Background:
Foreign Policy: ISIS/ISIL & Building A Coalition Against Them
The Daily Show: Turkey agrees to let the U.S. use their military bases to bomb ISIS but later reverses the decision in order to conduct air strikes on their own surprising targets. (4:19):
Foreign Policy: ISIS/ISIL & Building A Coalition Against Them
The Daily Show: Turkey agrees to let the U.S. use their military bases to bomb ISIS but later reverses the decision in order to conduct air strikes on their own surprising targets. (4:19):
What we have here is well over a century of military engagement in the Middle East & it's surrounding territories.
Many of these "countries" that exist today are basically randomly drawn maps by the British in their last military involvement as a western based Christian nation establishing the Middle East as it is today.
This particular problem was a direct result of our overthrow of Saddam Hussein. We had a policy of removing several levels of Government bureaucrats so that there was no one left to govern Iraq leaving it in chaos and turns out several of Saddam's top generals became what is "ISIS" today. When in reality they are a bunch of secular thugs - deposed by us - posing as Muslim fundamentalists (to use the established rhetoric to attract followers with the effects of a decade long war in the area to back them up) & out to kill everyone they can.
Instead of talking about the overall reason for why we have to clean up the ISIS threat, our media has turned it into a gruesome spectacle of a war to stop beheadings of American Citizens which will simply encourage more of them to happen.
Note: The United States is not in any existential threat because of some people dwelling in the desert. To say such a thing is just crazy.
Related past posts:
Moral Problem Of Violence - How Much Violence Can We Stand In Syria Before Wanting To Do Something?
THE PROBLEM OF THE "NEWS" MEDIA INTERFERING WITH NATIONAL SECURITY
UNDERSTANDING THE SYRIA PROBLEM FROM A NATIONAL SECURITY PERSPECTIVE
Instead of talking about the overall reason for why we have to clean up the ISIS threat, our media has turned it into a gruesome spectacle of a war to stop beheadings of American Citizens which will simply encourage more of them to happen.
Note: The United States is not in any existential threat because of some people dwelling in the desert. To say such a thing is just crazy.
Related past posts:
Moral Problem Of Violence - How Much Violence Can We Stand In Syria Before Wanting To Do Something?
THE PROBLEM OF THE "NEWS" MEDIA INTERFERING WITH NATIONAL SECURITY
UNDERSTANDING THE SYRIA PROBLEM FROM A NATIONAL SECURITY PERSPECTIVE
Showcase: Dick Cheney Making It Clear He Knew Invading Iraq Would Be a Mistake
Origins Of The Syria-ISIS Problem - Our first mistake was invading Iraq in the first place knowing what we knew (& this seems top be intentional). As a result we have created an almost schizophrenic society. Our second mistake was the ridiculous amount of people we killed. The third mistake was not stopping this when the intent of the war became clear. In short, a complete failure of American Democracy.
The Word - Perspective: There's nothing wrong with the number 2,000. Hell, five years ago we were celebrating it. (3:41)
The Word - Perspective: There's nothing wrong with the number 2,000. Hell, five years ago we were celebrating it. (3:41)
Showcase: Documents Proving We Invaded Iraq For Oil & Dick Cheney Profited From It
Halliburton got $7B in no-bid Iraq contracts
During Vice President Dick Cheney's tenure as its chief executive, the Halliburton Corporation altered its accounting policies so it could report as revenue more than $100 million in disputed costs on big construction projects, public filings by the company show. Halliburton did not disclose the change to investors for over a year.
Vice President Dick Cheney’s stock options in Halliburton rose from $241,498 in 2004 to over $8 million in 2005, an increase of more than 3,000 percent, as Halliburton continues to rake in billions of dollars from no-bid/no-audit government contracts.
Bush's Legacy: New Iraq Oil Law To Open Iraq’s Oil Reserves to Western Companies
The Halliburton Agenda: The Politics of Oil and Money
Bush's Legacy: Fired Army Whistleblower Receives $970K for Exposing Halliburton No-Bid Contracts in Iraq
Dick Cheney: The Ultimate Laissez-Faire Capitalist.
HALLIBURTON GETS $7 BILLION IN NO-BID IRAQ OIL CONTRACTS. GET'S FINED $200,000. LEAVES $55 MILLION TIP.
