Charlie Pierce gets right down to what America can do and should be doing about the actual bad guys behind last night’s attacks in Paris.
It is long past time for the oligarchies of the Gulf states to stop paying protection to the men in the suicide belts. Their societies are stunted and parasitic. The main job of the elites there is to find enough foreign workers to ensla…er…indenture to do all the real work. The example of Qatar and the interesting business plan through which that country is building the facilities for the 2022 World Cup is instructive here. Roughly the same labor-management relationship exists for the people who clean the hotel rooms and who serve the drinks. In Qatar, for people who come from elsewhere to work, passports have been known to disappear into thin air. These are the societies that profit from terrible and tangled web of causation and violence that played out on the streets of Paris. These are the people who buy their safety with the blood of innocents far away.
It’s not like this is any kind of secret. In 2010, thanks to WikiLeaks, we learned that the State Department, under the direction of then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, knew full well where the money for foreign terrorism came from. It came from countries and not from a faith. It came from sovereign states and not from an organized religion. It came from politicians and dictators, not from clerics, at least not directly. It was paid to maintain a political and social order, not to promulgate a religious revival or to launch a religious war. Religion was the fuel, the ammonium nitrate and the diesel fuel. Authoritarian oligarchy built the bomb. As long as people are dying in Paris, nobody important is dying in Doha or Riyadh.
It’s time for this to stop. It’s time to be pitiless against the bankers and against the people who invest in murder to assure their own survival in power. Assets from these states should be frozen, all over the west. Money trails should be followed, wherever they lead. People should go to jail, in every country in the world. It should be done state-to-state. Stop funding the murder of our citizens and you can have your money back. Maybe. If we’re satisfied that you’ll stop doing it. And, it goes without saying, but we’ll say it anyway – not another bullet will be sold to you, let alone advanced warplanes, until this act gets cleaned up to our satisfaction. If that endangers your political position back home, that’s your problem, not ours. You are no longer trusted allies. Complain, and your diplomats will be going home. Complain more loudly, and your diplomats will be investigated and, if necessary, detained. Retaliate, and you do not want to know what will happen, but it will done with cold, reasoned and, yes, pitiless calculation. It will not be a blind punch. You will not see it coming. It will not be an attack on your faith. It will be an attack on how you conduct your business as sovereign states in a world full of sovereign states.
The time to stop pretending that Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States are our buddies is over. I’m extremely okay with this plan, frankly.
Corner Stone
I will say one thing about the blog’s new platform, it certainly does seem to produce faster and more OP posts on a consistent basis.*
*When FP’ers aren’t locked out, natch.
Watchman
There are times when Pierce is wrong.
This is one of them, unless you think that economic sanctions against the princes and the strongmen will somehow help the average slave laborer in Qatar.
We’ve already had this discussion is respect to Iran. Sanctions didn’t hurt the hard liners, it hurt the Iranian people.
Moron. We don’t even want to jail the bankers here who are destroying the country. What makes you think we’re going to get that done in Abu Dhabi or Riyadh or Doha?
Betty Cracker
That question I posed downstairs — how should the Democrats respond when asked about the GOP’s attempt to link immigration and terrorism? The truths Pierce laid down should form part of their answer, the “draining the swamp” portion anyway.
The Other Chuck
@Betty Cracker:
“There is no link. The Republicans are making shit up as usual.”
srv
Minister Zandar? Dassault has a €6.3 billion deal with Qatar to sell them Rafale fighters. And an option for an order 2X that.
What levels of “OK” are you willing to let your French workers live with?
dedc79
The almost always wrong Tom Friedman was right about one thing – that W (and America) had a huge missed opportunity after 9/11 – rather than challenging americans and the American economy to move toward greater energy (ETA) efficiency and independence and putting the full support of the government behind that effort, W told us all to shop.
As long as we (and Europe) need lots of oil and the Gulf States have most of that oil, it’s hard to envision any change in this horrific status quo.
srv
Over a $150B in Iranian assets were seized and held by western governments.
Imagine the KSA’s assets worldwide.
Redshift
@Watchman:
Yes, in sure the reason they came to the negotiating table and gave us pretty much everything we were asking for was their deep concern for ordinary people.
Yes, you illustrate that with every comment you post. Maybe you should put it at the beginning of each one as a warning.
D58826
At an emotional level As much as I would like to see it happen I don’t think it is really practical. If for no other reason than what ever government replaces the House of Saud, for example, will be worse. There are no T. Jefferson’s or G. Washington’s hiding in these countries. If the Arab spring showed us anything it is that, at least for Western interests, the stability of the old dictators was better than the current chaos. Heck it might even have been ‘better’ for the citizens. Assad is no prize but millions of Syrians were not refugees before the civil war broke out.
Betty Cracker
@The Other Chuck: That’s true, and pointing out that the GOP candidates are hysterical demagogues on this issue would be a good opener. But it should lead to a longer comment that addresses legitimate concerns about resettling tens of thousands of Middle Eastern refugees in the US (which I support) and addressing the factors that create these conditions in the first place, our own fuck-ups and those of others.
max
The time to stop pretending that Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States are our buddies is over. I’m extremely okay with this plan, frankly.
Completely concur! This has been a problem since… 9/11.
@Watchman: We’ve already had this discussion is respect to Iran. Sanctions didn’t hurt the hard liners, it hurt the Iranian people.
The ‘sanctions’ the UN imposed on Iraq after the first Gulf War were not really sanctions but an embargo. They were trying to force out Saddam and it didn’t work. The sanctions imposed on Iran prior to the agreement did work – because they were simply *financial sanctions*. The Iranians weren’t suffering from a food and fuel embargo, they were suffering from a credit and fund transfer embargo, which made it hard to sell oil, even for cash. And even harder to purchase imports of needed manufactured goods. That made things very bad for the Iranian economy. And that seemed to have done the trick.
The Saudi’s are currently up a creek without a paddle concerning oil prices – were we to hit them with a finance and transfer embargo that stoppered up their ability to move funds, they would be in deep shit, especially if they couldn’t purchase ammo and weapons. (It’s not the awesomeness of the weapon that is the thing, it’s the steady flow of supplies of ammo that is most important.)
