Comment by 0xFFC | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 0xFFC | Hacker News Reader

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Complete and pure nonsense.I don't have time to respond for all of that(you can read my comment in bottom).

But FWIW US didn't start intervene in middle East policy in 2001. They have half century of destroying in any imaginable way.

BTW the way you are dividing ethics show you don't have clue what you are taking about.for example Kurds vs Alawites? Really ? These are allies most of the time.

And another thing you completely missed is the idea of West intervention in middle East weakened liberal politician position in middle East.by intervening you are basically proving yes.liberals are our puppets.

And I don't know you have read or watched any documentary (beside midia establishment fantasies).fightig against West and taking "revenge of our people" is best propaganda for Isis in recruitment process.

(By people they refer to who have died in iraq, afghanistan invasion, or when US did support dictators which some of them brutally tortured people/journalist)

Welcome to real world , and turn off your CNN

Blaming the West for all their problems has become a kind of a reflex in the middle east, but the west didn't create this ethnic hatred, and the west didn't create islamism (if a finger had to be pointed at anyone it should rather be Saudi Arabia, though it's a bit like blaming Germany for the Gulag and the Cultural Revolution because Marx was German).

Actually they did.no matter how much you deny it. But the truth is they did , as people like Noam Chomsky tries to tell truth.but people in western society are mind washed.

USA and West political intervention in middle East created mojaheddin at first place dude.because they thought they need these guys against Soviet.no one in that time cared about people of middle east, when they was creating these monsters.do you know any history? Mujahedeen was small group of people in caves.when USA made them hero's.

You can look at times when people in middle East lived together peacefully for hundreds of years.Jew , Christian, Muslims and go on. And remember this was time when slavery and lynching was cool thing to do in your society.

P.s. I am not saying middle Eastern people are better or worse. This is complete nonsense. People are homo-seipans and all of us are animals. There is no bad or good. But they will become bad when you make their lives miserable. When there is no education.

Maybe you are right. Maybe not. Stating something as "truth" will not make it so in my mind. Show me the sources, show me the arguments. Show everybody that you know why you state it as truth.

Only because Chomsky says so is like saying: Jesus said so.

I'd like to follow the logical arguments myself.

btw.: I do think, that the western interventions, the capitalistic land-grabbing, the weapons trade, the support for partisan groups, because of mutual political enemies and so on are (at least) some of the reasons this powder keg keeps exploding.

Non the less are the underlying ethnicities, animosities that go back generations and different believe systems (like sunnites and shiites) at least as much to blame.

Only doing finger pointing in the direction of the big bad wolf called US of A is too easy, too simplistic (imho) and will not lead to a better understanding.

I do not believe in such a simplistic logic when it comes to world politics. Most of the time there is a multitude of influencing factors at play. These have o be understood like in a multiple regression analysis (just a metaphor).

Actually your argument (about Chomsky) is seriously ridiculous.

When I reference a person like Chomsky or any other scientist (which is well respected scientist) I am not referencing to his character.I am referring to material and position which he takes (for example in his books, which is based on logical inferring, or factual evidence)

I don't think any good will come out of this discussion because you keep nitpicking.But for further information you can read Chomsky's,Finkelstein's and serius scientifics book.

>I do not believe in such a simplistic logic when it comes to world politics. Most of the time there is a multitude of influencing factors at play. These have o be understood like in a multiple regression analysis (just a metaphor).

I 100% agree with this part.but I don't agree with make matters complicated. This is fact and simple. USA did support Mujahedin for many years. And go on.

careful I am not saying USA is responsible for all things in middle East.but they are major part in this fucking mess they created. And after they left middle East we can start to talk (without any military intervention from outside) and push for reform in middle east.And I would personally beg/appreciate for providing cultural material.( I don't know. Internet. TV shows. Thing like this , which shows people how people live in West)

You can and should argue Chomsky's positions, writing ideas and such. In my opinion you must do this, else no progress is possible. That said - I did read him, I have a very high degree of respect for his ideas. I think nobody, esp. in the social "sciences" should become an "orthodoxy" (lacking a better word here).

