Syria

[Park Life 70]

Fuck me you sexy bitch.

 

Bear in mind she called it back in 2012

 

Edited November 22, 2015 by Park Life

[ChezGiven 0]

I dont think anyone's really debating the morality of the people behind the Paris attacks. You're naive to think if there's no connection with foreign policy though. And of course the fact there is is still morally wrong. Noone is debating that either. If France tomorrow killed all Syrians but one and the remaining one Syrian killed one innocent Frenchman in revenge, I'd still call it wrong because that one person was innocent.

 

Which is why your writing off of so many innocent people in the conflicts mentioned is so fascinating to me, especially in the light of this moral high ground. You think its morally corrupt to avenge foreign policy grievances by killing innocents (which I agree with), yet in turn reacting to such actions by going on and killing more innocents (thousands and thousands more as history has shown) is something you write off as mistakes or war crimes. Its contradictory and hypocritical to me. Then again I do not possess a fair western and rational mind!

 

Yeah you keep pointing at intent. Bombing some place which has been designated as a hospital and for which you've expressly been provided coordinates is as intent as its gets. Its no accident in a war zone ffs. (not that those are justifiable either but anyway). If you dont get that then lets just disagree.

We are debating the morality of the attacks because you and many others on here have sought to lay blame for those attacks on the behaviour of the previous actions of other governments!! Not the French government either. Your propaganda riddled media (and let's face it, it's just less sophisticated elsewhere in the world) has done an equally effective job on you.

 

The response by many on here has been disgusting and can only be explained by exposure so certain media. The French have been attacked by radical Islam 4 times this year and it has nothing to do with its minimal and recent involvement in Syria.

 

I am not writing off the actions of America or war crimes, I am telling you that morally you can't justify the attacks on the French people or government due to the mistakes or actions of the Americans. You are saying you can. It's a propaganda driven load of shite and a line you wouldn't dare utter to any Frenchman who was in Paris last week.

 

I am further saying that the acts of the terrorists in Paris are morally repugnant because of their intent, their consequences and their nature (drawing upon all schools of ethics there). You can only use the actions of the French in Syria to draw comparison to the acts of the terrorists. Drawing upon war crimes of other countries from the past is irrelevant to how we should view these acts. Unless of course you've swallowed the idea of the 'west' and 'Rome' all being part of one big evil empire?

 

The security council at the UN agrees with my moral assessment - this is not about superiority, it's about assessment of how to respond. If there was some human justification, then perhaps we'd be using more diplomatic language.

 

"The UN security council has backed a French-sponsored resolution designed to combat by all means this unprecedented threat, saying IS constitutes a global and unprecedented threat to international peace and security

[Park Life 70]

The UN is bought and paid for.

 

French are the foreign policy donkeys of the planet from Morocco, Libya, Tunisia to greater Africa.

Edited November 22, 2015 by Park Life

[ChezGiven 0]

"IS represents an unprecedented threat to global peace and security"!!

 

So for all of you struggling here, why no resolution being proposed that the French do too?

[ChezGiven 0]

The UN is bought and paid for.

 

French are the foreign policy donkeys of the planet from Morocco, Libya, Tunisia to greater Africa.

Drivel.

[Park Life 70]

Cause IS is nothing more than a regional threat with some tactical reach to disenfranchised Muslim communities in the West.

[Park Life 70]

Drivel.

One thing you've proved (Mr 6 weeks) is that you have absolutely no clue what is happening in Syria and I notice no real interest in it.

 

The French elite have been screeching for the overthrow of Assad since 2011.

 

They along with NATO want Syria divided into 3 parts and they fantasize they might have some neo-colonial reach in the matter.

 

America was talking about getting rid of Assad back in 2006!! Before there was any kind of 'uprising'.

 

The plan is to isolate Iran. Cheney and Wolfowitz talked about it in 2003 and published the PNAC document.

 

The French elite are clueless lapdogs of American hegemony and traitors to the state.