We could put the squeeze on them, and they would be in bad social trouble.
As it stands, Daesh (& al-Queda & al-Nusra) are being heavily funded by the Gulf, and maybe Turkey and that is why we can’t shut off their supplies.
max
[‘The alternative is a ground attack.’]
pamelabrown53
@Betty Cracker:
I really wish the debate wasn’t tonight. Emotions are too raw; people scare too easily. Anything our candidates say that is reasoned and measured will sound like weak tea to those who think we haven’t done enough to taking the fight to ISIS. Doesn’t matter if they’re wrong. Right now, many are ruled by fear and not just the RWNJs.
Mike J
Splitcoil @Splitcoil 2h2 hours ago
Keith G
Yes the Saudis helped gather the fuel and light this fire, but the fire is now burning and even if the Kingdom totally vanished in an instant, the fire would continue to burn. And for however long it continued to burn, it would still be a source of destabilization, destruction, and death.
So Chuck, you pinpointed the easy theoretical, but what else ya got?
MattF
@dedc79: I have no pat answers about anything. But one thing to note is that the world, right now, is swimming in oil, and the excess oil is only going to increase. I’m hoping that there’s some new analysis going on about the leverage this could be providing.
the Conster
Getting rid of Saddam was the single worst foreign policy blunder that this country will ever make. Talk about unintended consequences, and now everyone other than the Bushes and Cheneys will pay. If I had ever believed in a benevolent god, this would break my faith and then my brain.
benw
@dedc79: yes, this exactly!
And what is it with otherwise rational people like Charlie Pierce who want the US to turn into Dirty fucking Harry after every terrorist attack? I’m sickened by the Paris attacks and it never once occurred to me to want the US to threaten others with pitiless surprise attacks.
MattF
@benw: I’m somewhat embarassed to admit that one of my first reactions to the Paris massacres was gratitude that Andrew Sullivan is no longer blogging. So, we’ve been spared his inevitable hysterical reaction.
debbie
@the Conster:
More like not-even-thought-about consequences. It’s the hubris that’s so maddening.
Some guy
It is no secret the Gulf countries are funding IS and al Qaeda, unless you are a regular reader of the American press, then yes, it’s s total secret.
tom
> It came from countries and not from a faith.
That’s a load. In many, if not most, of the countries in the mid-east with ties to terrorism, their politics and their faith are one in the same, they function (and rule) in tandem, can’t have one without the other.
Some guy
Putin showed in Allrppo that a bombing campaign and a ground game together can beat ISIS. LoOKs like the US has gotten on board with the same tactics in Sinjar.
Watchman
@Mike J: So it’s a collection of Zandar posts then.
Why anyone would want the collective “wisdom” of this unhygenic shit-stinking lardass I will never know.
sdhays
@dedc79: My thoughts exactly. We fund the Saudi’s by remaining dependent on oil; if the country had maintained weaning itself off of oil as a national goal from the 80’s to now, it’s kind of difficult to imagine how different the world might be. Thanks, Reagan/Bush!
the Conster
@Watchman:
I don’t know who or what you think you are, but whatever you think it is, you’re seriously deluded and need to reassess your life and everything else you think you know.
Watchman
@benw: OPEC put an end to any such discussion of American economic warfare (or any other types of it) against the Saudis 40 years ago. This is stupidity at its finest.
Calouste
@dedc79: Fight terrorism. Drive electric.
Watchman
@the Conster: And you weren’t emotionally abused and threatened by him for 18 months at your place of work, either.
Kindly go fuck yourself.
Amir Khalid
It seems to me that Charles Pierce rather underestimates the complexities of dealing with the House of Saud, and of Middle-East diplomacy in general. I would really not want to try anything that simplistic or self-righteous. Do that, and the US will quickly see how much it depended on its former friends for small but crucial bits of help it suddenly doesn’t get anymore. What he proposes might be morally satisfying, but it could leave the US dead in the water diplomatically, and with fast-diminishing leverage.
Amir Khalid
@Watchman:
I wonder if you realise you’re not exactly winning hearts and minds here. If Zandar had such a toxic effect on your life, why do you keep coming back here? Do you want more of it? You should just move on.
mtiffany
@D58826:
How do you know that they don’t exist if they’re hiding? Are you Ben Carson’s source? Did you tell him the Chinese are in Syria?
There are small ‘d’ democrats in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States just as there are would-be banana-republic tin-pot dictators here in the US and the West. Statistics and The Law of Large Numbers guarantees it. And if you don’t believe in those, may I present the Republican 2016 field.
the Conster
@Watchman:
You need help, and no one here gives a shit.
Keith G
@Amir Khalid:
And maybe invest in sessions with a psychologist, really.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: I don’t think what they say even matters, at this point. Republicans automatically win whenever the T-word comes up. Either America’s short attention span moves on to something else, or we kiss 2016 goodbye.
benw
@efgoldman: I disagree; economic attacks and financial sanctions and – in particular – the way Pierce seemed to relish the way the US would threaten to carry them out, is pretty Dirty Harry.
Keith G
@mtiffany:
And they are quite easy to find as they are either in jail or up on a cross. Or buried.
mtiffany
@pamelabrown53:
And if they cancelled the Republicans would charge that Democrats are weak. “Terrorism is real and it threatens us and they ran away because they know they don’t have a plan to fight it…”
MattF
@Matt McIrvin: There’s certainly a big chunk of the Republican base that fits that description. But I’m not so sure it’s true generally.
the Conster
@debbie:
No one in that misadministration even knew about, or hand waved, the differences and animus between Sunni and Shiite. The failure of the politicians and the corrupted sycophantic press, at every level, will resonate forever.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Betty Cracker:
I think you start by pointing out that France actually hasn’t taken any Syrian refugees yet. They’ve had requests, and they’ve promised to take thousands in the next couple years. But it is my understanding they haven’t yet opened the borders to the new wave of skeery brown people.
wmd
@Betty Cracker:
Ask Clinton about Saudi funding for terrorism and what our policy should do about it.
