Most 'Muricans Want Ground War With ISIS - Falling Into the "ISIS Trap"

 " Why of course the people don’t want war...But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship ... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they’re being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.” - Hermann Goering, Nuremberg, 1946

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." -Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

According to a recent Quinnipiac poll, Americans are full of raging war 'roids and ready to dispatch tens of thousands of ground troops to fight ISIS. Specifically, 62 percent of registered voters - who are supposed to be a tad smarter than rocks - want U.S. ground troops committed to another failed combat effort sure to inflate the ISIS rats and their recruits more than achieve any victory. Elias Isquith, noting the figures in a recent salon.com piece,  actually asked: "Are we insane?" 

Well, yes "we" are -  at least those of us who get the bulk of our "news" from the corporate media and especially from the propagandists at FOX (who can't even 'fess up to Billo O'Reilly's multiple lies - from being in the Falklands war zone, to being present when a key HSCA Kennedy assassination witness was murdered.)

But this is what one can expect when a people are half-educated, ignorant and lack critical thinking skills, in which case they become malleable tools to be molded by the PR and propaganda machines.   And we've seen this dog and pony war beat show before, about a year and a half ago when neocons were clamoring for a Syria intervention.

Most cooler heads at the time were able to see through it and as they saw the polls climb for intervention some even noted a "herd mentality" taking root. One of these was Hillary Mann Leverett, professor at American University, who on one Steve Kornacki 'UP' show, observed we had no business barging into Syria - which effects would arguably be even more catastrophic and dunning than those from barging into Iraq.

Prof. Leverett compared that drumbeat  " to the lead up to the war in Iraq" and she ought to have known as she was in the Bush White House and also dealing with Congressional Democrats, and with members of the media. She went on:

"The herd mentality which took over to buy into the Bush administration's narrative that Saddam had to have chemical weapons of mass destruction and was determined to use them, was something unquestioned. ....it was not only a mistake, it was based on manufactured evidence. "


In  the case of Iraq, too many citizens played along by being cowed, afraid to speak out lest we be deemed "unpatriotic" or  "terrorist sympathizers".  Many of us also allowed ourselves to be too uninformed, even ignorant of the issues, thereby allowing ourselves to be played. Susan Jacoby, for example (in 'The Shock Doctrine'), referenced “two thirds of us can’t find Iraq on a map and many members of Congress don’t know a Shiite from a Sunni”  In a nutshell, too many Americans had “become too lazy to learn what we need to know to make sound public decisions."

 

This is tragic, and what has led to the operative herd mentality that comes up every time our  collective consciousness is hijacked by overwrought emotions.  Because if Americans can’t or won’t exercise their minds to think critically, especially concerning our national history and consequences of our actions, then we stand to be led into more reckless wars.

 

This thing with ISIS is no different, and as a recent (Mar. 9) highly excellent piece in TIME noted (yes, they do have a few) Americans would be making the biggest error ever in falling for the ISIS trap.  As the authors write (p. 31):

 

"ISIS is taunting the world to run the cycle (of war) one more time....As bad as these people are, there is room for things to get much worse. And they will unless the U.S. and its coalition has the discipline at last to think all the way through to the end. The question is not beating ISIS. It's what comes after that. More than ever the question needs an answer."

 

What comes after that? The multiple authors aren't afraid to broach their views, with which I wholeheartedly agree (ibid.):

 

"The U.S. showed in 1991 and again in 2003 that it knows how to take down enemies in Iraq. What it has never shown is an ability to leave something better afterward."

 

But until it does, ever new crops of terrorists will emerge. From the region's overall degradation of civil society, leading to: "mass unemployment, resentment, suspicion and sense of victimhood" .  These are the human factors that need addressing in the Middle East, especially the conflict -torn regions like Iraq, Syria and Libya. Sure, it's easy to treat all inimical problems like a "nail" and wield a "hammer" to solve them  - but that only leads you back to more conflicts, i.e. that require more "hammers".

 

This again takes us back to State Dept. spokesperson Marie Harf's recent comment which I cited yesterday:

"We cannot kill our way out of this war" 

 

Referring to the current conflict with ISIS.  Well, we certainly cannot if that means once more committing tens of thousands of ground troops - especially after we beheld how that worked out before with Iraq- an intervention that laid the path for ISIS.

