Via Mick Hartley, I came upon this summary of the state of the Middle East, and in particular of the bloody shambles that was the attempt to unite Sunni Islam, aka: the Arabs. It’s the best background briefing I have recently read on that deeply depressing region of our otherwise moderately undepressing world. Although, that doesn’t say much for I am no sort of Middle East expert, nor even much of an observer of it. Too depressing. But I read all of this piece, by Ofir Haivry of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem, at one sitting as soon as I encountered it, which is quite rare for me and my crumbling attention span.
I haven’t much to say about all this, but one thought does occur to me, which is that it seems rather wrong for Americans to blame other Americans for this bloody shambles. (Haivry himself does not blame America.) The next silliest thing to believing that your country is an unchallengeably magnificent superpower that never ever errs is to believe that your country’s mistakes and crimes are overwhelmingly more important and blameworthy than those of any other country, these two attitudes being far more similar than those who indulge in the latter one typically realise. The Middle East would surely now be a bloody shambles whatever the Americans had recently tried to do about it.
If there are imperialist villains to be blaming, how about Britain and France? But one suspects that, again, even if those notorious “lines in the sand” had never been drawn around a century ago, what would be happening on top of this sand would still now be a bloody shambles.
The only rays of light that Haivry discerns are in the form of the various little non-Islamic and anti-Islamist statelets that are starting to form, such as the newly emerging Kurdistan. The Kurds aren’t the only ones doing this, apparently. Good to hear.
And then of course there is the continuing success of Israel. A particular reason I am convinced by this article is that Israelis cannot afford to be wrong, and in particular they cannot afford to be sentimental, about what is going on around them.
Talking of sentimental, “Lawrence of Arabia” gets a well-deserved swipe of criticism.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the US has pursued an extremely aggressive interventionist policy just about everywhere in Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, the Balkans and Eastern Europe. The result everywhere had been death, destruction and utter chaos. It might be noted that Hillary Clinton was in these actions, as far back as Kosovo, up to her snout. We can expect much more of the same if she is elected. Trump is likely to pursue a sane foreign policy, assuming he survives to the election and then to the nomination. Dicey.
Remember, if the nukes start flying, Russia and China will send a few your way just to be fair.
It is a good text, because it talks how the “Arab” was constructed by the West integrationist influence (hints of UE) and how for that to exist it had to wipe and make subjects of many peoples to the so called Arab.
Druzes, Assyrians, Kurds, Berberes, Copts, still misses a millennial religion oppressed by Ayatollahs: Zoroastrians.
Btw in Iraq they call Arabs to the people that came from Arabia not to themselves unless it is someone politician that wants to use the Arab political identity.
There was a piece about the political graffiti in Baghdad at time of invasion and was clear that the Iraquis didn’t think much good of the “Arabs”.
He unfortunately doesn’t talk the influence of Arab Socialism in all of this and how that assured failure.
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” extremely aggressive interventionist policy ”
Really? Have US threatening neighbors like Russia?
Incidentally of the reasons for Al Qaeda is because US has not pursued an “aggressive” policy.
Seems we have the Marxist/Rothbardian obsession with US like there are not other people in the world.
bob sykes – no the United States has NOT.
But it is always “interesting” to hear from Mr Putin’s R.T.
As for those “libertarians” who think that the late Murray Rothbard “proved” that the evil ….. (“Rothbard was from a Jewish family” – so what, so was the head of the Spanish Inquisition) got the United States into both World Wars and that Israel should not exist….
Well, in the end, such people are tossers (to use a technical scientific term) and one can not spend one’s life obsessing about them – thanks to Mr Ed for that point.
People who trust the likes of Harry Elmer Barnes (the Nazi apologist) on history, really rule themselves out of polite consideration.
Germany started both world wars – and German war aims were to dominate Europe as a stepping stone to world domination.
The “land between the river and the sea” was less developed, and less populated, at the start of the 19th century than it had been under the rule of the Emperor Maurice back at the start of the 7th century.
People who think the Jews destroyed some country called “Palestine” are away with the elves and pixies.