Matt McIrvin
@MattF: In the days right after September 11th, 2001, George W. Bush got up to something like a 90% job approval rating, for failing to stop a terrorist attack and then doing basically nothing but shout through a megaphone. If the presidential election had been held that November, he’d have won with 538 electoral votes. Well, maybe 535. Three years later, the aura was still enough for him to squeak by despite being an obvious failure already.
Now, it helped that he was the incumbent. But does anybody think the reaction would have been that large if he’d been a Democrat?
He got a significant spike up for starting the Iraq War, another one for catching Saddam Hussein. He lost luster only after years of terrible, appalling results. Obama gets the actual mythic leader of al-Qaeda, the boogeyman of 9/11 himself, and… nothing. The immediate reaction is all about how Obama really had nothing to do with it because it was the SEALs what did it. Fine, but Bush was somehow immune from that reaction.
This particular deck is stacked to an amazing, I think insurmountable degree. The only thing for it is for some other subject to be top of mind.
agorabum
@Some guy: What is it with the total amnesia in the mid-east once Russia showed up? The US led an air campaign that led the Kurds to retake Mosul Dam. It led an air campaign that let the Kurds defend and expand from Kobane. It led an air campaign that helped the Iraqis take Tikrit.
The Russians took a page out of our books, not vice versa.
benw
OT but if any Democratic candidate pledges to end the tyranny of setting our clocks so that it’s pitch black by 5 pm, they’ll get my vote.
the Conster
@efgoldman:
All that is true, and also part of the rippling out effect – the initial decision by Bush to invade Iraq and to insert our big swinging dick into such a volatile region is Shakespearean in its dramatic tragedy and folly, and there is no unfucking it, ever. We can only suffer the effects, and those of us who were horrified by what unfolded back then are just left to shake our heads in sorrow.
Baud
@benw:
I pledge my term will be filled with eternal light.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: You just lost the vampire and other creatures of the night vote. Can you afford that?
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
I was never going to get Republican voters.
benw
@Baud: or at least a 4-year-long light, with the possibility of renewing for another 4 years of light.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Interesting take on my comment. I must ponder.
chopper
@Watchman:
he’s never going to love you back. you must know this by now.
benw
@Baud: ooh sick burn (which you can also get from exposure to too much sunlight).
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
As 2012 showed.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
That’ll never happen.
Are we all still dying from Ebola?
Omnes Omnibus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
No, but I am oh so terrified of it. Eek.
lamh36
@KailiJoy 24m24 minutes ago
This seems … unwise: Sanders aide pushes back against CBS switch to foreign policy focus for debate
the Conster
@lamh36:
Well, that’s how the world works in real life if you’re the prez – I’m sure Barack had other plans for Friday night.
beltane
@Baud: Hillary presents herself as a far more credible hawk than any of the Republicans, who most appear to be brightly plumed Cuckoo birds.
Betty Cracker
@benw: If insisting that your “allies” stop funding a psychotic death cult is “Dirty Harry,” sign me up.
Zandar
You know what? Watchman?
You really need help. Please go get it. I’m tired of playing whack-a-mole with you.
Just go get help, I am begging you. You’re not right.
Redshift
Crap.
This, after they spent a week in discussions with the campaigns about the topics to be discussed so they could have thoughtful, substantive answers and a serious conversation.
I’m sure the candidates have advisors on terrorism and national security, but pulling the rug out from under their debate prep is just crap. Obviously there were going to be questions about this in response to current events, but announcing that you’re throwing it the whole debate plan because of it is bullshit. It’s not like none of that other stuff matters any more.
Betty Cracker
@the Conster: Exactly right.
Baud
@lamh36:
Agree. That will play poorly.
Heliopause
Yes, this would be a very good start on a sensible and moral policy. Unfortunately, the current President is committed to doing the exact opposite, arming and funding and encouraging these regimes, and any prospective future President will do as much if not more. I agree with you and Pierce on the basics here but it truly is hopeless. It will take a complete paradigm shift in the big Western capitol cities and I don’t see anybody with that kind of vision or courage on the horizon.
Mike J
@lamh36: If you want to be president you have to deal with shit as it comes up, even if it wasn’t what you planned for.
the Conster
@Betty Cracker:
This is why I’m already in high anxiety about PBO not being president. He’s the only adult.
benw
@Betty Cracker: it’s not
that I’m reacting to (I’d like to see that stop, too), but the delight that Pierce seemed to feel in being the biggest, baddest mofos on the block by enforcing our will on other people at the end of a figurative, economic gun. That sounded really unlike the Pierce I’m used to.
Villago Delenda Est
@max: The problem with such a plan is that it would also hurt our banksters, who would scream like stuck pigs, and we’ve had little success in turning these vile greedy creatures into bacon, which is what should happen.
Betty Cracker
@the Conster: I will miss PBO, but if HRC wins, I expect US foreign policy will carry on much the same. I’m not altogether happy about that, but lord knows it’s better than the GOP alternative.
MomSense
After the France 24 coverage on C-Span finished airing yesterday, they immediately went to a call-in segment. What a depressing mess that was. It was call after call about Obama being weak because he hasn’t bombed and invaded Syria already. No mention of the Congress voting against the use of force in Syria. They really knew nothing about the situation except Obama is weak and we should do something. The something they wanted to do is bomb and invade. I tried to tell the man who picked up my old furniture that Reagan left Beirut with his tail between his legs after the barracks bombing but he didn’t believe me. Reagan was strong! Good luck selling a sanctions program that would take months of negotiations to initiate (I highly doubt it would work) that would be followed by patiently waiting for years for dog knows what to happen. The people who want to do something want to make war. The more violence and death the better. The rest of us look at the situation and throw our hands up in despair.
This problem is more than a century in the making (IS wants to restore the pre Sykes-Picot Greater Syrian Levant!) and there are no good choices and mostly bad outcomes. The one group that is a reliable partner for the US is the Kurds and there is no way in hell that Iran and Turkey will ever let them get out of this alive.
