Al-Sistani calls on followers to fight ISIS

First!

I’m at a loss, Bill H – why are ‘safe havens’ such a priority? Bad things happen in the world. Not everyone will be your friend. Some people even actively wish you ill. Can we not make distinctions between intent and capacity?

In short – is it the goal of U.S. policy to control everything and everyone?

Osama bin Laden came from a relatively minor ideological trend, itself part of a failing movement that had adopted a revanchist (some have argued even millennialist) mindset. Following the complete inability of Islamist political adherents to achieve political power and the near complete rejection of Islamist political movements across the Arab world (read: the Nasser-Sadat-Mubarak regime in Egypt, the Algerian post-independence regime, Iraq under Ba’thist Saddam, Syira under Ba’thist Assad etc.)) to broaden their appeal amongst the population reassessment needed to occur.

Two broad trends developed, though they were not equally adopted in the number of adherents. One followed a quietist path of Islamizing the population from ‘below’, while another argued that this could be circumvented and power brought about more rapidly through a ‘politics of the deed’ (violence and the decapitation of existing regimes). Both trends moved forward, with those working on bottom-up efforts achieving great success through social movements and the popularity attendant to social welfare provision to poor citizens of largely failed states in a globalizing economic order. However, this success was never translated into political power because – even when they managed to receive electoral success (1990/91 in Algeria, 2012 in Egypt), broader coalitions of the various national polities closed ranks and violently rejected Islamist political actors from taking power. The sole exception to this has been post-2011 Tunisia (and if you really wanted to broaden the discussion beyond the Arab world to that of all Islam, pro-American Pakistan and anti-American Iran).

The point I’m trying to make is that Islamists needed to answer a thorny question: if they were the ‘answer’ to the problem of political and social development in the Arab world, why did the masses of Muslims reject them? Again, the broad reaction adopted by dozens of Islamist movements was to roll up sleeves, reject direct action and political violence, and get to work building a political base. Change the local environment and the state and institutional structures would change of their own accord.

The radical fringe continued to argue for using violence and direct action. Within this fringe bin Laden (and his type) argued that it was better to attack the real source of their failure – the far enemy, rather than to play whack-a-mole in attacks on the local dictators who were in power and successfully subverting Islamist efforts at reform. Like many analysts, bin Laden et. al. take agency away from the authoritarian regimes and see them solely as puppets of Western imperialism. Puppets they may be, but the strings are lax and they have shown no shortage of creativity to act against their supposed foreign patrons when it came to their own regimes survival. They have proven adept at mobilizing popular opposition against Islamists time-and-again.

This brings me back to the beginning – a U.S. policy based on providing zero safe haven(s) is impossible IMO – although the security and military political economy **loves** such policy for the endless budgetary outlays it provides. The U.S. had a choice on 9/12 – it chose wrong. It chose to attack a host of unaffiliated and most-often adversarial political actors on a global scale in an effort to find those responsible. It attacked without distinction both the broader Islamist trend as well as the even larger Islamic ummah through indiscriminate targeting and cultural stupidity. It has to be one of the grandest political mistakes in history. The Bush administration had virtually unlimited political capital and unfathomable empathy from the global population. Instead of marshalling that all – in recognizing that the pain and fear Americans were feeling following the attacks of 9/11 were a shared experience to political violence the globe over – the Bush administration decided on direct action of their own. That they lied, rolled up everything from the expansion of executive authority, tax reforms, a vendetta against Iraqi Ba’thism, an expansion of state surveillance etc. etc. etc. makes it all the more astounding in that Americans never questioned such idiocy. Very few still do. Its evident in the response to this week’s advance of ISIS/ISIL forces.

More than a decade later can this folly not be seen for what it is?

ISIS/ISIL are about as bad as it gets. But, unlike bin Laden, in act and deed they are visiting hell on fellow Muslims and ethnic/religious minority groups rather than attacking Americans. Give the Iraqis – all the Iraqis – the agency to solve this themselves. Nut bars not getting affection from young women, fantasists who deserve humane medical treatment for mental health issues, and various right wing fanatics indigenous to the U.S. who like to blow up abortion clinics, or target American veterans for LGBT rights are a more direct “threat” to U.S. citizens than ISIS/ISIL. Besides, even if the fantasies of neocon OpEd writers were to come true and ISIS/ISIL were to hold terrain and establish a state – then they pose even less of a concern for the United States. Unlike social movements and terrorist organizations – states have return addresses and the modality of how they are dealt with is well established.

I’ll give the Bush administration credit for two things: Bush was right when, faced with the popular uprising against Anglo-American occupation, itself following the devastation of more than a decade of American efforts to alter Iraq as a polity, he stated that ‘politics is hard’ … what makes all these clowns think they understand Iraq any better today? Moreover, his administration partly identified the ‘new’ post-9/11 threat that can be posed by small factions and even single actors through the use of modern technologies.

In an age where internet cafes or even a new iPhone provide a sufficient platform to attack and do great damage to American citizens do U.S. forces really need to be in Anbar or the Hindu Kush?

Untold numbers of Iraqis have died – how can that be deemed at all acceptable? How will killing more accomplish anything but add to the suffering and proliferate more opposition to the U.S.?

You did notice how far Bill H’s tongue was in his cheek.

oh these comments. First we’ve got Trixie, really contributing. get it?

and then Bill H. drops a sarcasm bomb which John Measor misses and writes a really nice essay apropos of nothing.

@ Bill H June 14, 2014

Those planners also could be cooking up plans to drain our precious bodily fluids, so allowing that haven to remain safe for them to be planning their attacks would be a dangerous folly indeed.

Stop giving yourself airs adjnabi everybody knows that body fluids of you miserable anglozionistimperialisticteddybearmutilatingbunnyboilingkufrs is haram and that the goodcleanlivingmenofISISwhodesireonlytoliveinpeaceandfreedomandwhoconsumeonlyhalalproducts wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot long bloodsoaked الرمح

mfi