Endless War category archive

I have no interest whatsoever in Game of Thrones, which seems to have cast its spell over a good portion of the podcasters I listen to. I stopped paying extra for HBO 20 years ago and haven’t missed it.

Now comes Shaun Mullen to point out that you don’t need to pay for HBO; a Game of Thrones has been playing out in the Middle East since the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the perfidy of France and Britain towards the Arabs who, under the sponsorship of T. E. Lawrence, had allied themselves with them against the Ottomans. A nugget:

The diplomats had been negotiating on how to divvy up the spoils of the Ottoman Empire. The conclusion of World War I was still two and a half years away, but the end of Turkish hegemony in the region was a foregone conclusion and the superpower governments in London and Paris, which were kind of like the Westeros and Essos of the time, wanted to leave as little as possible to chance in fulfilling their imperialist desiderata, least of all to make good on vague promises made to the Arabs — and the legendary Lawrence of Arabia, the leading advocate of the Arab cause — for their own homeland as a reward for their assistance in crushing the Turks in the arid western expanses of their empire.

Subsequent episodes of this real-life Game of Thrones, minus scantily clad maidens and a dwarf named Tyrion, but with plenty of civil wars and bloodshed to go around, have been playing out for nearly 100 years beginning with the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement, which set the artificial boundaries of colonial Iraq, Syria and Lebanon (and eventually the state of Israel) and provoked never ending cycles of ethnic strife, poverty, disenfranchisement, religious extremism and, of course, terrorism. Which brings us to the current episode — the disintegration of Iraq — where all that is on offer.

If you want to understand what’s happening in the Middle East–to have some context for today’s events–this is a good place to start.

Via AMERICAblog.

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The neocons and their symps, dupes, and fellow travelers who made policy for George the Worst*, upon what appears to be the final crumbling of their fever dream of American conquest in the Great and Glorious Patriotic War for a Lie in Iraq, have resurfaced to call for yet more war.

Dick Polman is disgusted (as, indeed, must be any thinking person outside the Beltway-Wingnut Bubble).

So when the shameless necons and Bush amnesiacs and clueless trolls bleat about “Obama’s fault,” it’s like hearing a pyromaniac whine that the fire department didn’t bring enough hoses to his four-alarm blaze.

Do I have a magic elixir for the raging Iraqi fire? Nope. Nobody does. But here’s a fanciful idea: Let’s dispatch the dogs of war to Iraq, and compel them to clean up their mess. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, McCain and his fellow congressional hawks, Kristol and his fellow cheerleaders…they should all stay until they forge a solution. And if they argue for a new U.S war, young members of their own families should fight it.

Do please follow the link.

Image via Job’s Anger.
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*Was George the Worst a dupe or a symp? Inquiring minds want to know.

Dan Simpson contemplates the collapse of Iraq and argues persuasively that America not only cannot stop it, but has facilitated and exacerbated it through the Great and Glorious Patriotic War for a Lie in Iraq. It’s a must-read.

The Iraq war, also known as “The War to Re-elect George W. Bush President,” not only left the country of 33 million severely damaged, but, worse, also left it with a government structure that simply does not work in terms of Iraq’s sectarian composition. More than that, America left Iraq with a situation that guarantees continuing fighting until it finds — or re-finds — a stable status quo.

He goes on to say that the least harmful thing we can do is to stay the hell out.

The violence there now must not be allowed to re-engage America in Iraq’s internal conflicts and how it balances its competing elements — Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. We have already done far too much damage to the Iraqis and to ourselves through our efforts to shape Iraq’s future.

In the warmonger’s world, more war for more lies for more lives is always the answer (warning: language).

Old men lie, young folks die.

And the old men keep right on lying.

Bloodthirsty narcissistic bastards.

Addendum:

George Smith notes the lust for war amongst those who will not have to fight:

As if it isn’t big enough already, you can observe how large elements in the media and sources at the Pentagon wish to relight the American war machine . . . .

More blood is always the solution for those who remain safely in the rear.

It’s all just smoke and mirrors.

Via Job’s Anger.

Dan Simpson explains supply and demand, but for one small error.

He’s got it backwards. This is not supply and demand, it’s demand and supply.

My impression of the growth of the U.S. military command for Africa, AFRICOM, created by President George W. Bush in 2008, is that its activities around the continent are a clear example of supply-driven actions — America pointlessly in quest of wars and enemies.

Read the rest.

Warning: Language. And outrage.

Old men lie. Young folks die.

Forty-four years ago today, four young folks died because they dared question the lies.

Old men keep on lying, young folks keep on dying.

Sit back and let George parse the melody.

At Psychology Today Blogs, Laurie Essig comments on what she terms Machismo Man David Brooks’s “manhood problem.”