JPL
OT>>>
My cell phone is possessed. I have a Nokia no contract go phone. Son number 1 just called and while talking to him, the phone called Son number 2. I noticed it was an outgoing call so ended the call. It then went down the phone list and called someone else. Of course, then everyone started calling me back and then the phone repeated the process. The phone is now off.
Can I reset the damn thing or do I just stomp on it.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Even if one disagrees with her, she is definitely an adult. So is Sanders, notwithstanding his alleged complaining about the change in the debate topic.
CBS was right, BTW. It would have been eerie to pretend as if Paris didn’t just happen.
Omnes Omnibus
@MomSense:
We can’t do that. It’s what the ISIS folks and the neocons want. Let’s not give it to them because fuck them, that’s why.
the Conster
@MomSense:
There is no unfucking this mess, and it’s a yooooooge fucking mess, compounded by the fact that Americans refuse to acknowledge how the mess was made. I’m in total despair about the future and this mess we’ve created for our kids.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MomSense: It was call after call about Obama being weak because he hasn’t bombed and invaded Syria already.
I realize it’s pointless to ask them, but I’m fascinated by their thinking: how this is supposed to stop attacks like this? Do they even bother to articulate the old “fly-paper” theory? I always want to ask them how this worked in London and Madrid, but I doubt most MSMers, much less your average “kill’em all and let god sort ’em out” types, would understand the question.
@Baud: I don’t know the debate format, even the length, but I’m inclined to think they could/should have split in half
Villago Delenda Est
@Omnes Omnibus: THIS.
MomSense
@Omnes Omnibus:
What should we do?
Jerzy Russian
@JPL: In his song “Virus Alert” Weird Al gives some helpful advice on what to do to your computer after it has become infected. Perhaps that would also work on your phone.
the Conster
@MomSense:
Act tough on the internet.
JPL
@Jerzy Russian: Thanks Well I blame Cortana cuz it was the first time I used her assistance. I think you must be right though because this is way beyond butt dialing.
MomSense
@the Conster:
I know it seems like that but I’m genuinely interested in what VDE and OO think because they are not chicken hawks who think every problem can be solved militarily having both served.
pat
OK, this is OT but I’ve been busy today and couldn’t respond earlier. There was a post with a link to something written by a former Republican…. Basically asking why the intelligent Republicans, there must be a few left, right… Don’t say something about the lunacy spouted by all of the current contenders for the nomination,
and I HAVE THE ANSWER!!!
They are following the RUMSFELD RULE. You go into an election with the candidates you have, not the candidates you wish you had. Ha ha ha…
eta, OK, I’ve been into the cooking wine…..
Just Some Fuckhead
If Donald Trump was President of ISIS, this would have never happened. Or could have been even yooger. Take yer pick.
the Conster
@MomSense:
How do you make radicalized young Muslim men and women turn away from what is essentially global, stateless high stakes cosplay with real blood and real results? No one has the answer to that, because you can’t bomb an ideology.
Davis X. Machina
@MomSense:
It’ s Sir Humphrey’s Law: (from Sir Humphrey Appleby of Yes (Prime) Minister:
Something must be done.
This is something.
This must be done. QED
MomSense
@the Conster:
That is exactly the question. The first world problems with raising boys into men is daunting enough. NPR or PRI did some interviews with the parents, classmates, and teachers of the three teenage girls who tried to go to Syria to fight with IS. They also did a long interview with a young man who went to fight with IS and then somehow managed to come back and is now talking about his experience and trying to prevent more young people from being recruited. It’s hard to find the links now because they are buried down the search lists, but they were fascinating interviews. I don’t see the EU Austerians or the Randians in the US Congress actually investing money in the things that would make the lives of young people healthier and more hopeful.
Omnes Omnibus
@MomSense: Right now, I think Obama is doing what can actually be done. Trying to keep everything from boiling over while looking for a way to move toward a solution. It may need to stay that way for a long time. I also just don’t see the point of giving up and despairing. This is the situation in which we now live; we can’t go back in time or wish things away. So we either live with them while trying to find solutions or we don’t.
@the Conster: Yeah, right.
Omnes Omnibus
@MomSense: They need to have hope.
MomSense
@Omnes Omnibus:
I agree with you. I should probably not listen to call in programs anymore or try to talk to people with bumper stickers that read “I love my country. It’s the government I hate.”
Omnes Omnibus
@MomSense: I am actually thinking of switching over all my news watching to France 24. Facts and non-hyperbolic tone, wow.
debbie
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m assuming you’re referring to despair in the Western world, but then there’s also the despair in the Middle East that turns to anger, to frustration, and then, if there still aren’t alternatives, to radicalism.
the Conster
@MomSense:
Somewhere along the way, Islam devolved from keeping the light of civilization on while Europe was mired in the Dark Ages, to rejecting all of modernity. They’re now bringing up the rear on the long march towards civilized, enlightened self-interest for men, and especially and particularly for women. European and American colonial interests dividing up their ancestral lands and deliberately pitting them against each other to expropriate their natural resources explains the geopolitics, but given the outcome of the Arab Spring, they’re not interested in participating in western ideals of democracy. ISIS is cultivating a “true believer” mentality, impervious to the values that we accept as civilized, and that’s a phenomenon we, the west, are incapable of not only fighting, but understanding, because we’re their villain (but we’re the “good guys”!). It’s truly baffling, confounding, and as of right now unsolveable.
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: Since I was responding to a question from a person in the Western world, yes, you may assume that.
MomSense
@Omnes Omnibus:
I started watching the Montreal station this morning and it was much better than MSNBC or CNN. I thought France 24 was impressive yesterday so I will try to stream their broadcasts instead of watching cable news.
mclaren
Yes, Pierce is ludicrously shockingly startlingly wrong on this one.
If the West were to treat the Gulf States like this, very quickly the Gulf States would find themselves overthrown by radicals in their own country. Sanctions against the Gulf States would greatly empower their radical factions.
Then you’d have the spectacle of the world’s biggest oil embargo against the West. If you liked the 1974 recession, get ready for the mother of all recessions. Great Depression Part Deux coming up.
The plain fact of the matter is that Western Europe, Japan and North America are all addicted to fossil fuels from the Gulf. The real solution?