Our historical involvement in the middle east, that proves something we would rather not admit to ourselves just yet (as "installed" into us by Fox News & its allies) , is why Ron Paul was initially shut out by Fox News in the 2012 Primaries!
About 5 minutes into the above video Ron Paul is asked about Jihad/Suicide Attacks and he highly recommends the research done by Robert Pape
Take a look at the research he is talking about (or watch a presentation of his on C-Span below)...
The Logic of Suicide Terrorism: It’s the occupation, not the fundamentalism The American Conservative: Your new book, Dying to Win, has a subtitle: The Logic of Suicide Terrorism. Can you just tell us generally on what the book is based, what kind of research went into it, and what your findings were? Robert Pape: Over the past two years, I have collected the first complete database of every suicide-terrorist attack around the world from 1980 to early 2004. This research is conducted not only in English but also in native-language sources—Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, and Tamil, and others—so that we can gather information not only from newspapers but also from products from the terrorist community. The terrorists are often quite proud of what they do in their local communities, and they produce albums and all kinds of other information that can be very helpful to understand suicide-terrorist attacks.
This wealth of information creates a new picture about what is motivating suicide terrorism. Islamic fundamentalism is not as closely associated with suicide terrorism as many people think. The world leader in suicide terrorism is a group that you may not be familiar with: the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. This is a Marxist group, a completely secular group that draws from the Hindu families of the Tamil regions of the country. They invented the famous suicide vest for their suicide assassination of Rajiv Ghandi in May 1991. The Palestinians got the idea of the suicide vest from the Tamil Tigers. TAC: So if Islamic fundamentalism is not necessarily a key variable behind these groups, what is? RP: The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign—over 95 percent of all the incidents—has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw. TAC: That would seem to run contrary to a view that one heard during the American election campaign, put forth by people who favor Bush’s policy. That is, we need to fight the terrorists over there, so we don’t have to fight them here. RP: Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism, the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies over there, if you would, is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us.
We are fighting people OVER THERE ... who are fighting us BECAUSE we are OVER THERE!!!!
Take a look at the research he is talking about (or watch a presentation of his on C-Span below)...
The Logic of Suicide Terrorism: It’s the occupation, not the fundamentalism The American Conservative: Your new book, Dying to Win, has a subtitle: The Logic of Suicide Terrorism. Can you just tell us generally on what the book is based, what kind of research went into it, and what your findings were? Robert Pape: Over the past two years, I have collected the first complete database of every suicide-terrorist attack around the world from 1980 to early 2004. This research is conducted not only in English but also in native-language sources—Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, and Tamil, and others—so that we can gather information not only from newspapers but also from products from the terrorist community. The terrorists are often quite proud of what they do in their local communities, and they produce albums and all kinds of other information that can be very helpful to understand suicide-terrorist attacks.
This wealth of information creates a new picture about what is motivating suicide terrorism. Islamic fundamentalism is not as closely associated with suicide terrorism as many people think. The world leader in suicide terrorism is a group that you may not be familiar with: the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. This is a Marxist group, a completely secular group that draws from the Hindu families of the Tamil regions of the country. They invented the famous suicide vest for their suicide assassination of Rajiv Ghandi in May 1991. The Palestinians got the idea of the suicide vest from the Tamil Tigers. TAC: So if Islamic fundamentalism is not necessarily a key variable behind these groups, what is? RP: The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign—over 95 percent of all the incidents—has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw. TAC: That would seem to run contrary to a view that one heard during the American election campaign, put forth by people who favor Bush’s policy. That is, we need to fight the terrorists over there, so we don’t have to fight them here. RP: Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism, the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies over there, if you would, is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us.
We are fighting people OVER THERE ... who are fighting us BECAUSE we are OVER THERE!!!!
... & here is how the GOP who call themselves "Republicans" stay in power...
CHART from Mother Jones: Americans didn’t intend to elect a Republican majority to the House of Representatives. But thanks to GOP-engineered redistricting, they did.
Shutstorm 2013: America Sits on Its Balls - Republican Shutdown - John Oliver explains the electorally invincible strategy behind unpopular Congressional actions. (06:09):
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