Edited November 22, 2015 by Park Life

[ChezGiven 0]

By claiming the UN Security Council is bought and paid for you demonstrate no real interest in reality.

 

Prove the date for air strikes wrong rather than posturing like a imam in a tutu.

[ChezGiven 0]

Diplomatically backing Assad's departure = executing innocent people then?

 

Thanks.

[Park Life 70]

You know nothing about Syria.

[Park Life 70]

By claiming the UN Security Council is bought and paid for you demonstrate no real interest in reality.

 

Prove the date for air strikes wrong rather than posturing like a imam in a tutu.

I know why you want to only talk about airstrikes. I'm talking about Frances disregard for Libyan sovereignty and Syrian sovereignty. How they are a central part of the merry NATO bandwagon and screeching from the front whenever they can. Not the French people but the leaders and especially Sarkozy. Look up the facts. If we are to deal with Isis successfully than we have to do it from a position of self-awareness and self-actualization. We have to admit to ourselves our part in its creation and armed with proper knowledge and inclusiveness of all parts of our communities set out our stall to rid Isis from the arena.

 

The debate is lensed to continue duplicity - the huge arms sales to Gulf states by France the scratching around for oil and gas concessions and reliance on Gulf money to prop up our banks and stock market.

These are the levers that need to be addressed. Beating Isis is piece of piss but there has been a strange reluctance to do so since 2012.

 

If Syria falls to radical Islam then you'll fucking know about it cause then there will be a real and sustained progression to their mad and barbaric schemes.

 

If we don't get nuked by Russia first.

 

You need a bit of critical distance from your French mates.

 

Believe me I'm angrier than you are cause I was talking about all this happening 10 years ago.

 

There is also now the real danger that the Front National will win in 2017.

Edited November 22, 2015 by Park Life

[aimaad22 3414]

I am telling you that morally you can't justify the attacks on the French people or government due to the mistakes or actions of the Americans. You are saying you can.

 

I said: "If France tomorrow killed all Syrians but one and the remaining one Syrian killed one innocent Frenchman in revenge, I'd still call it wrong because that one person was innocent."

 

So umm, no, I've not been justifying anything. You clearly havent even been listening. This uncivilized voice is apparently unable to reach the fair western and rational mind at its mighty heights! The other conflicts were mentioned not in light of Paris but because of your rather disturbing writing off of 'less civilized' human life and the insistence that they're all mistakes. Makes your ramblings about media propaganda all the more amusing. You're as influenced by Murdoch as anyone Ive met.

 

What I find disgusting is your justification of thousands of dead innocents in the name of collateral damage. I'd like to see you say that to the face of one of the grieving families.

 

We can continue to disagree about everything else but at the very least I thought you would have the decency to not make up this assumption that Im in some way trying to justify the Paris attacks or the morality of those behind them. Its pathetic to be honest. If this is what you've derived from what I've been saying then I guess I ought not be surprised by anything else you've been saying.

[aimaad22 3414]

I know why you want to only talk about airstrikes. I'm talking about Frances disregard for Libyan sovereignty and Syrian sovereignty. How they are a central part of the merry NATO bandwagon and screeching from the front whenever they can. Not the French people but the leaders and especially Sarkozy. Look up the facts. If we are to deal with Isis successfully than we have to do it from a position of self-awareness and self-actualization. We have to admit to ourselves our part in its creation and armed with proper knowledge and inclusiveness of all parts of our communities set out our stall to rid Isis from the arena.

 

The debate is lensed to continue duplicity - the huge arms sales to Gulf states by France the scratching around for oil and gas concessions and reliance on Gulf money to prop up our banks and stock market.

These are the levers that need to be addressed. Beating Isis is piece of piss but there has been a strange reluctance to do so since 2012.

 

If Syria falls to radical Islam then you'll fucking know about it cause then there will be a real and sustained progression to their mad and barbaric schemes.