Mount a Manhattan-project-level effort to wean ourselves off crude oil. It can be done. Solar and wind power and nuclear power can produce the electricity we need, and electric cars and trucks and electrically powered light rail can provide the oil-free transportation.
It would be a big job, though. It would take a huge society-wide effort. The elites as well as the average person would experience a drop in our standard of living whlie we rebuild and restructure our societies, our cities, our highways, our transportation systems, our power generation and distribution infrastructure.
Since the infantile childlike Americans refuse to allow themselves to be inconvenienced for a few years now in order to enjoy energy independence later, it’s off the table. Americans made clear their preferences when Jimmy Carter presented the U.S.A. with a plan for energy independence in the late 1970s and the American people shrieked like infants in their highchairs and banged their little spoons in a tantrum and elected Ronald (“the cruel man wit the constant smile”) Reagan because he told them Americans didn’t have to give up their big cars and suburban homes and enormous highways into nowhere.
mclaren
@the Conster:
Not “somewhere along the way.” Operation Boot, 1953, brought to you by your wonderful friends the British MI6 and the American CIA.
mclaren
@Betty Cracker:
Considering the many thousands of women and children and old men systematically murdered by U.S. drone strikes, I think our allies would say: “You first, America. We’ll stop funding the jihadi death squads when you stop funding your Pentagon JSOC death squads.”
You might find this interactive flash graphic showing all the wedding parties and innocent family gatherings we’ve blown up with Hellfire missiles from drones of interest.
Howard Beale IV
@Some guy: Reports are the Iranian Al-Quds General Qassem Soleiman and his 3 assistants were killed in Aleppo. If true, that’s at least the third Al-Quds General in as many months. Iran can’t afford to keep losing generals like that, and this will send shockwaves in Tehran.
benw
@Betty Cracker:
One of my biggest worries about Hillary is that she is more hawkish than Obama. Still miles better than the Republicans, tho’. (typo edit)
the Conster
@mclaren:
Iran is Persian and Shiite, not Arabic and Sunni, which is most of the Islamic world. ISIS is the direct descendant of our dear friends the Saudis’ Wahhabism, and their influence is responsible for most of what we see taking place in the Islamic world. They’ve beheaded more people this year than ISIS has.
MomSense
@mclaren:
That was an epic failure but it doesn’t explain all of this.
Villago Delenda Est
@the Conster: Give them an alternative. Letting them eat Qur’ans is not the answer, but that’s pretty much all they’ve got at the moment.
mclaren
@Omnes Omnibus:
Except, you know, stopping the drone strikes that murder 98% innocent bystanders and women and children and only 2% known “high-value targets.”
Oh, and sending the drones back a couple of hours later to murder aid workers who try to rescue the wounded. When jihadis did that, American state department officials called it “terrorism.”
But when America does the exact same thing, well, that’s not terrorism, that’s…something else. Something AMERICAN. Something patriotic!
Also — Obama could stop spending every morning sifting through pictures of young girls in order to authorize their murder. When I was a kid, I was taught that this was the sort of thing Al Capone did, not the president of the United States.
Source: “Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will,” The New York Times, 29 May 2012.
I think you actually meant to say “Right now, I think Obama is doing what can actually be done to continue filling people in the middle east with rage and hatred and ensure that more of them become terrorists.”
the Conster
@Villago Delenda Est:
They (the radicalized) don’t want what we have. There’s nothing we can offer them that compares favorably to being on a mission from Allah to restore the caliphate.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@the Conster:
They don’t want our television and blue jeans, but I’m pretty sure they would like to have decent-paying jobs and an end to constant civil unrest.
Of course, right now we can’t offer good jobs or freedom from random shootings to our own population, so I’m not sure how we could realistically offer them to people in the Middle East.
mclaren
@MomSense:
Actually it kind of does.
Let’s recap: Great Britain together with the U.S. mounted a coup against the democratically elected president of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh, because he (gasp!) promised to nationalize Iran’s oil.
The Brits & Americans replaced the liberal modernizer democrat Mossadegh with the autocratic torturer & murderer Shah Reza Pahlavi. The Shah also tried to modernize, but because he tortured and murdered so many innocent people with his vicious SAVAK secret service death squads, the Iranian people came to associate “modernization” and “Westernization” with “torture” and “mass murder.”
Eventually the Iranian people rose up and overthrew the Shah. (Yay!) Unfortunately, extreme Islamic fundamentalists replaced the Shah. Westernization and modernization stalled, and initially, because of their bad experiences under the Shah, the Iranian people supported this turn away from modernization and away from liberal democracy. By the time the Iranian people found out how mistaken they were to support Islamic fundamentalism, it was too late — they were stuck with a savagely anti-modern antidemocratic anti-Western theocratic dictatorship.
the Conster
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
They want their 7th century back. We can’t offer that, and they’re determined to try. They’re like the Tea Party, except they’re not fat and reliant on Medicare and government provided scooters and blood pressure drugs. They’re young, angry, murderous ideologically driven sociopaths on a mission from God, and not in any ironic way. They’re deadly serious. Very deadly serious.
Felonius Monk
@Baud:
Does that mean that if elected you will bring on the Rapture?
mclaren
@the Conster:
You’re quite right that Iran is Shiite while the fundamentalists in ISIS are another cup of tea entirely. Also, the Iranian people remain the biggest supporters of America in the middle east, quite different from the population of the other Gulf states.
Also, no one has mentioned that current climatology forecasts show that within 80 years most of the middle east will become uninhabitable due to the heat.
Iran does export quite a bit of terrorism, though, just not to the same places that the Saudis and the UAE and Oman and Qatar and other other Sunni Gulf states export their terrorism. Notice that Americans don’t care if people in Lebanon get blown up by terrorists, only if people in Paris or New York get blown up.