 

And let's go even further back in the mists of time to how all these terrorists managed to manifest thanks to our stupid manipulations during the Reagan era.  As the TIME authors remind us (ibid.):

 

"It's true that some of the same mujahedin trained and armed by the U.S. to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan went on to be the founding fathers of modern jihadist terrorism - men like bin Laden and Mullah Omar, creator of the Taliban."

 

Ouch! The truth hurts, doesn't it? The authors go on with even more truth:

 

"No thought was given to what would become of these battle -hardened fanatics after the West was done using them."

 

Yes, indeed. We were too smart by half. Believed we could create this 'Frankenstein' monster to sic on the Russkies but never dreamed it would stay alive and come back to wreak havoc....on US! Hubris anyone?

 

Americans, as fearful as they are about ISIS beheadings and having ISIS zombies appear at Malls, need to get a grip and not allow  themselves to be converted to a drooling, mindless herd. This is exactly what the ISIS bugs want, and they're hoping they can taunt us enough to force our weaker politicos and leaders into precipitous action.

 

But if we do we will prove once more we are indeed insane. As Einstein put it: "insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result."

 

 

See also:


http://www.salon.com/2015/03/05/americas_war_fever_is_rising_how_fear_bloodlust_are_bringing_americans_together/

If You're Against Radical Jihadists - You Need to OPPOSE Attacks on Syria!

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
— Martin Luther King, Jr.,

"As always, the war’s stated purpose — “a punitive strike against the Syrian government” — is just a cover story. The U.S. and its possible allies, France and Great Britain, all have an interest in regaining influence in Syria, which requires Assad’s collapse. But beyond the geopolitics, there are deeper and darker hidden motives for launching a bright new war. We, or at least our government and the economic interests it serves, are addicted to war. This addiction is the Washington consensus. Almost every politician who rises to prominence has to embrace this consensus."- Robert C. Koehler,  'Stopping A War Before It Starts', smirkingchimp.com today


The image this morning (on CBS's Early show) of rebels standing over butchered, headless bodies ought to be a last wake up call for Americans, i.e.  who the hell might comprise a large portion of Assad's opposition. It also brought to mind the video  images of a few months ago, when a rebel dug his paws into a downed Syrian regime defender, ripped out his heart, and ate part of it. Look, these oppositionists are not angels. (Assad sure as shit isn't either, but that's the point! It's an internal civil war between Sunni and Shiite sects of Islam!) Also we still don't know - despite even smarmy liberal bloviators - that this opposition or factions within it,  didn't actually launch the gas attacks to drag the U.S. into the fray. It's not incomprehensible, and despite all Kerry's gum flapping he hasn't presented any forensic evidence showing the gas was industrially manufactured - as opposed to home made.

On Steve Koroacki's MSNBC program ('UP') Sunday, guest Hillary Mann Leverett, professor at American University, came out swinging and gave a wake up call to the mainly pro-attack zombies:

'What if Assad didn't order this? What if this wasn't a Syrian troop chemical attack. What if this was perpetrated by al Qaeda affiliated oppositionists. The consequences here for going into Syria are even more grave than Iraq. Because if we go into Syria and the al Qaeda groups get away with mass chemical warfare- and that's what happened - and we think they're going to stop there - that's the definition of insanity."


Prof. Leverett then pointed out that the Russians and Chinese didn't pull their people out of Syria like the U.S.  but went to the last chemical weapons attack sites in March. What did they find? According to her:

"They did forensics on the ground themselves and found two striking things which have not been covered here in the press at home: One was that the rockets used to deliver those chemicals were home made rockets. Not military or industrially produced. The other thing they found is that the sarin was not military ordnance or industrially produced, it didn't include stabilizers. So maybe the Russians have a point."

Why haven't these been covered by the media at home? Maybe because they're as hot to trot for an attack as Obama and the M-I-C is! Maybe because they can't wait to televise another late night attack with flashes and noise that they seem to believe subs as a real life video game. But....the people on the ground won't be laughing or entertained.


Okay, let's cut the crap. Despite all the Neoliberal warmongering and pundit baloney and BS that  this planned attack on Syria is a "punishment operation" - let me make clear for all remaining sentient citizens that it's an act of war and will be perceived as such by Syria and its allies. Hence, it will invite retaliation and likely massive retaliation! There is no soft soaping this - and what is ambiguated by an above-the- law Empire as "punishment" will be seen by the sentient and sensible global citizen as a pre-emptive,  aggressive strike against a sovereign state - that hasn't killed one single American or demonstrably been proven to affect American interests.


