Innocence Riots

Interesting article in the Guardian today: Full Article

It's too simplistic to simply say "Their fault. Not ours." The West has been picking sides and selling weapons to it's preferred puppets for decades. Our oil companies have been exploiting Middle East oil resources for decades too. Western interference has a long and undignified record in the Middle East that dates back long before 9/11.You can blame radical Islam for all ills or you can claim that radical Islam is an entirely inevitable product of evil Western governments subjugating dontrodden Arabs.Like most things - The fact is that the truth lies somewhere in-between.

This black and white 'you are either with us or against us' approach is part of the problem. I don't recall saying murder is ever justified. It's not a question of "help it".The question here is why they are doing it? What drives the people rioting to do what they are doing? Of course if everyone storming Western embassies etc. just decided that the world would be a jolly nicer place if we all just tried to get along and let bygones be bygones then they could stop. Of course they can "help it" in the sense of choosing to do it. The question is why do they choose to do what they do? So you think all the Middle East rioters, all those expressing anti-Western sentiments, all those who seem willing to give their lives for some cause that we find difficult to identify are simply doing so because they are delusional religious nutjobs who have been fed a mass of anti-US propaganda by their governments?I think that is too simplistic.The following link is to a piece shown on UK TV a couple of days ago. It isn't hyperbolic. Indeed it is quite understated. It isn't anti-US or even explicitly anti-Western in content. Indeed it is mainly about Syrian internal conflict. But I think it is quite telling of how people are driven to become "terrorists" by the situations they find themselves in. I also think the sort of situation shown is not untypical in large parts of the Middle East. It's about ten mins long. At about 8:30 the desperate father states that he would give his small son to Al Qaeda as a suicide bomber. It seems to me that he has nearly reached a point where all he has left is the ability to fight, the ability to die and his faith that it all means something. LinkEdited by Straggler, : No reason given.

I think the point is that children die in drone attacks, we all know children are going to die in drone attacks and that the ongoing use of drone attacks in which children get killed cannot legitimately describe those child deaths as "accidents". Use of the word "targeted" is just going to lead to a "No they are not" response of the sort Drone received. But the point which he makes with his questions is a valid one: Can you at least see where he is coming from with this comparison? How would you answer his question? Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Off-topic banner.

The difference is obviously obvious to you but perhaps not to others. Without being trite or facetious can you explain where you think the difference is exactly? Particularly in terms of intent and expected outcome. Well if that was my dead children you were talking about in such terms I might well be tempted to stop being a peaceful and productive member of society, strap a bomb to my chest and take as many of those exhibiting such attitudes as I could with me.If killing people’s children isn’t the best way to turn them into terrorists I don’t know what is.. Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Off-topic banner.

On what basis are you convinced that those undertaking the attacks are doing the necessary moral calculus? So you think the US is entirely justified in it’s actions. Those who see the US as the "oppressor" think they are entirely justified in their actions.My question to you is — How do you see this ending? Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Off-topic banner.

Meanwhile those who have been incredibly tolled have nothing to lose and are prepared to go to almost any length, including blowing themselves and their families up, in order to exact some sort of revenge on the oppressor.....And so it goes on..... Such as not working? Such as exacerbating the situation? Well as one asshole to another (perhaps arsehole in my case) - Recovering from the asshole label is indeed fraught with cynicism and peril. But if you genuinely are an un-repentant asshole you can't really be justifiably upset about being treated like an asshole.....

I have been reading what this guy, Robert Grenier, has to say: Robert Grenier headed the CIA's counter-terrorism center from 2004 to 2006 and was previously a CIA station chief in Pakistan. Grenier was the CIA's station chief in Islamabad when terrorists struck the World Trade Center in New York and attacked the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. He played a key role in co-ordinating covert operations that led up to the downfall of the Taliban in Afghanistan. He later headed up the CIA's CTC where he led the CIA's global operations in the War on Terror as its top counter-terrorism official. He left the agency in 2006.He says:

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"It [the drone program] needs to be targeted much more finely. We have been seduced by them and the unintended consequences of our actions are going to outweigh the intended consequences,"

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"By launching those attacks, are we creating more militants than in fact we are killing?"