The situation is complicated. The fact that not a single person has mentioned the current plight of the Palestinians or the vast number of American military bases in all the countries throughout the middle east shows very clearly the kind of surreal bubble in which Americans reside.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that if Americans had a dozen military bases in a dozen different U.S. states run by a foreign power, and if that foreign power was giving the U.S. government lots of weaponry and troops and training to help torture and murder many people in the U.S. population, Americans would have a slightly different attitude toward our policy of building bases and supplying weaponry and training to the armed forces of the dictatorships of the middle east.
mclaren
@Baud:
Oh, you’re going to start a nuclear war? Good to know.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@the Conster:
Did you see the recent report about the life expectancy for middle-aged whites taking a sudden downturn since 2000? They can’t find jobs, they’re in poor health, and they’re killing themselves in large numbers both intentionally (suicide) and unintentionally (drug overdoses).
I think the same factors are driving ISIS and the Tea Party: the modern world isn’t working for them, they’re in despair, and the only solution they can see is to retreat to a fairy-tale world of the past. The main difference is that ISIS is younger and more heavily armed, so they’re willing and able to act on the Tea Partiers’ darkest fantasies.
I also had a weird thought today — how is lead abatement going in the Middle East? I’m guessing not too well. Given the statistics we’ve seen about lead abatement and the plunge of crime in the West, stepping up lead abatement efforts may be a helpful, nonviolent step we could take.
mclaren
@benw:
Yes, HIllary only wants to pre-emptively attack and invade a couple of countries in the middle east, whereas the Republicans want to attack and invade all of them.
This is what is known in 2015 as “democracy.”
Betty Cracker
@mclaren: Except the “allies” in question support the drone program, even if they don’t say so out loud. I believe Pierce’s point is to stop futile shit like playing whack-a-mole with drones (and the killing of innocents that inevitably follows that strategy) and pursue the people bankrolling the terrorists instead.
mclaren
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Exactly the same thing that happened in Russia in 1991 when the entire country's wealth got handed over to a handful of oligarchs. Life expectancy plummeted, divorce and alcoholism skyrocketed, suicides went through the roof.
Now that America is turning into an oligarchy not very different from Russia, the same thing is happening to our population.
That's not at all comparable with Qatar or the UAE or Saudi Arabia, whose per capita standard of living has steadily risen since the 1970s and is now comparable with America's. In fact, the Al Qaeda 9/11 attackers were almost all engineers studying in Europe or America who came from very affluent middle eastern families.
As usual, you simply haven't done your homework. The problem with the middle eastern countries who are exporting terrorism (like Saudi Arabia) isn't lack of jobs or lack of money. Qatar has the number 1 per capita income in the world, Brunei and Kuwait and number 4 and 5, the UAE is number 7, America is number 10, and Saudi Arabia is number 11.
Just Some Fuckhead
@mclaren:
Demos = people
Kratos = power
You may begin giggling now.
the Conster
@mclaren:
I just recently had a conversation with a really good friend – a highly educated, highly compensated executive with all the technology and expertise in the world – literally – at her disposal, who had never heard of Sunni and Shiite, and that there has been 1500 years of warfare and strife over the differences between them about interpreting the Qu’ran. She didn’t know Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, after all these years, and that most of what is happening now in Iraq has to do with how removing Saddam, a secular Sunni, fucked up the entire stability of the region, especially regarding Iran and how their hand was strengthened in the region by removing Saddam. Mind.Blown. I realized then that maybe 10% of Americans have any idea about anything to do with that part of the world, and maybe 1% or less could have the level of convo you and I are having now. Fucking scary, because I consider myself to be largely ignorant of the facts on the ground.
mclaren
@Betty Cracker:
Drone murders aren’t exactly “futile,” they’re part of the reason why the terrorists are targeting America.
Permit me to suggest that if the U.S. weaned ourselves off middle eastern oil and pulled our bases out of the middle east and stopped giving weaponry and training to the middle eastern dictatorships and stopped supporting the way Israel treats the Palestinians, their terrorists would find someone else to attack other than America.
Just a thought.
But noooooooooooooooooo…it’s much more effective, I’m sure, to freeze foreign countries’ bank accounts and “get tough” and “go in hard” and “take them on” and John Wayne it like a macho man. That’s what always gets good results. You know, like the results the French got in Algeria…
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Another similarity between the two groups: greed heads have robbed them of their birthright, and they blame the wrong people.
MomSense
@mclaren:
The wealth from the oil economy is not evenly or even widely distributed among the population. Only about 30% of the people employed by oil companies do well. These are also very young populations. It is absolutely true that you have a large percentage of young people who do not have good jobs and who feel that they are being screwed over.
the Conster
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Totally agree that radicalization comes from alienation – the sense that earthly rewards are out of reach, so burn it all down for the promise of an afterlife in paradise, or self destructively self medicate so you’re numb to it, or latch onto a demagogue who promises to wrest the rewards away from the imaginary “those people”. That’s where we are now, and it’s precarious and dangerous.
Betty Cracker
@mclaren: Permit me to suggest I’ve been saying the same fucking thing you’re yammering on about in the second paragraph for about 15 years. Again, the point is to stop shooting and follow the money — just like John Wayne and Dirty Harry, I guess…
Villago Delenda Est
@the Conster: Bread. A chance to farm the land. A chance to provide for their families.
They don’t need our consumer luxuries. They need the basics. They don’t have those right now.
mclaren
Speaking of robbing people of their birthright, it might be churlish to recap the history of the Seven Sisters (the world’s biggest anglo-America oil companies) and how their lust for oil led them to create artificial phoney countries like Iraq and Qatar after WW I. But let’s give it a try anyway.
Western powers chopped up the Ottoman Empire in 1919 and created fake countries that jammed people of wildly incompatible ethnic and religious backgrounds together in order to get oil. (Then we acted all surprised when civil unrest constantly broke out and had to brutally suppressed by death squads like the SAVAK. Quelle surprise! Hoocoodanode?)
Western countries after WW I put the Saud family in power in the previous stateless desert known as the Arabian peninsula in order to get oil.
Western powers after WW II supported sadistic brutal dictators and paid them off with lavish bribe money and arms shipments in order to get cheap oil, which the dictators sold them in return for being maintained in power.
Ever wonder why America has such a hate-on for Muammar Qaddafi?
Because Qaddafi was the first middle eastern ruler to nationalize his country’s oil in 1969. Within 4 years, every other middle eastern country followed suit.
