the middle east Thread

[Dr Mantis Toboggan]

i want to know what's being done and what we can do to prevent isis infiltration. the only way we can prevent isis winning is by sticking together so if there's anything we should be doing let us know

#ian4mod

 

[sl1k]

To stop isis you need to know where their arms and funding is coming from. It might seem all tin hat foil thinking, but i'm fairly sure it has alot to do with the region's oil and the tit for tat game that is the dynamics of the u.s' complex relationship with russia. The us wanted assad out so pipelines can be built directly from saudi and qatar, through syria and into turkey for distribution to the europeans - which would effectively reduce their dependance in russian energy. Ovvi putin stepped in and didnt let it happen. Out of nowhere isis pop up causing havoc in the region. Israel doesnt sèem too concerned either. A little too convenient for particular parties.

 

[Dr Mantis Toboggan]

i know everybody likes to blame america for everything, but i don't think it's in the u.s.'s strategic interest to fund an al qaeda affiliate

their money is from saudi arabia. obvsly. they are wahhabi, man, and they're fighting shia. it's just another chapter in this drawn out iran/saudi cold war

 

[Womble98]

The US are directly responsible for the war though, because of their actions in Iraq. Furthermore, the historic actions they undertook (going back to the 1960's) can be seen as the root of the whole "The West is evil". What we should be doing, is making closer ties with Iran, a country which looks like it is becoming slowly more moderate, whilst breaking ties with regimes which fund the spread of radical Islam. Iran is no doubt best placed to combat ISIS.

 

[Dr Mantis Toboggan]

iran has been funding shia death squads in iraq: it's far from moderate. disagree with u on the u.s. too. out of the 4 'old men' of post independence middle east only saddam was directly deposed with u.s. action. two of the other three more or less deposed themselves within the parameters of the arab spring. only assad has held on. considering how ethnically heterogeneous and (relatively) peaceful libya and egypt were in comparison to iraq, if u think for a second that saddam wouldn't have been deposed in an alternate timeline without the second gulf war, or at the absolute least iraq wouldn't be syria 2.0 right now, then you're avin a giraffe. saddam's fall was preordanied the u.s. just removed it from the hands of the iraqis

really wish we'd just tell saudi to fuck off. obvsly we can't be too straight with em without the west's support they crumble and they'd crumble at a real shitty time, we do need to let them know that having oil reserves only afford u so much power tho

 

[Womble98]

"Slowly becoming more moderate". Not moderate yet.

When we and the American's invaded Iraq, we set up no sustainable system of government. The members of Saddam's Baath party were driven out. Large numbers of that community were essentially exiled. The prison camps of Abu Ghraib amongst others, have been identified as places where the IS leadership all met up, all united. In the resulting power vacuum caused by this, IS were able to capitalise in Iraq, and then spread into Syria when that too became unstable.
As for anti-Western feeling, for decades, we (the west) supported Saddam against the Islamic country, Iran. Iran was pretty much victimised by us, it was blamed by us for the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war which was caused by Iraqi aggression, and we isolated Iran. Not to mention the support for the Shah's regime previously, in which thousands were murdered, tortured etc, and a Shah's regime that we set up by deposing an actual democracy.

 

[Dr Mantis Toboggan]

wonder how iran would be doing if mossadegh was never overthrown

 

[Dr Mantis Toboggan]

i just find it remarkably simplistic and clumsy to blame errything on the US. american foreign policy exploits and excacerbates the inherent inequality within the middle east, but ultimately the problems are systemic and millennia old. i reckon it's a both a case of the devil u know for us and a rather human fault projection, a case of 'it ain't our fault' for those within the region. we know the u.s. are c*** and we have a deep understanding of these patterns of exploitation u.s foreign policy is consistently guilty of. so, we overplay their fault in the region, missing the wood for the trees. those in the region additionally seem to overlook how the their empire, an actual multiethnic (turkic led admittedly) middle eastern regime, how its' evolution and fall impacted upon and created these fault-lines in the middle east today. america is at fault. global capitalism is at fault. but u have to look deeper to find the real reasons behind a conflict. it's never just one actor, it's a successive gangbang of ill-fated expeditions and collateral damage. we'll be hearing about how the sunni/shia schism is obama's fault next, how it was a cia death squad that killed husayn ibn ali

 

[Tilbury]

i know everybody likes to blame america for everything, but i don't think it's in the u.s.'s strategic interest to fund an al qaeda affiliate

their money is from saudi arabia. obvsly. they are wahhabi, man, and they're fighting shia. it's just another chapter in this drawn out iran/saudi cold war

And where do they get all their weapons from.