And it is Putin’s Russia that has taken over land in Europe and elsewhere – ask the Ukrainians and Georgians.
The United States has not annexed one inch of land in “Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe”.
Its “interventions” have not been about taking over anywhere – they have been about fighting back against aggressors, for example the butchers in Kosovo (some people can still remember what happened there – before Rothbarians get to work “reinterpreting” it).
Sometimes I have opposed American policy – for example the effort to remove Saddam (which I thought would just lead to some other monster taking over – and would be a waste of American lives). But the intention has always been good.
As for threatening the United States with nuclear attack.
Well how nice of you bob sykes.
How about someone pouring petrol throw your letterbox and burning you to death in your sleep?
“just to be fair” of course.
“just to be fair”.
Short version.
Someone who blames the United States for “death, destruction and chaos” “just about everywhere”.
And then has a nice fantasy about lovely Mr Putin’s Russia and lovely Peoples Republic of China nuking the United States.
Well such a person is morally no good – they are bad.
As Harry Elmer Barnes and Gabriel Kolko (Rothbard’s pet “historians”) were bad.
The latter belief is not just silly: it is suicidally insane.
Having said that, Trump did not blame his own country: he blamed Obama and H. Clinton, which is not the same thing.
On this we can probably agree.
Btw all three articles -the 2 others are replies to the first- are good compared to the trash that appears in msm.
Balkans? What nonsense. So you think Slobodan Milosovic was a CIA stooge? Because it was his action that resulted in death, destruction and utter chaos in the Balkans. The US role was just helping to ensure the people in Belgrade who started it did not reap the benefits of all that death, destruction and utter chaos.
I tend to agree, but intentions are not the issue, however good they may have been – it’s the results that count, in the end.
Intervention does not necessarily include annexation, and without the latter it is still intervention – i.e. sticking one’s nose where one maybe should not. The US foreign-policy history is a mixed bag in that regard, it seems.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the US has pursued an extremely aggressive interventionist policy just about everywhere in Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, the Balkans and Eastern Europe.
“Extremely aggressive”? Compared to what? For a start, I am unclear what are the “extremely aggressive” actions in Africa. Give at least two examples. Central Asia – give examples. As for the Balkans, I assume you refer to the actions re Kosovo, a situation that arose because European powers were plainly incapable/unwilling to act to prevent genocide on its borders.
About the only area where extensive intervention of the sort described can be seriously criticised, in my view, is the Middle East, and even then, much of the reason for reversing the invasion of Kuwait, and toppling Saddam, was just.
Alisa
“…but intentions are not the issue, however good they many have been -it’s the results that count, in the end.
What?
Here are the results of Korea, Vietnam and the American battle against Communism:
Communism bit the dust and no thanks to the fellow travelers and useful idiots in the West.
Lee Kuan Yew – founder of modern Singapore realized that by halting Communist expansion his country and many others had the time to crush Communism locally or develop sufficiently so the Communist “we are here to help the poor” bullshit was exposed as a lie.
I was in the US Army as an Eastern European linguist and spy against these Warsaw Pact governments. I am glad I volunteered, served my four years and I believe the world is damn glad we won. Obama, Clinton and Sanders are not but screw them.
We are in another war now against Islam. Not radical Islam, Jihadist Islam – just Islam. Read the Sira, a Hadith collection (al-Bukhari’s will do), The Reliance of the Traveler (a compendium of Sharia Law) and a chronological Koran. If you don’t, you will mouthing the “Islam is peaceful” or some such tripe as your throat gets cut.
The article makes it sound as if the ‘mighty’ Sunnis are not so mighty.
Yet the great power of France cowers and quivers like a terrified rabbit facing a stoat, before deadbeat crackpot criminals who turn out to be mass murderers, as we have seen in Nice and Paris.
I think we should thank bob sykes for introducing the Balkans to this conversation, as it provides an interesting comparision. The problems in the Balkans were caused by the collapse of an ideologically-inspired redrawing of local politics to create a south-Slavic state (Yugoslavia), comparable with the idea of a pan-Arabia Sunni dominance albeit on a smaller and more centralised scale. The same problems of the imposition of a post-World War I order on a complex situation underlie the issue.