It's not just me, a "rabid" die-hard liberal (actually socialist) saying this either! Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer of the Center for Advanced Defense Studies(appearing on MSNBC's 'The Cycle yesterday )  laid it on the line that NO , the U.S. isn't "following the world" (on any issuance of a "red line")  to address any humanitarian concerns in Syria,  it is pushing the world to follow its lead. But he added that this could have severe repercussions because no matter what we believe, our aggression and attacks will be regarded by the Syrians (as well as the Russians, Iran) as an act of war- inviting full retaliation which could assume myriad forms - from massive cyber attacks, knocking down power grids,  to Iranian missile attacks on the U.S. fleet, to Russian bombing of U.S. destroyers in retaliation for any collateral damage.

Lt. Col. Shaffer  also warned of the possibility of  accidental killing of their technicians,  who help maintain the Syrian air force. Think Putin wouldn't retaliate for killing Russian techs or other personnel? Think again!

And again, keep in mind the images of the radical jihadists we've already seen. Why are so damned many elites - who really don't have that much  real skin in the game (other than egos) -  convinced the jihadists are in the minority? And because of the assumption of jihadi minority status or having no part in the gas attacks, the U.S. can feel free to hurl cruise missiles into Syria.  Could it be an inability to think?  This is the hypothesis of the late Chalmers Johnson, in his book: Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic. 

Johnson references Hanna Arendt's A Report on the Banality of Evil (p. 21) and the model of Adolf Eichmann as a "desk murderer" which also applied (according to Johnson) to  George W. Bush. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld who "order remote controlled killing of the modern sort" including "the firing of cruise missiles from a warship at sea " or the "firing of a Hellfire missile from a Predator, unmanned aerial vehicle controlled by 'pilots' thousands of miles away". These cowards are also "desk murderers" and every bit the contributors to the banality of evil as Eichmann.

How do people, including leaders, become "desk murderers"? Johnson notes (p. 22):

"First, they lose the ability to think because, according to Arendt, 'thinking conditions men against evil doing'".

What  she means is that before one commits an evil act, if he THINKS properly first, he will insert the act into a frame of exterior reference to forecast the effects on all those affected. Like a chess player, he will be able to see 6-10 moves ahead on how he can't advance a certain aggressive plan (i.e. taking the opponent's queen) without serious penalty. Hence,  the thinker will see the adverse consequences his act will lead to, and back away from the precipice.

Let us bear in mind again, as I wrote before, many evil acts are committed with good intentions. The evil then inheres in improper thinking,  which feeds the creation of false beliefs i.e. "We must be the world's guardians of  international norms, law and morality and it's our right to punish all other nations if they act bad." And then leads to an apparent rationally justified evil act.

Johnson goes on (ibid.):

"Jerome Kohn adds, 'With some degree of confidence it may be said that the ability to think, which Eichmann lacked, is the precondition of judging, and that the refusal as well as the inability to judge- to imagine before your eyes the others whom your judgment represents and to whom it responds, invite evil to enter and infect the world'. To lack a personal conscience means 'never to start the soundless, solitary dialogue we call thinking."

What must the putative leader be wary of, whether military or political? According to Johnson (ibid.):

"Instantly and unthinkingly following orders, submission to clichés, stock phrases and adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct - which have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality. That is, against the claim on our thinking attention which all events and facts arouse by virtue of their existence."

Instead of going all around the G-20 in St Petersburg and trying to badger the assembled delegates into joining him in an act of evil folly, Obama needs to find a quiet room, and in his solitary being,  think of what he is emotively planning to do:  inflicting this long distance "limited punishment" on Syria. If he is still able to think and has not been overly preconditioned by conventional responses,  mental artifacts and expected codes (or HIS OWN "red lines"), he will see what he thinks is a national "good" is not the answer.

Let us hope he follows this advice!

On a further note, it's been reported (e.g. at salon.com) this morning that Pope Francis has urged leaders of the Group of 20 to abandon the “futile pursuit” of a military solution in Syria and work instead for dialogue and negotiation to end the conflict.  Obama, you paying attention?