For 60 years, ever since 1919, every middle eastern country had been economically raped and robbed of its most valuable resource, oil, by the Seven Sisters run by American and British conglomerates.
That’s the kind of economic pillage and colonial exploitation that tends to make the native population angry. (When the British did this sort of thing to us, we Americans fought a revolutionary war against it. We called it “taxation without representation.” When Americans did it to countries in the middle east, however, it’s just “globalized capitalism at work.”) Of course, American media explained away the rage of the countries we were pillaging and exploiting by calling their irate elements “commies” and putting TV shows like MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE on the air to convince us that all those terrorists were just bad people who loved communism and enjoyed murdering innocents. Bad people like doing bad things because they’re bad. Spock with a beard is evil in the parallel universe because he has a beard. It’s just the way things are, y’know.
Nary a word in any of those MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 1960s TV shows about how previous “black ops” had actually put the Western dictators in power in the middle east.
And what’s one of the most popular U.S. movie franchises today, in 2015?
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movies.
Yes, we in America are definitely trapped inside a surreal bubble of junkthink and bogus “information” brought to us by our wonderful friends in the U.S. corporate-controlled media. Nothing to see here folks, move along.
Just Some Fuckhead
@mclaren:
America gets only 17% of its oil from the middle east. We get 37% from Canada and they aren’t barking fucking mad so that makes me think it’s not necessarily about the oil.
MomSense
@Betty Cracker:
I remember when James Baker suggested that the US may discontinue loan guarantees to Israel over settlement expansion. He wasn’t Secretary of State much longer.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@mclaren:
Sure, let’s talk about Saudi Arabia for a minute:
So, yes, the problem is exactly that Saudi Arabia has a lot of young men with a lot of time on their hands because there are no jobs to keep them otherwise occupied. Add in the fact that you can’t get married if you don’t have a job, and you can’t have sex unless you get married, and you’ve basically set the fuse on a powder keg full of resentment.
And while Mohammed Atta was highly educated, he also had a lot of trouble holding down a job and spent much of his time as a perpetual student. He wasn’t a high achiever who gave up his career to dedicate his life to jihad. He was quite frankly a lot like the white dudes who go on shooting sprees here in the good ol’ US of A.
the Conster
@Villago Delenda Est:
Most recruits have left all that behind – many ISIS recruits are from solid suburban comfortable families. You should read about the communities ISIS recruits live in. They’re completely provided for. They have everything they need, except communication with their families and the outside world. They’re just like those fundie Mormons in bumfuck Utah, Ultra orthodox Jews, etc. They’ve chosen, and believe they’ve been chosen. ISIS is a different can of worms.
mclaren
@Betty Cracker:
Well, then we agree in part.
Good luck with that one, buckaroo. The world’s shadow banking system and underground economy dwarf the official world GDP.
Are you familiar, Betty, with the hawala system of informal money transfer in the middle east?
It doesn’t use computers or banks. You may want to rethink your strategy on this one…
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@the Conster:
As we have all seen from things like Sandy Hook, being from a solid, comfortable suburban family is not exactly a guarantee of mental health. And now ISIS is gathering all of their Sandy Hook and South Carolina and theater shooting guys in one place by giving them an organizing principle.
mclaren
@the Conster:
Yes, precisely. The Al Qaeda 9/11 recruits all came from that comfortable top 30% in Saudi Arabia. The terrorists aren’t the “sitting around guys” Tom Friedman yammers about so ignorantly. The terrorist recruits come mostly from the affluent upper tiers of middle eastern society.
Using Tom Friedman’s twaddle as a guide to the history and problems of the middle east is about as useful as using Immanuel Velikovsky’s writings as a guide to the history and astrodynamics of the solar system. (I realize that last reference may go over some peoples’ heads. Velikovsky was an infamous crackpot pseudoscientist who wrote an inexplicably popular book called Worlds in Collision that proposed ridiculous theories about the solar system involving planets exploding, shifting out of their orbits, etc.)
Tom Friedman and the U.S. state department are to foreign affairs as Erik von Däniken is to archaeology.
mclaren
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
The current Saudi Arabian unemployment rate is 5.5%.
Try again, kiddo.
mtiffany
@Betty Cracker:
And then shoot whoever’s getting the money.
the Conster
@mclaren:
There’s alienation of those young Muslims with little to no hope to participate in the comforts of the modern world, which is the vast majority of young Muslims, and then there’s the alienation of those who have participated. ISIS successfully recruits from both, but focuses on the latter group through social media. That’s the group for which we in the west have no answer.
mclaren
@benw:
It’s the legacy of 50 years of relentless Republican attacks on Democrats as “soft on communism” and “weak on defense.” HRC boasts and struts about a “more assertive foreign policy” (translation: burn more brown babies in the poorest third world countries) because she’s afraid of looking weak by comparison with Republicans.
I fully expect all the Democratic candidates to jump up and down tonight and scream “KILL! KILL!! KILL!!” the way the draftee and his doctor did in the song Alice’s Restaurant.
mclaren
@mtiffany:
But we still have to pay money to the people who shoot them.
Ah, the circle of life…
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@mclaren:
Yes, because as we all know, the overall unemployment rate is exactly the same for all segments of the population. Science!
Here in the real world, Saudi Arabia is very concerned about its persistent youth unemployment rate because unlike you, they know that high youth unemployment = social unrest.
mclaren
@the Conster:
America’s whole approach to the middle east reminds me of H. L Mencken’s quip: “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
Cue Captain America! He’ll fix it!
mclaren
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Gosh darn it, your incredible logic has shown what a complete fool I am. I’m just astounded, and completely humiliated by your amazing intellect.
The current unemployment among youths 16-29 years of age in Saudi Arabia is 29%. Meanwhile, the current unemployment rate for recent college graduates in the U.S. is above 30%. Well, that explains why America is being rocked by so many constant terrorist attacks from our own population, right? All those unemployed American youths!
And then there’s the fact that inner-city blacks have an unemployment rate of 35%. Wow, that’s sure explains why all America’s urban areas are burning down today under the onslaught of all those relentless African-American terrorist attacks, doesn’t it?