Me being "seriously ridiculous"? Maybe - but I see Chomsky (and others) being thrown around as a killer phrase more and more. Not to further any discussion, but to end it with a final bang.

So no, I will not refrain from comparing these argumentative structures to religious arguing like it happened in the medieval times during different fractions of "the faith" for example. Great thinkers were back then also used as pars pro toto of their writings. And were also used as "arguments" - so yeah, I (on purpose) showed the flaws in your argument.

This last part by the way is just me interpreting your own argument against you. Probably totally misrepresenting you in the process and misunderstanding you as well. As you by the way did with my argumentation.

I totally agree with your view, that western intervention in the middle east did make matters way worse on the whole. I do strongly believe that we should reign them in (will not happen) and should not hail them as the source of freedom and democracy in the world (will also not happen). I am cynical and I do believe that the western (so called) democracies will be further doing their thing and we, the western people will further be supporting these systems without knowing most of what happens in the dark and unknown to us.

I do not agree with you calling me ridiculous though. As I strongly believe every "well respected" scientist has to have his writings and thinking strongly challenged for progress.

I feel like the burden of proof is definitely on the people suggesting that this was inevitable.

The west, lead by the US, has been destabalizing the middle east since the 1940's in order to pillage their natural resources and it continues to this day. This is their clear motive, stated in writing.

Here [1] is an FOIA'd email to Hillary's private server from a French aide where they are found casually talking about overthrowing Gadaffi in order to look after their interests in global oil markets, regional monetary dominance, and to make their military look good for the sake of internal political posturing. This email changed the way I saw the world so much.

I used to hear people say this sort of thing and think, "Well, it's the internet. Lots of crazy people out there. I guess what they're saying is plausable, but I don't believe that our government is making such a conscious, concerted effort." But it's hard to look at an email like that, served from a .gov domain, and think that the cheap oil we get from destabalizing this region is just a pleasant side-effect of pursuing an honest humanitarian goal.

And this isn't something new. It started with the Red Line Agreement in the 20's, where we entitled ourself to middle eastern oil. This became another agreement and into another, but the point is that we wanted their oil, and their political climate was in turmoil. All it takes is one nationalist movement to shut down a pipeline and our economy goes to hell.

Turns out there's a very simple solution: throw muscle at it. Don't risk someone unfriendly getting into power by reducing power all-together through destabalization and make sure that those who are in charge are effectively puppets.

[1]: They actually retroactively took this email off foia.state.gov, so a cached version will have to do... : http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/...

So you are suggesting that when sunni extremists kill 50 people with a bomb in a shia market in Iraq, it is because of Western oil contracts?

Indirectly, but yes, absolutely.

This region has been robbed of its ability to develop. The governments are dysfunctional by design. Is it any surprise that the people would start to identify more with their church than their government? It's local. It has set values and rules.

I'm not saying this accounts for centuries-old conflicts. But Sunni and Shia get along without killing each other in other parts of the world-- what's different about the middle east?

    > But Sunni and Shia get along without killing each other in other
    > parts of the world-- what's different about the middle east?

I happily admit my ignorence on this issue, but after some quick searching I couldn't find any demographic maps of Sunni/Shia populations that didn't exactly overlap with the current conflict-areas between Sunni/Shia in the Middle-East:

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00maplinks/over... http://thegulfblog.com/tag/sunni-shia-middle-east-map/

I.e. where else in the world is there a mixed Sunni/Shia population? Nowhere? Isn't that what's different about the Middle-East in this regard?

Muslims are only about 20% of the world's population, and only about 10% of that are Shia. So it's unrealistic to expect to find places where there's an even split.

With that being said, 15-20% of the Shia Muslims in the world live in the Americas, believe it or not. [1] Granted, all the Muslim sects together make up a minuscule portion of the population of the Americas, so it's reasonable to argue that this isn't a fair comparison.

The difference in my eyes is that Muslims in the Americas have governments they can depend on for arbitration.

[1]: http://shianumbers.com/shias-in-americas.html?m

You're asserting that US interference in the Middle-East has caused present Sunni-Shia conflict, which may well be correct. But I think your supporting point of "it doesn't happen in other parts of the world" is weak.