See also:   http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-parry/51460/all-scrubbed-up-nowhere-to-show

and:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-c-koehler/51459/stopping-a-war-before-it-starts

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-parry/51820/syrian-rebels-embrace-al-qaeda

Can We Avoid the "Herd Mentality" This Time Around? Can We Avoid Committing Rational Evil?

Hillary Mann Leverett, professor at American University, came out swinging with facts and intelligence this morning on Steve Kornacki's 'UP' show, that again- we have no business barging into Syria - which effects would arguably be even more catastrophic and dunning than those from barging into Iraq. And whether we're talking "limited strikes" for "two days" or not.

As Prof. Leverett observed, the current drumbeat is "strikingly similar to the lead up to the war in Iraq" and Prof. Leverett ought to know as she was in the Bush White House and also dealing with Congressional Democrats, and with members of the media. She goes on:

"The herd mentality which took over to buy into the Bush administration's narrative that Saddam had to have chemical weapons of mass destruction and was determined to use them, was something unquestioned. ....it was not only a mistake, it was based on manufactured evidence. Here, no one is asking this basic question except our friends in Moscow: 'What if Assad didn't order this? What if this wasn't a Syrian troop chemical attack. What if this was perpetrated by al Qaeda affiliated oppositionists. The consequences here for going into Syria are even more grave than Iraq. Because if we go into Syria and the al Qaeda groups get away with mass chemical warfare- and that's what happened - and we think they're going to stop there - that's the definition of insanity."

But perhaps the country has been in the throes of national insanity since the 1991 Gulf War and ditching the so-called "Vietnam Syndrome"- which up until then had instilled forbearance in our leaders for taking precipitous military action. After that happened, we got "humanitarian" interventions in Somalia (with disastrous results - merely converting it into a rogue state) and Bosnia, which then led the Clinton cruise missile attack in Sudan - which actually struck a pharmaceutical factory and culminating in the lawless invasion of a sovereign state in Iraq. The latter technically no different from the Nazi  blitzkrieg invasion of Poland in 1939 - which also employed the ruse of Polish terror to justify it.

Maybe people need to read 'The Shock Doctrine' by Naomi Klein, or the essay by Henry Giroux, 'The Politics of Cruelty - America's Descent Into Madness' . The problem, of course, is if the political structure has descended into a putative madness, there will be only a few citizens with the insight to see it and the spine to point it out. This very probability makes the "herd mentality" referenced by Prof. Leverett an ongoing reality.

Anyway, back to the 'UP' program. Kornacki interrupted at one point to ask:

"What would be the evidence?" and adding, "John Kerry put a lot of evidence on the table."

To which Prof. Leverett responded: "Compared to Colin Powell, it's a joke!"

Prof. Leverett then pointed out that the Russians and Chinese didn't pull their people out but went to the last chemical weapons attack sites in March. What did they find? According to her:

"They did forensics on the ground themselves and found two striking things which have not been covered here in the press at home: One was that the rockets used to deliver those chemicals were home made rockets. Not military or industrially produced. The other thing they found is that the sarin was not military ordnance or industrially produced, it didn't include stabilizers. So maybe the Russians have a point."

Well, I would say that sane people have a point and anyone claiming not to be foolish would again have to ask: 'Cui bono?' WHO benefits? Would it be Assad, or al Qaeda oppositionists, just itching to get the U.S. involved to help them neuter Assad so they can take over. THEN we will have not a few thousand terrorists to confront, but likely hundreds of thousands. And I can just see the last remnants of our civil liberties crumbling before my eyes as the last vestiges of constitutional protections are gutted .....oh, in the name of "national security."

As Prof. Leverett concluded:

"The rest of the world does not believe what we're saying for good reason: we made it up before!"

Adding:

"This gets back to the whole point in the set up (Kornacki's intro) that this is not peculiar to Bush, Clinton, or Obama. These decisions, taken with very little thought, including under Clinton-  to keep tens of thousands of troops in Iraq, and to continuously bomb Iraq, bomb Sudan and bomb other places- these are not clean interventions."

Indeed, any highly intelligent race of outside observers (say aliens from another world) would regard our actions as meeting even their definition of insanity. They'd ask why this particular enclave of humanity is so obsessed with fighting terrorism when it appears committed to creating more terrorists.

Hillary's final point was the one I made when blogging that the U.S. has no moral authority to unilaterally attack anyone:

"The United States has no authority to punish".