 

[Dr Mantis Toboggan]

u have the money doesn't matter where u get the weapons from. we live in an era of global capital i've read a lot on their funding, particuarly their weaponry. it's a messy, messy situation but it truly is from everywhere and anywhere

 

[SUTSS]

"Slowly becoming more moderate". Not moderate yet.

When we and the American's invaded Iraq, we set up no sustainable system of government. The members of Saddam's Baath party were driven out. Large numbers of that community were essentially exiled. The prison camps of Abu Ghraib amongst others, have been identified as places where the IS leadership all met up, all united. In the resulting power vacuum caused by this, IS were able to capitalise in Iraq, and then spread into Syria when that too became unstable.
As for anti-Western feeling, for decades, we (the west) supported Saddam against the Islamic country, Iran. Iran was pretty much victimised by us, it was blamed by us for the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war which was caused by Iraqi aggression, and we isolated Iran. Not to mention the support for the Shah's regime previously, in which thousands were murdered, tortured etc, and a Shah's regime that we set up by deposing an actual democracy.

This is a bigger issue than actually invading in my opinion. Saddam was a tyrant and the world is a better place without him in it. But soldiers aren't nation builders and there seemed to be a real lack of plan or effort to create the diplomatic infrastructure needed for Iraq to succeed in the long run.

 

[Dr Mantis Toboggan]

a result of the conflation of interests that led us there to begin with probz

 

[Tilbury]

u have the money doesn't matter where u get the weapons from. we live in an era of global capital i've read a lot on their funding, particuarly their weaponry. it's a messy, messy situation but it truly is from everywhere and anywhere

Mean the Saudi's. We shouldn't be trading with them.

 

[Dr Mantis Toboggan]

agreed. but we can't ignore both them and russia that'd be shooting ourselves in both feet

 

[sl1k]

The West funded - in one way or another whether through arms or $ - Wahabism to break up the Ottoman empire.

 

[Techno Gypsie]

I read this today and found it quite interesting. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/11/-sp-isis-the-inside-story?CMP=share_btn_fb

 

[Womble98]

This is a bigger issue than actually invading in my opinion. Saddam was a tyrant and the world is a better place without him in it. But soldiers aren't nation builders and there seemed to be a real lack of plan or effort to create the diplomatic infrastructure needed for Iraq to succeed in the long run.

There were more than enough grounds in my eyes, to invade Iraq on humanitarian reasons- Saddam had used gas against the Kurds and was attempting ethnic cleansing.

 

[ForeverUnited]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...tate-group-threatens-kill-Japan-hostages.html

The latest.

 

[Dr Mantis Toboggan]

The West funded - in one way or another whether through arms or $ - Wahabism to break up the Ottoman empire.

that'd be impressive considering the break up of the ottoman empire predates the east/west dichotomisation by like 3 decades

 

[Dr Mantis Toboggan]

i bet the tff politics forum became right shit when i got banned

 

[sl1k]

that'd be impressive considering the break up of the ottoman empire predates the east/west dichotomisation by like 3 decades

Well they certainly contributed to the demise of thr empire. They used lawrence of arabia then screwed everyone by dividing the middle eastern land among
st themselves i.e. the europeans. Arabs later had t o take up arms to get their land back. Thats when islamic fundamentalism rly took off as a banner to unite under to fight off occupation.

 

[Dr Mantis Toboggan]

never the muslims fault is it now

also let's conveniently ignore the fact we propped the ottoman empire up for like a quarter of its existence

 

[SUTSS]

You must have missed the memo Ian. The people of the Middle East have no agency of their own and are just forced into things by the evil Westerners.

 

[sl1k]

Totally missing my point.

Ofcourse sectarian violence has always in the region, I'm in no way saying that Muslims have not played their part, but the West's proxy wars with Russia played a part also. As did the fact lines were drawn in the sand and land was split up amonst colonialist Europeans.

I may seem like I go on about the West sometimes, but that's only cos there's alot of rly ignorant and dare I say plain dumb people who know fuckal about history.

My point is, there's a shit load of complex interwebbed reasons to why the middle east the way it is. And most of the civilised world has played some part in contributed to it too.