Mnemosyne, did it ever occur to you that it’s the society in the middle east that’s the problem, not simple nostrums like unemployment rates among the young people? Massive repression of women, horrible sexism, sexual repression, fanatical fundamantalist religion?
These things are what breeds terrorism in the middle east, not economics or employment.
America and Europe don’t breed terrorism even though many of our young people have similar rates of unemployment, particularly minorities here in America.
Think it through. You’ll figure it out eventually.
The middle eastern societies breeding terrorism is what C. West Churchman described in 1967 as a “wicked problem.”
Wicked problems have the following characteristics:
1. The problem is not understood until after the formulation of a solution.
2. Wicked problems have no stopping rule.
3. Solutions to wicked problems are not right or wrong.
4. Every wicked problem is essentially novel and unique.
5. Every solution to a wicked problem is a ‘one shot operation.’
6. Wicked problems have no given alternative solutions.
We now return you to the regularly scheduled simple easy solutions to complex social problems offered by our front-pagers and most prominent commenters.
Steve in the ATL
Holy shit I’m agreeing with mclaren. I better go count the empty wine bottles on my kitchen counter….
redshirt
mclaren, you surely have a prescription for these ills. I’d like to hear it.
mclaren
@redshirt:
Make America oil-independent so we no longer have to provide support to the dictators who run these middle eastern countries. Then support feminism, higher education, and secularism by a modern version of the Marshall Plan for the middle east. Help these countries modernize but without violently forcing modernization on them the way the Shah did.
The fanatical Islamic fundamentalists are doomed. Nothing they do can will stave off modernity. They know it; that’s why they’re lashing out with these attacks.
If we help raise the living standards of the population in the middle east while championing womens’ rights and education for all and more science and technology, the populations of the middle eastern countries will soon become so alienated from the Islamic fundamentalists that the religious fanatics will find themselves marginalized and powerless.
The most powerful weapons America has against radical fundamentalist Islam are our Victoria’s Secret catalogs, Mademoiselle magazine, Ralph Lauren fashions, and our TV shows and movies. We should use those instead of drone strikes and cluster bombs.
Mike G
@Baud:
So the White House will be filled with Thomas Kinkade schlock?
Kyle
@mclaren:
The party that controls Congress vehemently opposes all those things here in the US. Their predilection for religious fundamentalism, crony capitalism and militarist violence is a major reason we support such similar-minded assholes in that part of the world. Establishment Repukes like the Bushes are quite comfortable with Middle Eastern autocrats; they’re probably jealous of their freedom of action to cynically cram corrupt feudalism down the throats of their societies to maintain power.
Peter
Mclaren, your pills are in the cupboard in the downstairs bathroom. Will you just fucking take them already?
redshirt
@mclaren: How would we raise the living standards of common folk in the middle east while simultaneously depriving the region of oil money?
Omnes Omnibus
@redshirt: The dude offered a list of nice ideas that anyone can support, but that get us no where.
Here is my plan to end racism: eliminate poverty, improve education (especially in inner cities and poor neighborhoods), support communities, and encourage people to be nicer.
Bill Arnold
@mclaren:
The charts at the paper preview referenced at the link are pretty scary but if I’m reading them correctly are scariest for RCP8.5, which is the worst case; burn all fossil fuel available, and maybe assume release or burning of some methane clathrate deposits.
We (humanity) don’t have to go there, and if we do even get close, there will be a collection of crazy but workable geoengineering projects in partial response. (ocean acidification unstoppable, oops). Unless civilization collapses first. Then it’s budget geoengineering (e.g. “controlled” “nuclear autumn”, or maybe something more benign) or nothing.
So yeah, best rational response is massive investment in clean energy projects. (Continued efficiency improvements are the easiest to sell politically.)
redshirt
@Bill Arnold: We’ll have our Mad Max future yet, we all know it.
We should all be stockpiling.
Anz Matz
The fact that the soceity in the gulf is parasitic and stunted is where the the real problem originates. As I live in one of those countries I can confirm that statement. The people here just live by sucking the oil money from the government and most of them does not know the value of it i.e. how to work hard and earn. If we cry over the problem of high unemployment rates among the citizens in these countries, one thing to be clearly noticed is that there are millions of foreigners who are able to find jobs. If you wonder why is it so , it is due to the superiority complex nurtured in these people and maintained throughout their lives. They only yearn to find a white collar job or a government job. If in a private firm, the demand is for a mangerial position.
From the day they are born, they are taken care by nannies and servants. Dont even need to bent down to pick a thing. Free healthcare. Most of the commodities and services are free, no tax. A thing that even people in the developed countries can only dream of. All kind of works that are considered menial or blue collar is done by expats mainly from South Asia and other non-gulf arab nations. Most of the locals thrive also on money from sponsoring these workers because no one can work in these countries if they are not sponsored by the locals.A kind of modern day slavery. In most places bachelors have to live away from their residential areas – in camps with less hygiene, cramped living conditions, low wages and unsafe working conditions. This is one of the reasons why the Qatar world cup bid was under fire.
In most of these places, you cannot find a citizen as a waiter in Mcdonalds or a restaurants, or as a sweeper or cleaner or driver.
Every thing is artificial or bought from others because they have huge money. Nothing is made on their own here. A good display of this can be seen in Dubai where if anything is made or built, it is by money buying things and people. There is no or very less innovation or a future vision among the youth as they dont have to worry as long as the government takes care of them. But, the frightening fact is that this show would not last long. The extragavanza has started to become bitter as oil price is plummetting.The governments are running out of money and finding hard to feed these parasites. If it stops, then starts the frustration,anger and radicalisation and ultimately the doom of the monarchs.
If terrorism has to be stopped, the attitude of the gulf monarchs towards their citizens have to be changed. Rather than pampering them with riches, they have to be taught to respect others and include the people living and working around them who are currently looked upon. They have to learn how to earn by hard work and sweat. Thus, being a useful citizen, they can hold their nation’s integrity tight and treat others equally and discard the ideas of domination and superiority.