And the same solution seems to have been the resolution – the resort to smaller historical/tribal identities with which those concerned felt happy. Only in Bosnia-Herzogovinia (I just like the full name OK) has this not happened, and that is because only there was there a real military intervention, apparently led by popular chanteur James Blunt, which as is the way with external intervention was concerned to prop up the existing structures. Elsewhere intervention was more limited (to support the effective independence of Kosovo etc). It is probably not a coincidence that Bosnia has failed to develop like the other former-Yugoslav states and the divisions are still raw there.
John Galt III,
I think technically you are at war with a library judging by your focus on texts (at least one of which, a chronological Qu’ran, is something no Muslim is likely to read – followers of religion tend to read the holy books in the way the religion defines them). Most Muslims would probably treat the Sira or the Reliance of the Traveler with the same respect my Christian wife has for the Book of Revelations or Egyptian monastic texts. Sure, some follow them, but most Muslims tend to be a bit more selective about what they want to follow. After all, Sunnis don’t even have a clergy to define what is the correct texts (and certainly do not all agree even on which Hadith should be followed).
No religion is peaceful – they tend to be hegemonic – and Islam is certainly the most militant of the major religions around at the moment, but to assume all followers of Islam are not peaceful is a bit like assuming all the inhabitants of Montana are racist anti-libertarians on the basis of the posts of one…
Those “notorious lines in the sand” initiated a brief period, less than 30 years, of European dominance in the area. It was never colonialism since there was no displacement of natives to make way for migration and settlement of subjects/citizens of the imperial powers. In particular, Britain disengaged rather quickly from Iraq. The French were a bit stickier, but even they were gone by the late ’40’s.
I believe that the Ottoman/Turkish imperial exploitation of the area for hundreds of years is much more consequential than the European blip in time.
However, white guilt rules OK.
Sorry JGIII, but i fail to see what your comment has to do with mine.
Brian ends the OP with something I have often thought and agree with entirely with him. Us Brits in particular have Romanticized TE Lawrence (and his “noble arabs”) in a way which makes “Braveheart” look like a hard-nosed and impartial documentary for a century.
I mean OK. If you really want to consider the ME as something from a Fry’s Turkish Delight cinema ad from 1977 fine… But then I have a fairy in a jam jar I caught in the garden today available for a staggering price. Best get in there quick mind because I have also had a garbled oiuja-board enquiry from a Dr Cunning-Dole – or similar.
None of that does any harm, “really”. Except it does because way too many people, for a very long time, have regarded that Arab “nobility” or “simplicity” as a code for saying very nasty things about Jews in contrast who are of course “ignoble money-grubbers”.
It is simply a building of a metacontext that there is some “nobility” in the vile whereas Israel must have stolen the untold treasures of the Gaza Strip to leave that place potless yet Israel successful.
PS.Typed on a Lenovo S440 with an Intel i5 chip. Now, tell me the last time any Arab nation produced a CPU… Guess where the i5 was designed?
PPS. There is no nobility in poverty, degradation and meaningless violence.
Watchman,
1) Texts – Al Azhar University which passes judgment on holy books is a fiction? The Reliance of the Traveler is approved by this University which is like the Vatican saying something is ok or not to Sunni Muslims worldwide. It is the most extensive text on Sharia Law – you really are utterly ignorant of Islam given your response.
I suggested non-Muslims read these texts and you have not or have no comprehension abilities. I suggested a chronological Koran for non-Muslims due to the repetitive nature of the original as well as its haphazard structure – that plain to everyone but you. The Koran is put together by Sura length so it is not chronological and therefore hard to digest.
2) It isn’t whether the average Muslim reads the texts, it is whether Imam’s do, Watchman o. Look 1/2 the women in Egypt are illiterate. Do you remotely understand they can’t read.
3) On ok ,bad and really bad Muslims. Think 1942 – You argue that there are nice Germans, not so nice Germans and bad Germans. Germany is at war with you and you don’t have the luxury of doing diligence one by one.
