An immediate and unthinking call to bomb a country following a terrorist outrage committed by individuals is the gruesome manifestation of the worst aspects of nationalism, patriotism, and revenge, from faux-strongmen who dress up their dick-swinging and reactionary positions to give the impression that they are the only people prepared to defend national security….
It is a ‘Dubya’ Bush level of analysis from back-slapping and self-righteous ‘Hawks’ who would have you believe that rubbing infectious materials into an open wound will somehow lead to its healing.
Anyone who doesn’t share that lumpen position is deemed to be weak on defence, indulging in pacifism, siding with the ‘enemy’, or even worse, accused of not caring about 120 dead Parisians - and a whole host of other quite ridiculous strawman arguments…..
In the medium to long-term the bombing will prove to have been completely ineffective. Worse than that, it will increase recruitment to ISIS and to the type of activity that the bombing missions were supposed to prevent.
None of this will bother the political class or their Oxbridge shite-hawk shills in the media. As long as the average Daily Mail & Sun reader get a tingle in their underwear at the sight of bombed-out buildings and dead bodies, then their bloodthirsty desire for vengeance has been achieved and the political and media classes can revel in their Bonapartist posturing in anticipation that it boosts their media careers and increased majorities at the next election.
Furthermore, it gives the pro-Trident and Pro-Snoopers Charter brigade another bogey man to hang their hats on. Last week we needed Trident to deal with the escalating threat posed by Russia. Yet this week they are our new best friends in the fight against ISIS. What a difference a week makes…. The ‘Snoopers Charter’ legislation is obviously now guaranteed to be passed without hindrance…
Don’t worry though, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about (apparently) – and the next time a terrorist organisation plans a major attack on the UK, they won’t be able to do it via WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook, of Gmail.
I certainly don’t have all the answers to the situation but that does not prevent me from pointing out what I believe to be a fundamentally wrong approach.
Comments
Great little polemic here,
Great little polemic here, very well written.
Current situation seems like a great example of how the media constantly frames everything within its ahistorical context. ISIS is never described along the lines of its very recent history including the massive incompetence by the US foreign policy establishment that has led to its predominance. No mention is made of how the US was inadvertently arming and funding ISIS for years, how it is primarily a creation of its major ally Saudi Arabia, how the installation of a massively corrupt, sectarian, and brutal Shia regime in Iraq fueled Sunni discontent. The story is simply, ISIS exists, do we bomb them or not?
All fits very neatly into Chomsky's propaganda model.
Quote: No mention is made of
It has all happened before (see al-Qaeda) and will all happen again...
Khawaga wrote: It has all
Khawaga
From the West'w perspective this is nothing new, the US funded radical sunni jihadists to attack russian power in the middle east. However, there is so much more going on!
I think this can be most aptly framed within the context of the sunni shia sectarian war that has escalated sharply since the 1979 Iranian revolution and the 2005-2006 Iraqi civil war. The Saudis/Qatar tried to oust Assad to deal a blow to the Shia alliance of Iran/Iraq/Syria/Hezbollah while the Pakistanis rearmed the Taliban to repress the shia Hazara. My guess is the US didnt understand what was going on and whether by accident or on purpose they funded ISIS/jihadists under the guise of funding the very short lived Free Syrian Army in Syria and the pretty much nonexistent National Transitional Council in Libya
My simplistic take is that
My simplistic take is that all the imperialist west's chickens are coming home to roost.
I don't agree with IS at all, nor do i excuse terrorism.
I think Jeremy Corbyn (in the UK) is stuffed over this. If Labour vote it will split the party and he will be seen as weak and pathetic because his stance will be against the motion. If he whips the party to stand against the motion he will be accused in the media of appeasing terrorists.
Islam was as much
Islam was as much Imperialistic as the West. Their chickens also came home to roost. Islamic slave raiders captured and sold up to 1.5 million Europeans, and many Africans, who were then sent to the sub-Saharan slave markets, or to the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.
No state is benign, especially unaccountable states. The myth of a tolerant, multicultural Caliphate in Spain is exactly that: a myth.
ISIS, Al-Nusra, The Army of Conquest, etc, are Islam in practice as it was during its rule.
Islam of Islamism is vomiting
Islam of Islamism is vomiting of the world capitalism in its imperialist interaction and operation through Islam-stricken regions (decomposing state-dinesty of Qajar - todays Iran, Ottoman empire ...) in the early 1900s. The stigma of its history begins in the period between the First and Second World wars: The historical connection of the (modern) state building, primitive capital accumulation ( imperialistic center and periphery relations in the current Middle) and Islamism dates back to the Muslim Brotherhood(MB), Hassan al-Banna in 1928 and of course to the MB's collaboration and alignment with the imperialist states of Nazi Germany and British empire from 1930s to 1940s ...
The Iranian Shiite replica as a "doctrine" of Islamism (MB) goes back to Fada'iyan-e_Islam ( Devotees of Islam) in 1940s: In Iran Shia-Islamism declared its foundation by brutally murdering intellectuals and political opponents, such Ahmad Kasravi in 1946. This is actually when a dark era in the modern social and political history of Iran opens up for Islamism to move forward; Shia-Islamism ( Khomeini, later Khomeinism) is partly a logical outcome of that period.
In short, Islam of Islamism preaches a Islamic conquest of the society and the world, through a highly totalitarian repressive political agenda such as German fascism, and the establishment of strict Islamic law, sharia. In Islam of Islamism the society and the man is transforming to "medieval" (pre capitalist, primitive) norms an ideal way to create a caliphate (the supreme leader-Shia, Sunni-caliph) on humanity as a whole: Islamism is Islamic periphery's political solution to embedded capitalistic crisis of periphery, while maintaining the capital-labor relation unchallenged.
For those who seek to hypocritically ( specially related to the left of capitalist system) separate the psychopathic behavior of the IS from Islam of Islamism, I recommend the following action plan:
Kindly read Quran, Muhammed ( Maxime Rodinson, 1961), Islamic Government (Khomeini, 1970) for shia Islamism; Hassan Al-Banna’s notion of Islamic government or system (al-nizam al-Islami): The Symbolic Scenarios of Islamism: A Study in Islamic Political Thought (Andrea Mura, 2015), for Sunni Islamism ...
Check the constitutions of countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran ... Then finally take a trouble of little practice by visiting Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran, Turkey, Bangladesh ... ( try to get a work, at least for a short period of time and see how the working environment is for the workers).
Then tell us how one can justify the real Islam of Islamism as it operates for millions of population/workers( particularly for female section) in the Islamic-periphery. Don't bother to take a sightseeing tours in some Western/European ghettos and check how the Sharia law is applied to millions of younger generation of working class-based emigrants in the center of the modern and DEMOCRATIC capitalist order.