 

If we don't get nuked by Russia first.

 

You need a bit of critical distance from your French mates.

 

Believe me I'm angrier than you are cause I was talking about all this happening 10 years ago.

 

There is also now the real danger that the Front National will win in 2017.

 

Here's the perfect response. More support for the most undemocratic, tyrant, extremist regime on the planet. More evidence of fine Western values.

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/francois-hollandes-war-with-isis-wont-stand-in-the-way-of-frances-arms-deals-with-saudi-arabia-a6738546.html

Edited November 22, 2015 by aimaad22

[Dr Gloom 19717]

 

I said: "If France tomorrow killed all Syrians but one and the remaining one Syrian killed one innocent Frenchman in revenge, I'd still call it wrong because that one person was innocent."

 

So umm, no, I've not been justifying anything. You clearly havent even been listening. This uncivilized voice is apparently unable to reach the fair western and rational mind at its mighty heights! The other conflicts were mentioned not in light of Paris but because of your rather disturbing writing off of 'less civilized' human life and the insistence that they're all mistakes. Makes your ramblings about media propaganda all the more amusing. You're as influenced by Murdoch as anyone Ive met.

 

What I find disgusting is your justification of thousands of dead innocents in the name of collateral damage. I'd like to see you say that to the face of one of the grieving families.

 

We can continue to disagree about everything else but at the very least I thought you would have the decency to not make up this assumption that Im in some way trying to justify the Paris attacks or the morality of those behind them. Its pathetic to be honest. If this is what you've derived from what I've been saying then I guess I ought not be surprised by anything else you've been saying.

Are you saying then that all war is immoral then because of the inevitable civilian casualties?

 

Wasn't fighting the war against nazi Germany the right thing to do, despite the fact so many Innocent lives were lost in the process?

 

Can't you see that the moral difference between collateral damage in conventional warfare and terrorists suicide bombing and indiscriminately opening fire in civilian areas?

 

It's not even a debate. Remarkable that so many on here are struggling with this.

[Dr Gloom 19717]

 

Here's the perfect response. More support for the most undemocratic, tyrant, extremist regime on the planet. More evidence of fine Western values.

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/francois-hollandes-war-with-isis-wont-stand-in-the-way-of-frances-arms-deals-with-saudi-arabia-a6738546.html

The west is full of hypocrisy. I don't see anyone disputing that. Just have a quick glance at the Saudi thread. Disgusting that we're allies with these animals. A sad reflection of our addiction to oil.

[ChezGiven 0]

So why have I been reading for a week that the actions of the US are the equivalent to the actions of the terrorists in France? So now we agree that they aren't the same? That there are moral differences which set the actions apart? The distinction is important as the world's response will be guided by the moral disgust.

[PaddockLad 14486]

Here's some light reading to brighten a Monday morning....

 

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

[NJS 3954]

So why have I been reading for a week that the actions of the US are the equivalent to the actions of the terrorists in France? So now we agree that they aren't the same? That there are moral differences which set the actions apart? The distinction is important as the world's response will be guided by the moral disgust.

I don't think anyone is claiming moral equivalency - just pointing out cuntishness on both sides.

 

There are parallels for me with Ireland - nothing justified the IRA's actions morally but to not point out 400 years of British cuntishness as a contributory factor would be a little amiss.

[Renton 17537]

I don't think anyone is claiming moral equivalency - just pointing out cuntishness on both sides.

 

There are parallels for me with Ireland - nothing justified the IRA's actions morally but to not point out 400 years of British cuntishness as a contributory factor would be a little amiss.

The difference being of course the Irish directly exported their terrorism and were generally quite selective. Contrast that with these suicidal lunatics who amselect the softest targets they can and generally from the country they are domicile in. Who have no achievable political aims and whose true motivation is personal gain in the form of perpetual blow jobs in the afterlife.

 

I can't see any comparison of IS and the IRA as anything other than facile at best, offensive at worst.