Bingo! We are not the cops of the world, nor do we possess the unique moral authority given our own acts and complicity in past dastardly deeds as I noted three blogs ago.  Besides, if we set this up as a precedent what other "villains" will we be prepared to take out given we are already reaching a $16.7 trillion debt limit next month?

In my new book (Beyond Atheism, Beyond God) in the section Practical Reason and Human Evil  in the final chapter, I note that one of the canards circulated about human evil is that it’s irrational. If the person only knew better, or reasoned properly, he’d arrive at the generic good, and we'd all be better off.  I cited philosopher John Kekes who disposes of this myth quite forcefully (The Roots of Evil, p. 156.)  

As Kekes observes, abundant historical examples disclose that people often robustly justify their actions on the basis of a good perceived in their minds, but which in retrospect turns out to be evil. Therefore it’s not the lack of reason or rationality that infuses their actions but instead the false beliefs that supported the reasoning!

As examples of rational evil  one can cite all supposedly "rational justifications" for aggressive national policy, including military occupations of sovereign states, targeted military attacks, and the implementation of economic evil such as austerity policies- which harm millions.

A case in point for the first is George W. Bush’s “war on terror”, begun after 9/11. Launched after that horrific event nearly twelve years ago, it had been driven with all the best intentions to find and kill all those responsible for the deed that left nearly 3,000 dead in the World Trade Center. But in the aftermath what did we actually see? Well, an invasion of a sovereign state (Iraq) that had nothing to do with 9/11, and which left nearly 600,000 Iraqis dead according to World Health Organization statistics. Added to that, the widespread use of the most debasing torture methods (used by the CIA) to extract information including on bin Laden’s hiding place. The combined American occupations, unpaid for in additional taxes, left the U.S. with nearly $4 trillion in deficits that have now come back to haunt us. These have the nation facing the specter of even more draconian cuts to the most vulnerable citizens under the specious rubric of “sequestration."


Bush and his minions truly believed they were doing good at the time they demanded congress vote on The Iraq War Resolution in 2002, never mind what we later discovered[1]. Bush’s aggressive foreign policies also exposed unsavory aspects about the U.S. as a nation.  For example, one willing to violate Nuremberg Article VI to actually launch a pre-emptive war by invasion as the Nazis did when they invaded Poland. The rich humor of it all is that at the time the Bushies actually compared Saddam to Hitler! Never mind that Saddam was the one being pounded by the most devastating shock and awe attack since the Blitzkrieg launched by Hitler on Poland in 1939.

But this sort of human evil had been strenuously reasoned and formally justified by Bushie Neocons like Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney! In addition, the U.S. corporate media acted as a willing accomplice, fully complicit in spreading the hysteria that led to the Iraq invasion on March 15, 2003.  Hence each and every one of these actors, agents share blame in manifesting human evil, including the devastating costs exacted on Iraqi civilians.

 

Far from malignant human evil emerging without rationality or reason, it instead erupted as if from multiple cancerous cells becoming malignant. We the citizens also played along by being cowed, afraid to speak out lest we be deemed unpatriotic or even terrorist sympathizers.  Many of us also allowed ourselves to be too uninformed, even ignorant of the issues, thereby allowing ourselves to be played. Susan Jacoby, for example, references “two thirds of us can’t find Iraq on a map and many members of Congress don’t know a Shiite from a Sunni[2]”  In a nutshell, too many Americans have “become too lazy to learn what we need to know to make sound public decisions."

 

This is tragic, because if Americans can’t or won’t exercise their minds to think critically, especially concerning our national history and consequences of our actions, then we stand to be led into more reckless wars. This is why Obama's rhetoric that this proposed strike will be "limited" is bollocks. What if, after his "2- day" strike,  another nerve gas attack happens a month later and kills more than 1,429? What then? Obviously, having gone in once under this 'humanitarian" pretext, Obama will have to go in again... and again.....and again! There will be no end especially as he has no intentions of actually removing Assad (which itself would be as reckless as what we did with Saddam).

 

Enough "red lines". Remember one thing and one only: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions".

 

Hackneyed, but as true as ever. Let us have no more rational evil expedited with the best intentions! Under Obama, or anyone else.
 

 See also: http://thiscantbehappening.net/node/1934

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1] We now know an Iraqi (codename ‘curveball’) made the whole WMD baloney up in order to trigger regime change to replace Saddam, oblivious to the human costs.

2] Jacoby, op. cit., 310.

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