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"That brings you to a place where young men, who are typically armed, are in the same area and may hold these militants in a certain form of high regard. If you strike them indiscriminately you are running the risk of creating a terrific amount of popular anger. They have tribes and clans and large families. Now all of a sudden you have a big problem"

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"It's not just a matter of numbers of militants who are operating in that area, it also effects the motivations of those militants. They now see themselves as part of a global Jihad. They are not just focused on helping oppressed Muslims in Kashmir or trying to fight the NATO and the Americans in Afghanistan, they see themselves as part of a global struggle, and therefore are a much broader threat than they were previously. So in a sense, yes, we have helped to bring about the situation that we most fear."

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"We have gone a long way down the road of creating a situation where we are creating more enemies than we are removing from the battlefield. We are already there with regards to Pakistan and Afghanistan,"

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Source and SourceAs for the rioting and anti-Americanism that is manifesting itself — Chalmers Johnson is his Blowback series of books has some interesting things to say:

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"In Blowback, I set out to explain why we are hated around the world. The concept "blowback" does not just mean retaliation for things our government has done to and in foreign countries.

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It refers to retaliation for the numerous illegal operations we have carried out abroad that were kept totally secret from the American public. This means that when the retaliation comes -- as it did so spectacularly on September 11, 2001 -- the American public is unable to put the events in context. So they tend to support acts intended to lash out against the perpetrators, thereby most commonly preparing the ground for yet another cycle of blowback. In the first book in this trilogy, I tried to provide some of the historical background for understanding the dilemmas we as a nation confront today, although I focused more on Asia -- the area of my academic training -- than on the Middle East."

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"The Sorrows of Empire was written during the American preparations for and launching of the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. I began to study our continuous military buildup since World War II and the 737 military bases we currently maintain in other people's countries.

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This empire of bases is the concrete manifestation of our global hegemony, and many of the blowback-inducing wars we have conducted had as their true purpose the sustaining and expanding of this network. We do not think of these overseas deployments as a form of empire; in fact, most Americans do not give them any thought at all until something truly shocking, such as the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, brings them to our attention. But the people living next door to these bases and dealing with the swaggering soldiers who brawl and sometimes rape their women certainly think of them as imperial enclaves, just as the people of ancient Iberia or nineteenth-century India knew that they were victims of foreign colonization."

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I haven’t read these books (I think I’ll try and get hold of the first one — Blowback). But those rioting and exhibiting anti-US sentiments certainly seem to think of the West as colonising oppressors. what is the "win condition" for the US in your view? Hmmm. How's that strategy working out for you so far?

I thought the "war on terror" was using the word "war" in the same sense it is used when we say "the war on poverty" or "the war on drugs" or whatever.I didn't think we were actually at war in the sense of proper war war.Who are we at "war" with exactly......?

So who are we at war with now?

Oh. So you think the US (along with it's allies) and Al Qaeda are at war with each other?If Al Qaeda is at war with the US then was 9/11 an act of terrorism or was it instead an act of war in the same way that British planes bombing German cities in WW2 (for example) was?I'm not sure what point I'm making here I'm just interested in where you see the line between terrorism and waging war on a nation in a way that includes all it's citizens.To be fair to your use of the term "war" I think Al Qaeda would certainly seek to justify their actions by claiming that they are at "war" with the United States as a nation, including it's civilian population....

I'm not really disagreeing (and I have no intention of starting a long dialogue on this with you) but I am interested to know who you think it is a war between? Who is at war with who in this war exactly?

So am I right in saying that, officially, the US isn't at war?

The tone of your post suggests you are imbuing me with a position I don't think I hold.I am happy to accept that the "Iraq war" was a war whether or not the official US sanctioning of war was declared or not.But I am still interested in knowing who exactly it is the US is at war with now?

Sure. I agree. But what about the bombing of other German cities in the name of war?Not everyone in Berlin was a Nazi soldier...