[Happy Face 29]

I'm reminded of Stewart Lee's bit after 9/11 on being nostalgic for the old days of good honest British terrorism under the ira. "And let's be clear it WAS British"

 

Anyway...

 

https://medium.com/@MattBors/france-s-plan-to-defeat-isis-275899040b8f#.4cabgnoec

[NJS 3954]

The difference being of course the Irish directly exported their terrorism and were generally quite selective. Contrast that with these suicidal lunatics who amselect the softest targets they can and generally from the country they are domicile in. Who have no achievable political aims and whose true motivation is personal gain in the form of perpetual blow jobs in the afterlife.

 

I can't see any comparison of IS and the IRA as anything other than facile at best, offensive at worst.

I agree on the difference but maintain there is some similarity - funnily enough I agree it's the religious underpinning that's the difference.

[Happy Face 29]

And...

 

It is nearly certain that we will endure, sooner rather than later, another catastrophic terrorist attack on American soil. The blundering of our military into the Middle East; the failed states that have risen out of the mismanagement and chaos of Iraq and Afghanistan; the millions of innocents we have driven from their homes, terrorized or slaughtered; the bankrupt puppet regimes we have equipped and trained that will not fight; the massive amounts of munitions and military hardware we have allowed to fall into the hands of jihadisthousands of them carrying Western passports; and the myopic foreign policy whose single tenet is that more industrial violence will get us out of the morass created by our industrial violence in the first place means that we, like France, are in for it.

 

All the major candidates for president, including Bernie Sanders, along with a media that is a shameless echo chamber for the elites, embrace endless war. Lost are the art of diplomacy, the ability to read the cultural, political, linguistic and religious landscape of those we dominate by force, the effort to dissect the roots of jihadi rage and violence, and the simple understanding that Muslims do not want to be occupied any more than we would want to be occupied.

 

Another jihadi terrorist attack in the United States will extinguish what remains of our anemic and largely dysfunctional democracy. Fear will be even more fervently stoked and manipulated by the state. The remnants of our civil liberties will be abolished. Groups that defy the corporate stateBlack Lives Matter, climate change activists and anti-capitalistswill be ruthlessly targeted for elimination as the nation is swept into the Manichean world of us-and-them, traitors versus patriots. Culture will be reduced to sentimental doggerel and patriotic kitsch. Violence will be sanctified, in Hollywood and the media, as a purifying agent. Any criticism of the crusade or those leading it will be heresy. The police and the military will be deified. Nationalism, which at its core is about self-exaltation and racism, will distort our perception of reality. We will gather like frightened children around the flag. We will sing the national anthem in unison. We will kneel before the state and the organs of internal security. We will beg our masters to save us. We will be paralyzed by the psychosis of permanent war.

 

In wartime, public discourse emits the insane sputterings of King Lear: Then, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill! Demagogues bellow for more bombs and more enemy corpses. The military and the war profiteers provide them. The public cheers on the slaughter. Victory is assured. The nation rejoices when the newest face of evil is eradicated. But when one face of evilSheikh Ahmed Yassin, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or Abdelhamid Abaaoudis exterminated, another swiftly rises to take his or her place. It is an endless and futile quest.

 

Violence generates counterviolence. The cycle does not stop until the killing stops. All that makes us humanlove, empathy, tenderness and kindnessis dismissed in wartime as useless and weak. We revel in a demented hypermasculinity. We lose the capacity to feel and understand. We pity only our own. We too celebrate our glorified martyrs. We endow our sanctified dead with the lofty virtues and goodness that define our national myth, ignoring our complicity in perpetuating the ceaseless cycle of death. Our drones and airstrikes, after all, have decapitated far more people, including children, than Islamic State.

