no alternative.

But leftism, just like liberal capitalism, cannot by itself provide disenchanted young men with �struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flag and loyalty-parades.� It is why so many leftist movements must ultimately dilute themselves with populist-nationalist elements- as true today with Chavismo as it was in Stalin�s time

It�s a comforting myth that western modernists would win out against political Islam if only they were on an even playing field- the tautology: �if leftism was stronger than radical Islam, it would displace radical Islam.� Closely related is the idea that political Islam hasn�t also been subjected to brutal repression by Soviet/US backed governments. SAVAK infiltrated mosques and prayer meetings just as it did National Front tea sessions.

Political Islam has repeatedly displaced and subsumed leftist or liberal movements because it achieves reliable mass support - this is in part because it can present itself as more authentically anti-imperialist, but also because it can subsume competing revolutionary ideologies while keeping them subservient; the same can't be said for westernized leftist/liberal vanguards.

Consider the example of Iran.

Khomeini outmaneuvered the anti-imperial left by taking the embassy and publicly calling the siege of Mecca a false flag operation by the USA. He blamed acts of anti-government terrorism on SAVAK. Most importantly, he contextualized the people�s struggle as having continuity with Shia national and religious myth: the men, women, and children tortured or shot in the streets were martyrs after the followers of Al-Husayn ibn Ali, and the shah a modern Yazid (no relation to the Yazidis), the legendary rassenfeind. How can Marx or Liberalism compete with something like the Karbala narrative, that charges your thoughts and actions with divine significance?

I�ll also post my emotional and mostly facetious response to another modernist:

quote:

Historical materialism does not explain how revolutionary Islam "transforms thousands of forms of discontent, hatred, misery, and despairs into a force." It is such a mean and tawdry orientalism, how Western modernists attempt to explain away the dynamism and creativity of political spiritual with their venal, squalid meta-narratives. It's why in his work Shariati had to so thoroughly butcher the corpse of Marxism before it became palatable.

e:typos

Dilkington fucked around with this message at 02:46 on Oct 26, 2014

# ? Oct 26, 2014 02:44

CharlestheHammer: Jun 26, 2011; YOU SAY MY POSTS ARE THE RAVINGS OF THE DUMBEST PERSON ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH BUT YOU YOURSELF ARE READING THEM. CURIOUS!

Phlegmish posted:

What the gently caress. You do realize there are already plenty of Arabs living under Kurdish administration?

I am aware of this yeah. Doesn't impact my point all that much.

# ? Oct 26, 2014 04:23

Armani: Jun 22, 2008; Now it's been 17 summers since I've seen my mother

But every night I see her smile inside my dreams

Cole posted:

Sorry but anyone who says "because the real brutality of the fighting isn't in the field engagements but the structural violence visited upon the population" and believes it is an idiot.

Am I reading your post right? Direct combat is worse than the systematic oppression of the population that follows it?

I don't think it's an either/or situation - it's all really loving bad.

# ? Oct 26, 2014 04:48

Cole: Nov 24, 2004; DUNSON'D

Armani posted:

Am I reading your post right? Direct combat is worse than the systematic oppression of the population that follows it?

That's a really unfair question to certain people.

# ? Oct 26, 2014 04:56

Willie Tomg: Feb 2, 2006

Cole posted:

That's a really unfair question to certain people.

Go on.

# ? Oct 26, 2014 05:05

FourLeaf: Dec 2, 2011

Really sad article in the NYT about torments ISIS hostages experienced, including James Foley before he was beheaded.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/world/middleeast/horror-before-the-beheadings-what-isis-hostages-endured-in-syria.html

# ? Oct 26, 2014 06:40

Volkerball: Oct 15, 2009; by FactsAreUseless

CharlestheHammer posted:

I am aware of this yeah. Doesn't impact my point all that much.

Neither does one guy getting real mad and saying something he shouldn't have FYI.

# ? Oct 26, 2014 06:45

Atomizer: Jun 24, 2007

Willie Tomg posted:

For a dude who came into the thread like, last week, and admitted he didn't know what gently caress was going on in posts that have on average contained eight emoticons, you have very quickly and comfortably decided that the one thing the US should have been doing all along was backing the good ethnics in a thousand-sided bloodbath taking place in the ruins of two secular governments all located between Israel, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.

poo poo, homie, you cracked the code! We gotta back the paramilitaries we like instead of the ones we don't! Why didn't the USA think of this ever before in literally any of its many, many, many proxy actions since the Monroe Doctrine?!

Except that's not what I said or implied. I mean, you can interpret what I've written however you want, I don't give a poo poo.

# ? Oct 26, 2014 07:16

TheOtherContraGuy: Jul 4, 2007; brave skeleton sacrifice

Cole posted:

Sorry but anyone who says "because the real brutality of the fighting isn't in the field engagements but the structural violence visited upon the population" and believes it is an idiot.

?

Conquered civilians that need to be "pacified" have accounted for the majority of deaths in pretty much every war since the beginning of time.

# ? Oct 26, 2014 07:42

ascendance: Feb 19, 2013

Cole posted:

Sorry but anyone who says "because the real brutality of the fighting isn't in the field engagements but the structural violence visited upon the population" and believes it is an idiot.

Most people (civilians mostly, but this totally applies to the military in some situations) in wars dont die because of combat. Most people die because the powers out, the waters out, and the networks that provide the necessities of life they need have been so disrupted that they starve or die of what would normally be controlled diseases. I think this is the type of structural violence the author meant.