The problem is 20% – 40% of Muslims want us dead and the rest of them are too afraid to say anything about it. You may not know this, but the West’s Intelligence agencies are totally compromised and useless. The Muslims they turn are then turned against them. I still have connections as I was a spy and everyone knows this in the intelligence community.
4) Islam is a religion based ideology and two of its fundamental principles are that Islam must a) spread throughout the world, historically 100% by force and b) become politically dominant wherever Muslims live.
“All religions are hegemonic” – you are 100% wrong and everyone here knows it. The Essenes were hegemonic? The Quakers are hegemonic? The Shakers are hegemonic. The Jews don’t even proselytize. What planet do you live on?
Guess your a Corbyn voter if you are UK based or an Obama voter if US based and so forth as they are all low information voters. You? You have no information. You have made that crystal clear.
Perry, can you recommend a book (or other resource) on the recent history of the Balkans? You seem to know a fair bit about it, whereas I am largely ignorant. I visited Serbia in 2002 and stayed for a few weeks. A lot of the tat on sale for tourists compared Serbia to the little Gaulish village in the Asterix comics, standing up to the Roman Empire (NATO, presumably). One could buy pamphlets listing various NATO actions: bombing ambulances and so on. I wandered around Belgrade and saw a lot of bomb sites that the locals were keen to point out: office blocks, hospitals, etc. However, I don’t speak Serbian and was unable to really discuss things in any detail. I certainly never managed to have a sensible conversation about Mladić, for example. I’d love to know more about the recent conflicts from more points of view.
JGIII (July 19, 2016 at 12:33 am), I doubt anyone commenting regularly here is a Corbyn voter. There are people who comment regularly at the Guardian who are yet not Corbyn voters. There are people who work for the beeb who are yet not Corbyn voters. Watchman does not strike me as a Corbyn voter.. 🙂 That said, I agree with your point that many religions are not hegemonic, and almost all are less so than Islam, both today and in the past.
In summer of 1943, the RAF turned many Hamburg residents into puddles of fat – including some opponents of Hiltler, some slave workers, some day-old babies, etc. There is post-hoc debate whether our bombing strategy was necessary to win the war. There is no debate in my mind that, if it were honestly reviewed and honestly thought necessary at that point in the war, then it was right to be done. (I also do in fact believe it was honestly adopted, with no more error than is unavoidable in the uncertainty of war.) I am not even sympathetic to those who claim Dresden was a needless war crime (and that is not just because the loudest still use Goebbels’ ten-times-the-truth casualty figures).
This history sets a high level to what might justly be done, i.e. to what could not on moral grounds be always and everywhere forbidden . It therefore imposes a need to take the word “honestly” seriously, do due diligence on what is truly necessary at a given time, etc. The Guardian and the beeb will be filled with dishonest objections so I will value honestly-meant ones – e.g. from such as watchman AFAICS – even where I may end, as above, agreeing with you.
NickM, July 18, 2016 at 11:43 pm: “Us Brits in particular have Romanticized TE Lawrence (and his “noble arabs”) in a way which makes “Braveheart” look like a hard-nosed and impartial documentary for a century.”
I take NickM’s point about “noble arabs”, and know he is just expressing himself in a rhetorical manner. As a Scot, I have to point out that no film of T.E. Lawrence makes Braveheart took like a hard-nosed and impartial documentary. Maybe comparing Braveheart with “Hitler Youth Quex” could give that impression but not much else. 🙂
John Galt III,
I am not a Corbyn voter, since I am not a Labour Party member. And I am not a supporter of Obama and his statist views either… I’m a classic liberal with a slight bent towards promotion of chaos if you want any particular definition.
However, I am informed enough to know that since Muslims are not even capable of determining on which day Eid Al-Fit falls without argument they are certainly not going to agree which religious books support the actual religious texts. Whilst Al Azhar University likes to pretend it sets the trend for Islam, there is no responsibility to it in the way the Catholic church (and note here there is no Sunni church – only individual mosques, like presbyterian Christians at best) has to the Vatican. I do agree with you about the imams by the way – and that is where Al Azhar University has some influence, as do the Saudis. But Islam does not accept the imam as the only interpretor of God’s word, which is why all Muslims are expected to learn the Qu’ran by heart – it is acceptable, and often common, to disagree with an imam.