 

Jihadis troll websites and the dingy corridors of housing projects outside French cities and in the slums of Iraqi cities looking for young people discarded by war and neoliberalism, just as Army recruiters sniff out our own discarded and dispossessed and send them off to fight. Disenfranchised youths, offered the illusion of heroism, glory and even martyrdom, promised a chance to be armed and powerful, are seduced by these scavengers. Hundreds of millions of people across the globe have been cast aside by globalization as human refuse. They are worth nothing to the corporate state. They are denied jobs, benefits, dignity and self-worth. They are easy prey for the siren calls of those for whom war is a lucrative business. They dress in uniforms. They surrender their individuality. They experience the intoxicating drug of violence. They assume a new identitythat of warrior.

 

By the time they see through the illusions and lies, by the time they grasp how they have been used and betrayed, they are broken, maimed or dead. No matter. There are legions behind them waiting eagerly for their chance.

 

We have lost the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq as a unified nation has been splintered into antagonistic and warring enclaves. It will never be reunited. We ensured that Iraq would become a failed state the moment we invaded and disbanded its army, police force and government bureaucracy, the moment we foolishly attempted to dominate the country by forceincluding our arming and organizing of Shiite death squads that carried out a reign of terror against the Sunnis. The Iraqi insurgents, al-Qaida and, later, Islamic State, easily recruited the masses of enraged dispossessed whose families have been torn apart since the 2003 invasion, whose childhoods have been colored by extreme poverty, fear, a lack of education and basic services and horrific acts of violence, and who correctly see no future under continued U.S. occupation. Islamic State now controls an area the size of Texas, carved out of the remnants of Syria and Iraq. All our air attacks will not drive it out.

 

The situation is no better in Afghanistan. The Taliban controls more of Afghanistan than it did when we invaded 14 years ago. The puppet regime in Kabul we arm and support is hated, brutal, corrupt, involved in drug trafficking and crippled by cowardice. It is also heavily infiltrated by the Taliban. The Kabul regime will crumble the moment we depart. Trillions and trillions of dollars, along with hundreds of thousands of lives, have been squandered for nothing, even as climate change moves closer and closer to ensuring the extinction of the human species.

We waded into conflicts we did not understand. We were propelled forward by fantasy. The occupation of Iraq was supposed to have seen us greeted as liberators. We planned to implant democracy in Baghdad and have it spread across the Middle East. We were fed the absurd promise that the oil revenues would pay for reconstruction. Instead, our folly spawned political, social and economic collapse, widespread poverty, massive displacement, misery and a rage that gave birth to radical jihadism in Iraq and throughout the region.

The disintegration in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan has forced us to form a de facto alliance with Iran to battle Islamic State and the Taliban. This disintegration has upended our goal of overthrowing the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad. We now function, along with the Russians, as Assads surrogate air force. And because Hezbollah fighters, whom the United States and Israel condemn as terrorists and have vowed to destroy, are integrated into Assads army, we also serve as Hezbollahs surrogate air force. The Iraqi regime is dominated by the mullahs in Iran. The objectives used to justify these conflictsincluding the promise to root out radical jihadismhave all failed.

In endless war, yesterdays enemies eventually become todays allies. This is a theme George Orwell captured in his dystopian novel 1984:

 

At this moment, for example, in 1984 (if it was 1984), Oceania was at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia. In no public or private utterance was it ever admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped along different lines. Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge, which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.

This will not end well. The massive violence we employ throughout the Middle East will never achieve its goals. State terror will not defeat individual acts of terror. More and more innocents will be sacrificed, here and abroad, in a furious and futile campaign. Rage and collective humiliation will mount. As we continue to fail to blunt attacks against us, we will become more aggressive and more lethal. Internal enemiesespecially Muslimswill be demonized, endure hate crimes and be hunted down. The most tepid forms of criticism and dissent will be criminalized.

We are hostages, like Israel, to an accelerating death spiral. Only when we are exhausted and depleted, when the numbers of dead and maimed overwhelm us, will this lust for blood end. By then the world around us will be unrecognizable and, I fear, irredeemable.