 

[Dr Mantis Toboggan]

nah you've got it the wrong way round. the zeitgeist being what it is the 'west' and israel are assumed to be in the wrong. like 90% of discourse on the middle east revolves around the errors of zionism and our unconditional support of it and the evils of imperialism. what you're doing by constantly overstating this, is as sutts put it so well, removing agency from muslims. the middle east isn't africa, there u can talk about a lack of agency due to a lack of (generally speaking) states and urbanised communities in the pre-colonial era. in the middle east we've had an ottoman system built upon the remains of a byzantine system which was, in turn, built upon a roman one and so on. there are centuries of overlapping east/west empires and peoples, u can't just blame the ottoman empire's fall and all the present day chaos on our meddling of it.

u want to look to the past but u only want to look to it when u can hold your people on a pedestal and claim 'yes history's important u bought down the great empire of osman u evil white men '. u don't apparently wanna look at the existing schisms within the ottoman empire. were we at fault when muhammad ali marched on turkey in the 1830s? were we at fault when turkey killed off the armenians and the pontic greeks? you're making assumptions on the inviolability of this 'middle east' when it's nothing of the sort i mean there ain't even an accepted definition of what the middle east is it's just extended until critics of the west can't any longer say 'oh wait this is the u.s.'s fault'. which is why turkey ain't included really cause turkey's doing well. which is why iran isn't included anymore cause they fucked themselves ultimately (after being fucked by britain in 53 admittedly).

what is the middle east? it ain't some tragic comedy of errors, the buttend of a constant stream of neo-capitalist plunder based jokes, it's part of a greater mediterranean international system. its demographics are the result of a millennia of on again/off again military expansion and contraction. its undergoing a period of contraction because there has been very little muslim political innovation. the middle east held up their 'strong men' like icons, 'they're showing the west they can fight imperialism hoo rah'. the fact is even as u did hold up nasser and the latter wave of strong men (qadaffi's generation) leaders u were simultaneously embarrassed by them. they didn't fight the evils of zionism and imperialism, they fucking co-opted them for their own needs. ultimately, u were failed by your own indigenous leaders. what happened to pan-arabism? that failed u and that was an indigenous movement. what about pan-islam? only evidence i see of that is in isis and al qaeda. regions develop when their people blame less and think more, u can understand an evil but it never exists in a vacuum; the game is rigged but it's not unbeatable

 

[sl1k]

When I talk about the history I'm talking specifically about the time and place were wahhabism was born. End of the day that plays a massive in recruiting fundamentalist militants through indoctrination and is what gets funding from the house of saud. Why are we exactly supporting this dictatorship? All they have done so far is facilitate the defamation of Islam and Muslims while attrocities are committed all over the world in the name of this sick cult. That's what we Muslims mean when we say terrorism isn't Islam. They do not represent us in anyway.

Ofcourse I'ma be defensive of Muslims, any nutter with a beard goes and does suttin n outa nowhere the 'Quran breeds extremists'. I'm just personally tired of that lazy ass angle of arguement.

Ian your history is on point but I can see you - as did SUTSS - have mis-interpreted my angle of arguement. Fact is all of our histories are fucked in places, great in others. But how do we move forward from our current global issues. That is the conversation that is most important.

 

[silkyman]

Indeed. I suspect many of the young men and even younger girls who have gone to fight have never heard of the Ottoman Empire.

The important discussion is 'how is it stopped'. Leave 'how did it start' for the historians later.

 

[Dr Mantis Toboggan]

The important discussion is 'how is it stopped'. Leave 'how did it start' for the historians later.

no, idiotic suggestion. when u make a prediction on behavior in the international arena, when u aim to foresee conflict or peace u base that prediction on history. history is the lab of international relations. without history what are u basing your suppositions on? nada is the answer

we support the house of saud not due to our role in its rise btw, but out of necessity as i said earlier. we genuinely, depressingly and absolutely have to support saudi arabia. we left ourselves no other option

 

[sl1k]

no, idiotic suggestion. when u make a prediction on behavior in the international arena, when u aim to foresee conflict or peace u base that prediction on history. history is the lab of international relations. without history what are u basing your suppositions on? nada is the answer

we support the house of saud not due to our role in its rise btw, but out of necessity as i said earlier. we genuinely, depressingly and absolutely have to support saudi arabia. we left ourselves no other option

I get why, I know the history why. But it's obviously a counter productive relationship when you consider what they finance and how that affects the rest of us here in the West.

 

[Dr Mantis Toboggan]

i dunno, terrorism offers quite a lot more to a state than it takes away. i mean look at all the intrusive media laws that were passed after our (relatively) tiny terror attack. considering how small 99% of terrorist attacks are, the blanket crackdown on freedoms that follow any attack are really incommensurate. play the obvious pros (to a state) of terrorism against the danger of isolating yourself from the TWO MOTHERFUCKING BIGGEST OIL SOURCES AT THE SAME TIME, allowing some sunni interventionism and an increased risk of domestic muslim tension seems an ok sell