And since we are not at war with Muslims, I am not sure what your point is there. Are you seriously suggesting we set aside the recognition of the importance of the individual because a small number of them (and I suspect far less than 40% of Muslims – but then again, I’ve been to Indonesia and Malaysia and don’t mistake the relatively-lightly populated regions of Arabia, the Sahara and Pakistan as being where most Muslims live…) don’t like the way we live? You’ve just given Obama and his progressive ilk the right to attack you on the same basis you realise? If you do not respect individuals, then you die as part of a group, whether you belong to it or not.
Islam does encourage the spread of the religion, including by force (it is not unique in that), but since following any religion is a matter of what teachings you follow this does not mean all Muslims believe this to be the answer, any more than all Christians belive homosexuality is a sin despite the clear statements of Paul on this. You’re making the mistake of assuming everyone you label with a word (Islam) is the same – the classical mistake of believing they are different from you so are not different from each other. Did you not read the article that was linked to in the original post which stresses that Islam is shattered and argumentative, not a united whole?
And I stand by all religions are hegemonic. Certain cults or branches are not for various reasons, but these tend to be related to trying to survive the hegemonic tendencies in their own or other religions. Judaism has certainly been hegemonic in the past – why do you think so many Jews used to live in Russia (hint: it wasn’t migration)? It lost and now it is generally simply a group identity thing, although there are still missionary tendencies in Judaism as well. Anyway, almost every religious person tries to pass their religion on to their children, which is hegemony in action right there.
I have no idea – why indeed?
Such as?…
Alisa,
The Khazan Empire was Judaic (not Jewish I suppose) due to missionary activities north of the Caucaus. They were pretty powerful for a couple of hundred years, so Judaism spread. Their territory covered a large chunk of what was later Mongol, Lithuanian and Russian territory, and the Jewish communities of these tended to spread.
And I tend to associate Judaic missionaries with reform movements. I admit that the mainstream of Judaism is limiting hegemony to family and sometimes to ‘racial’ Jews – this I see as a legacy of Judaism being a minority religion persecuted by dominant religions for a long time (outside of the Khazans anyway). Kaballah might also be seen as a form of Judaic missionary activity.
I have to admit though that I tend to see religion as open to anyone, so something defined by ‘race’ as well as choice does present a challenge to my normal world view. A closed religion is possible I suppose, but I think that Judaism’s history explains its relative inward-looking characteristic. Put it this way: if Judaism was not threatened, do you really believe the idiot orthodox types would not want to extend their reach?
Are you seriously suggesting we set aside the recognition of the importance of the individual because a small number of them (and I suspect far less than 40% of Muslims – but then again, I’ve been to Indonesia and Malaysia and don’t mistake the relatively-lightly populated regions of Arabia, the Sahara and Pakistan as being where most Muslims live…) don’t like the way we live? You’ve just given Obama and his progressive ilk the right to attack you on the same basis you realise? If you do not respect individuals, then you die as part of a group, whether you belong to it or not.
It is what happens in war isn’t it? Colective punishement.
And when that threshold is passed for colective punishment ? Hundreds of deaths in France per year is enough or not? thousands?
I think it is significative that the example you went by is that you legitimate Obama war on others that didn’t killed any but you don’t approve of War on Islamism that killed tens of thousands.
lucklucky,
I think collective punishment is actually illegal in war – and we tend to believe in individuals being judged by their own actions, not those of someone you don’t know, shares no connection to you and lives in a different country. So there is no threshold for collective punishment – rather than focussing on easy targets (and you do know the effects of attacking soft targets don’t you – it strengthens the resolve of those you are fighting) perhaps we should rather focus on the terrorists, their support and those funding it. And the French should perhaps get with the twenty-first century (you know the problem is partially very poor intelligence and pretty poor policing right? Admittedly not surprising in a heavily-centralised state).
Also where did I legitimise Obama doing anything? I noted the logic John was using was the same logic that could be used to do that. I did that because I believe it would be a bad thing. John should not be in danger for having views with which I disagree, but neither frankly should someone who happens to be Muslim be in danger for that.