 

http://m.truthdig.com/report/item/states_of_terror_20151122

[Renton 17537]

And...

 

It is nearly certain that we will endure, sooner rather than later, another catastrophic terrorist attack on American soil. The blundering of our military into the Middle East; the failed states that have risen out of the mismanagement and chaos of Iraq and Afghanistan; the millions of innocents we have driven from their homes, terrorized or slaughtered; the bankrupt puppet regimes we have equipped and trained that will not fight; the massive amounts of munitions and military hardware we have allowed to fall into the hands of jihadisthousands of them carrying Western passports; and the myopic foreign policy whose single tenet is that more industrial violence will get us out of the morass created by our industrial violence in the first place means that we, like France, are in for it.

 

All the major candidates for president, including Bernie Sanders, along with a media that is a shameless echo chamber for the elites, embrace endless war. Lost are the art of diplomacy, the ability to read the cultural, political, linguistic and religious landscape of those we dominate by force, the effort to dissect the roots of jihadi rage and violence, and the simple understanding that Muslims do not want to be occupied any more than we would want to be occupied.

 

Another jihadi terrorist attack in the United States will extinguish what remains of our anemic and largely dysfunctional democracy. Fear will be even more fervently stoked and manipulated by the state. The remnants of our civil liberties will be abolished. Groups that defy the corporate stateBlack Lives Matter, climate change activists and anti-capitalistswill be ruthlessly targeted for elimination as the nation is swept into the Manichean world of us-and-them, traitors versus patriots. Culture will be reduced to sentimental doggerel and patriotic kitsch. Violence will be sanctified, in Hollywood and the media, as a purifying agent. Any criticism of the crusade or those leading it will be heresy. The police and the military will be deified. Nationalism, which at its core is about self-exaltation and racism, will distort our perception of reality. We will gather like frightened children around the flag. We will sing the national anthem in unison. We will kneel before the state and the organs of internal security. We will beg our masters to save us. We will be paralyzed by the psychosis of permanent war.

 

In wartime, public discourse emits the insane sputterings of King Lear: Then, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill! Demagogues bellow for more bombs and more enemy corpses. The military and the war profiteers provide them. The public cheers on the slaughter. Victory is assured. The nation rejoices when the newest face of evil is eradicated. But when one face of evilSheikh Ahmed Yassin, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or Abdelhamid Abaaoudis exterminated, another swiftly rises to take his or her place. It is an endless and futile quest.

 

Violence generates counterviolence. The cycle does not stop until the killing stops. All that makes us humanlove, empathy, tenderness and kindnessis dismissed in wartime as useless and weak. We revel in a demented hypermasculinity. We lose the capacity to feel and understand. We pity only our own. We too celebrate our glorified martyrs. We endow our sanctified dead with the lofty virtues and goodness that define our national myth, ignoring our complicity in perpetuating the ceaseless cycle of death. Our drones and airstrikes, after all, have decapitated far more people, including children, than Islamic State.

 

Jihadis troll websites and the dingy corridors of housing projects outside French cities and in the slums of Iraqi cities looking for young people discarded by war and neoliberalism, just as Army recruiters sniff out our own discarded and dispossessed and send them off to fight. Disenfranchised youths, offered the illusion of heroism, glory and even martyrdom, promised a chance to be armed and powerful, are seduced by these scavengers. Hundreds of millions of people across the globe have been cast aside by globalization as human refuse. They are worth nothing to the corporate state. They are denied jobs, benefits, dignity and self-worth. They are easy prey for the siren calls of those for whom war is a lucrative business. They dress in uniforms. They surrender their individuality. They experience the intoxicating drug of violence. They assume a new identitythat of warrior.

 

By the time they see through the illusions and lies, by the time they grasp how they have been used and betrayed, they are broken, maimed or dead. No matter. There are legions behind them waiting eagerly for their chance.