Of course they aren't tracking down and killing each other in the US, because they're both minority groups and probably rarely even run into each other.

That doesn't say anything about whether they would be doing so if they were both in the majority and their sectarian conflicts were the dominant aspect in society.

    > The difference in my eyes is that Muslims in the Americas have
    > governments they can depend on for arbitration.

So if the governments in the Americas collapsed do you think the Sunnis and Shias there would go right back to systematically killing each other? Could you e.g. say the same thing about the Amish and the Mormons? Or is there a pre-existing divede between these people that really has nothing to do with external factors?

You can't both say that Sunni & Shia conflict happens in certain areas of the world because of US foreign policy, and also suggest that Sunni & Shia conflicts would arise between Muslims living in the US who aren't subject to US foreign policy.

Almost no one else on this thread cited sources. Whereas 0xFFC mentioned excellent sources anyone can check out to improve their knowledge. (Like for any other field.) The poster said, "I don't have time to respond for all of that." We're all busy, we don't have to spoon-feed each other arguments amply covered by leading dissident scholars.

> the big bad wolf called US of A

The whole zombie genre (probably anything post-apocalyptic) is based on the premise that the US would immediately collapse into reactionary, extremist militant gangs often out to impose a new state.

What other country goes to the other end of the world and topples governments? Does China drop bombs on US militants? Set up military bases in Canada? Of course the US gov't is the global hegemon, like the big mafia boss, regardless of what propagandized inhabitants think.

> And remember this was time when slavery and lynching was cool thing to do in your society.

...and is all the rage in the Middle East today.

How about killing Australian native people like kangaroo? Do know history? When they arrived to the land which we call today Australia they killed native people like kangaroo.

It is a little bit disgusting, the same people who created this fuckig mess, the same people who supported brutal dictators, the same people who created Mujahedeen at first place , now came and claims ,

"Oops , we didn't mean to create this mess.maybe some thing wrong in your people's gene?"

No people are people.They do bad thing when there is no education , when there is no economy.when there is no future. When you humilate their existence.

Do you wanna see bad thing? Take trip, and go to one of trumps rally , when they literally yell at black people: " go to your fucking continent, what the fuck are you doing in my country? "

"the west didn't create this ethnic hatred"

Look at the border between France and Spain, there are big mountains there. Now look at the border between Egypt and Libya, a straight line in the middle of nowhere. How is that possible?

"if a finger had to be pointed at anyone it should rather be Saudi Arabia,"

Who is the best ally and supported of the Saudi royalty? One of the more backwards regimes in the world.

What about Iraq?

What about Iran? from wikipedia: "In 1951, Mohammad Mosaddegh was elected as the prime minister. He became enormously popular in Iran, after he nationalized Iran's petroleum industry and oil reserves. He was deposed in the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, an Anglo-American covert operation that marked the first time the US had overthrown a foreign government during the Cold War"

Not accepting how the west have messed in the area has become a kind of a reflex.

Saudi Arabia spends billions promoting Wahhabism abroad so it's a bit more than blaming Germany for Marx because he was born there.

Yes but my point is that I hold responsible for their actions the people who commit these actions more than those who inspired these actions.

Systemic problems require root cause analysis.

It's like firing a dev who introduced a bug. Sure you can fire him, but you haven't fixed the problem. Fix the build.

While the US is often thought to be an easy scapegoat, there is a long history of bad strategic interventions that go back to a century. It's not some remote relationship - the very recent US interventions in the region have brought disastrous results, in both syria and libya, opening roads to the free reign of radical islamists. What's worse, the US public now is backing for their next election the war-hungry person that backed these kinds of interventions (Hillary) and an ignorant whose response to crisis is to hatred against the people deposed by those interventions.

Why reply at all, if you do not have the time? This is just no civilized behavior to throw unsubstantiated critique and see what sticks.

And in the end you are the one looking bad and not having reached any goal. If you can't win with arguments, but try to do it with statements and ad hominem attacks you will probably never convince anyone here.

Your point are completely valid. But I refered to a comment in bottom of the page.T he reason I didn't want to explain further is because it is same Western media propaganda, which is disgusting.

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