Watchman:
How would I (or you) know? Your assertion was not posed as an hypothetical, but as a fact – which it is not, for whatever historical and other reasons.
Regarding the Khazar empire, it is again an hypothesis in this particular context, since no one knows the true origins of all those Russian and other Eastern-European Jews (although it is certainly fair to assume that at least some of us originate from the Khazars), and I doubt we ever will. In any case, that entire historical episode is no more than just that – an exception indicative of the rule.
How, exactly?
You seem intent on showing that all religions are hegemonic (and expansionary?) – which is fine as an hypothesis, but so far you supply virtually no solid evidence by trying to disprove that Judaism is no different than Islam or Christianity in that regard – because all existing evidence I know of is to the contrary.
Watchman, if it were hegemonic to pass one’s faith on to one children, then almost every belief in the world, religious or otherwise, would be hegemonic. How many avowed atheists do you know who attempt to prevent their children adopting their beliefs? I can’t see Richard Dawkins sending the kids to Sunday school, though it would seem he would have to to avoid being hegemonic in your use of the word. This is far too large a hammer to crack your nut. When everyone of all religions and none is hegemonic, the word no longer says anything about religion as such.
From ancient times to the present, Jews have been very unproselytising and even less hegemonic (using the word in its proper sense). The story is that the ruler of those Russian Georgians asked a Christian, a Jew and a Muslim questions about religion, ending with: “If you could not be of the faith that you are, which would you choose instead?” “I’d rather be a Jew than that dog of a Christian”, said the Muslim. “Well, I’d rather be a Jew than that vile Muslim”, said the Christian. The Jew indicated that if he could not be a Jew, he couldn’t care less what he was. These replies decided the ruler to take the very unusual step of deciding the realm would be Jewish. It seems unfair to call the indifferent-to-alternatives Jew “hegemonic” for managing an answer that impressed.
(Khasan has, I believe, very little to do with why there were many Russian Jews in 1900. The mongols erupted all over south Russia in their usual slaughtering manner and the empire ceased to be. Catherine the Great imported Jews (and Germans) in the 1700s. It has been argued that some communities do indeed descend from the Khazars. Doubtless some fled the mongols but I think most Russian Jews descend from later immigrants.)
I’ll bow to the general view here and accept Judaism is not a missionary religion then.
I will stick with my view that hegemony includes forcing children to follow a religion. If a communist regime tries to indoctrinate children into being communist from birth we would see that as attempted hegemonic behaviour. Why is it different for religions? Even Judaism believes that religion is not a choice but a duty remember.
No it does not.
But Judaism is not a regime, and in any case we are talking about parents’ right to decide on the upbringing of their children – which applies to communist parents as well, yes.
“I think collective punishment is actually illegal in war”
Really? what do you think is destroying a bridge if not collective punishment? And energy factory? a ball bearing factory? oil industry? Impediment of movement? Blocking of ports and mining?
“Also where did I legitimise Obama doing anything? I noted the logic John was using was the same logic that could be used to do that. I did that because I believe it would be a bad thing. John should not be in danger for having views with which I disagree, but neither frankly should someone who happens to be Muslim be in danger for that.”
Did libertarians/conservatives resorted to violence against Obama? No. Your point is that Obama is justified to attack even if no one makes violence.
The argument is like if a criminal is right to do violence because someone might resort to self defense.
Btw US Army manual explicitly says that an Officer can even give order to not respect War conventions if the enemy is wining(gaining advantage) by not respecting them. Temporarely until he starts to respect them.
mmacg @ July 18, 2016 at 6:54 pm:
Colonialism does not always mean settlement. France never attempted to settle Indochina, nor Britain India, nor the Netherlands Java, nor Belgium the Congo. But surely these all count as colonies.
lucklucky @ July 19, 2016 at 11:10 pm:
Actions to destroy the war-making ability of the enemy.
what does it say about the world that, when I heard about a shark attack on Australia’s Gold Coast, I was waiting to hear that the shark had cried out ‘Allahu Akbar!!” before attacking?