 

We have lost the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq as a unified nation has been splintered into antagonistic and warring enclaves. It will never be reunited. We ensured that Iraq would become a failed state the moment we invaded and disbanded its army, police force and government bureaucracy, the moment we foolishly attempted to dominate the country by forceincluding our arming and organizing of Shiite death squads that carried out a reign of terror against the Sunnis. The Iraqi insurgents, al-Qaida and, later, Islamic State, easily recruited the masses of enraged dispossessed whose families have been torn apart since the 2003 invasion, whose childhoods have been colored by extreme poverty, fear, a lack of education and basic services and horrific acts of violence, and who correctly see no future under continued U.S. occupation. Islamic State now controls an area the size of Texas, carved out of the remnants of Syria and Iraq. All our air attacks will not drive it out.

 

The situation is no better in Afghanistan. The Taliban controls more of Afghanistan than it did when we invaded 14 years ago. The puppet regime in Kabul we arm and support is hated, brutal, corrupt, involved in drug trafficking and crippled by cowardice. It is also heavily infiltrated by the Taliban. The Kabul regime will crumble the moment we depart. Trillions and trillions of dollars, along with hundreds of thousands of lives, have been squandered for nothing, even as climate change moves closer and closer to ensuring the extinction of the human species.

We waded into conflicts we did not understand. We were propelled forward by fantasy. The occupation of Iraq was supposed to have seen us greeted as liberators. We planned to implant democracy in Baghdad and have it spread across the Middle East. We were fed the absurd promise that the oil revenues would pay for reconstruction. Instead, our folly spawned political, social and economic collapse, widespread poverty, massive displacement, misery and a rage that gave birth to radical jihadism in Iraq and throughout the region.

The disintegration in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan has forced us to form a de facto alliance with Iran to battle Islamic State and the Taliban. This disintegration has upended our goal of overthrowing the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad. We now function, along with the Russians, as Assads surrogate air force. And because Hezbollah fighters, whom the United States and Israel condemn as terrorists and have vowed to destroy, are integrated into Assads army, we also serve as Hezbollahs surrogate air force. The Iraqi regime is dominated by the mullahs in Iran. The objectives used to justify these conflictsincluding the promise to root out radical jihadismhave all failed.

In endless war, yesterdays enemies eventually become todays allies. This is a theme George Orwell captured in his dystopian novel 1984:

 

 

This will not end well. The massive violence we employ throughout the Middle East will never achieve its goals. State terror will not defeat individual acts of terror. More and more innocents will be sacrificed, here and abroad, in a furious and futile campaign. Rage and collective humiliation will mount. As we continue to fail to blunt attacks against us, we will become more aggressive and more lethal. Internal enemiesespecially Muslimswill be demonized, endure hate crimes and be hunted down. The most tepid forms of criticism and dissent will be criminalized.

We are hostages, like Israel, to an accelerating death spiral. Only when we are exhausted and depleted, when the numbers of dead and maimed overwhelm us, will this lust for blood end. By then the world around us will be unrecognizable and, I fear, irredeemable.

 

http://m.truthdig.com/report/item/states_of_terror_20151122

What a cheery read. Suggests the initial intentions of the West in Iraq and Afghanistan were good, but were now locked in some kind of mutual death spiral. The road to hell and all that. Offers literally no solutions and fails to comment adequately on the obvious root cause of this, radical Islam. Let the self flagellation continue.

[Kevin Carr's Gloves 3176]

What a cheery read. Suggests the initial intentions of the West in Iraq and Afghanistan were good, but were now locked in some kind of mutual death spiral. The road to hell and all that. Offers literally no solutions and fails to comment adequately on the obvious root cause of this, radical Islam. Let the self flagellation continue.

 

If you think that the root cause of this is radical islam then you really have no idea what has been going on at all.

[Dr Gloom 19717]

 

If you think that the root cause of this is radical islam then you really have no idea what has been going on at all.

Radical Islam isn't to blame for suicide bombing?