This has been true in most wars throughout history, starting from when the first cavemen got murdered, and their kids starved to death as a result. Also true of the US in Iraq.

# ? Oct 26, 2014 07:48

Zedsdeadbaby: Jun 14, 2008; You have been called out, in the ways of old.

Nuke everyone in the Middle East. No people, no problem. No people, no obligation to send billions of dollars in aid.

The smoking gun is a mushroom cloud.

# ? Oct 26, 2014 08:04

My Imaginary GF: Jul 17, 2005; by R. Guyovich

Zedsdeadbaby posted:

Nuke everyone in the Middle East. No people, no problem. No people, no obligation to send billions of dollars in aid.

The problem with this suggestion is that the definitions of "everyone" and "in the Middle East" become extremely political, extremely fast.

# ? Oct 26, 2014 08:05

Zedsdeadbaby: Jun 14, 2008; You have been called out, in the ways of old.

My Imaginary GF posted:

The problem with this suggestion is that the definitions of "everyone" and "in the Middle East" become extremely political, extremely fast.

I thought the problem would be the hundreds of millions dead, but let's go with that.

# ? Oct 26, 2014 08:06

The Insect Court: Nov 22, 2012; by FactsAreUseless

Cole posted:

Sorry but anyone who says "because the real brutality of the fighting isn't in the field engagements but the structural violence visited upon the population" and believes it is an idiot.

You'd think that the idiotic and facile notion that any locus of resistance to the West should be romanticized as anti-colonialist freedom fighters would have met its match with ISIS, but I guess not. Although if we're being generous it's not always an outright defense as much as it is a shrug of indifference and "let the brutes exterminate one another", usually sandwiched between the same tired old diatribes.

ascendance posted:

Edit: Or, say, compared to the number of people killed by Israel in their last Gaza campaign.

Laffo to the max. What's the multiplier on civilian lives snuffed out by ISIS, instead of the IDF? 0.1? 0.01? :peanut:

# ? Oct 26, 2014 08:08

My Imaginary GF: Jul 17, 2005; by R. Guyovich

Zedsdeadbaby posted:

I thought the problem would be the hundreds of millions dead, but let's go with that.

Hundreds of millions? I see you're for a very broad definition of "everyone" and the colonial understanding of "Middle East."

# ? Oct 26, 2014 08:09

Golbez: Oct 9, 2002; 1 2 3!
If you want to take a shot at me get in line, line
1 2 3!
Baby, I've had all my shots and I'm fine

My Imaginary GF posted:

Hundreds of millions? I see you're for a very broad definition of "everyone" and the colonial understanding of "Middle East."

The countries of the peninsula alone are 70 million. Syria, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon, which are unambiguously Middle East, bumps that to over 100 million. Iran and Iraq? Another hundred million. Egypt? Eighty. Turkey? Eighty.

Even based on a rather narrow definition (let's keep Turkey and Egypt out of it for fun) you're still looking at over two hundred million people.

# ? Oct 26, 2014 08:47

TheImmigrant: Jan 18, 2011

Anyone here an Emirates expert? I've been here for close to a week scouting for clients, and think I could live here well and happily. Very easy visa policy, great location and beaches, lots of opportunities. My shallow understanding suggests that it's pretty stable. Any threats on the horizon?

Zedsdeadbaby posted:

Nuke everyone in the Middle East. No people, no problem. No people, no obligation to send billions of dollars in aid.

The smoking gun is a mushroom cloud.

I'm in the Middle East. I oppose this idea.

# ? Oct 26, 2014 09:00

My Imaginary GF: Jul 17, 2005; by R. Guyovich

TheImmigrant posted:

Anyone here an Emirates expert? I've been here for close to a week scouting for clients, and think I could live here well and happily. Very easy visa policy, great location and beaches, lots of opportunities. My shallow understanding suggests that it's pretty stable. Any threats on the horizon?

Serious answer: Ebola, if this West African outbreak cannot be contained by December 15.

How do you think the Emirates healthcare system would respond to an Indian expat returning and developing symptoms while waiting for their connecting flight? How would the Emirates handle a disease outbreak in their migrant worker population? If Saudi experience is anything to go by, "very poorly."

# ? Oct 26, 2014 09:03

Absurd Alhazred: Mar 27, 2010; by Athanatos

TheImmigrant posted:

Anyone here an Emirates expert? I've been here for close to a week scouting for clients, and think I could live here well and happily. Very easy visa policy, great location and beaches, lots of opportunities. My shallow understanding suggests that it's pretty stable. Any threats on the horizon?

You may not want to share your virulently pro-Israeli views with the locals, even under the influence. Just a thought.

# ? Oct 26, 2014 09:06

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# ? May 18, 2024 19:36

Sergg: Sep 19, 2005; I was rejected by the:

TheImmigrant posted:

Anyone here an Emirates expert? I've been here for close to a week scouting for clients, and think I could live here well and happily. Very easy visa policy, great location and beaches, lots of opportunities. My shallow understanding suggests that it's pretty stable. Any threats on the horizon?

It'll be fine. ISIS would have to march over the dead bodies of millions and millions of Shia before it even gets to the Saudi border.

# ? Oct 26, 2014 09:16

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Middle East Thread of Despair: More Broken Than Syria

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