Some of the “manliest” of politicians have created wars without cause, made lives miserable for women, children, gays and any others who are not “man enough,” and generally created chaos in the world. Machismo is no substitute for foreign policy even if Brooks wants to fantasize about Obama swooping in on a white horse and sweeping him off into a future where strong men keep us safe from danger.

Do follow the link, if only to see the illustration.

Tom Plate of Loyola Marymount University argues against the United States’s media’s apocalyptic coverage of the events in Ukraine and the world in general. A nugget:

If Moscow can “get away” with seizing Crimea (and a slice of Ukraine), won’t this embolden Beijing to jump onto a disputed island in the East China Sea and do a “Putin”? Or might it not even justify a comparable putsch by Japan? Does not the current world (dis)order suggest the future belongs to the bold?

Implicit in this fearful assumption is the suggestion that if only the U.S. were more forceful against Russia, less “bad things” around the world would happen. This is fantasy.

He has a point. This is the “Shoot First” theory of international relations favored by the same Diminutive Phallus Brigade that believes in “Stand Your Ground.” Many of our media figures and politicians seems think that the U. S. is Gary Cooper, able to solve all problems in one High Noon moment, then relax as the credits roll and everyone lives happily ever after.

Outside of movies, the credits don’t roll and one High Noon moment leads to the next.

At Asia Times, Ramzy Baroud evaluates the cost of over a decade of the Wars of George the Worst.

He is not optimistic for the fortunes of the United States as arbiter of world affairs. Two snippets (emphasis added).

The (Iraq–ed.) war left the US fatigued and set the course for a transition in the Middle East, although not the kind of transition that the likes of former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice had championed. There was no “New Middle East” per se, but rather an old one that is in much worse shape than ever before.

(snip)

The US has truly lost the initiative, in the Middle East region and beyond it. The neo-cons’ drunkenness with military power led to costly wars that have overwhelmed the empire beyond salvation. Now, US foreign-policy makers are mere diplomatic firefighters, from Palestine, to Syria to Ukraine. For the Americans, the last few years have been less a “reality check”, more the new reality itself.

Read it, and weep for the devastation wrought by the wars of the Mongers of War.

The Lebanon Daily Star takes a relatively balanced look at events in the Crimea, which is a lot closer to Lebanon than it is to the U. S. A. A nugget:

Finally, American politicians and pundits deserve a bouquet of dead flowers. No issue that enters the mosh pit of American politics can escape being framed in terms of domestic partisanship. But the future of Ukraine – and of Russia – is not a game that any U.S. leader can win or lose.

The West has no choice but to impose sanctions on Putin’s Russia, and they will now come fast and furious. But they are unlikely to be anything more than punitive, with no coercive power to reverse facts on the ground in Crimea.A sanctioned Russia – and a one that maintains its own set of sanctions – will be the new reality. But the great historic task remains to coax Russia back in the direction of membership in the international community.

Read the rest. You’ll learn stuff that has not been sufficiently addressed in our own domestic media.

Dan Simpson thinks it’s simple.

The effort to demonize — to Saddam-Hussein-ize — Russian President Vladimir V. Putin in the eyes of Americans should serve as ample warning that some of the people who run this country see an opportunity in the Ukraine-Crimea problem to start a profitable new war to take the place of the recently ended Iraq war and the winding-down Afghanistan war.

(snip)

The Pentagon budget just happens to be on the table at the moment in Washington.

Read the rest.

Ta-Nehisi Coates looks behind the curtain at the perpetual destruction machine as illustrated by the reappearance of Condoleeza Rice into public discourse:

War-mongering is self-justifying. If you bungle a war in Iraq, it does not mean you need to sit back and reflect on the bungling. It means you should make more war, less Iraq become a base for your enemies. If Vladimir Putin violates Ukrainian sovereignty, it is evidence for a more muscular approach. If he doesn’t, than it is evidence that he fears American power. If there are no terrorist attacks on American soil, than drones must be right and our security state must be effective. If there are attacks, then our security state must increase its surveillance, and more bombs should be dropped. Violence begets violence. Peace begets violence. The circle continues.

The crucial take-away, as regards our public discourse at least, is that being always wrong about everything gets you a gig at the Washington Post.

Reg Henry tries to make sense of out what’s happening in Ukraine and of possible courses to take. A nugget:

If this were our backyard being destabilized, what would we do? Well, actually we know; Ronald Reagan invaded Grenada, ostensibly to rescue American medical students, but really to stop it from it becoming another Cuba.

Moral equivalence? No, logical equivalence. I think we are the good guys and Vladimir Putin is a weasel, but good guys and bad guys all have their reasons. It is necessary to understand those reasons if we are to act sensibly.

Instead, those who loved the Cold War are delighted that it’s back . . . .