The recent drone footage from Mosul is some of the most mind blowing, surreal stuff imaginable. God help anyone trapped in that city.
Seriously though, I’m not saying I have all the answers but let me ask a simple question. Why would the country with the biggest military industrial complex in the world be involved in the regions all over the world, especially on the other half of the planet? You don’t see soldiers from Bashkiria hanging out in your yard.
All the information I consume is not necessarily true nor fact-based. I don’t know, I wasn’t there. My point is that we don’t know 100% of the information as any information might be false. No channel, source, a journalist is 100% trustworthy nor bias-free. Thus, my only choice is to think about the global picture by consuming and sharing my thoughts based on both true and false news.
So, blinders off.
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You say that “entity” fights ISIS. Why do you say that? What’s your take in this? Do you personally support that war? Is it because you read/saw it somewhere or personally went to war? Let’s imagine you did go to war. Did you lay out the orders or followed them? These are rhetorical questions.
I read articles about how the US is the one doing the bid in stopping terrorism, but I also read articles on how the US is sponsoring state terrorism. I heard what the UK officials say, but I also listened to what Iran officials have to say. I read that the US sells billions worth of military stuff to Saudi Arabia, but I also saw that Saudi Arabia might be sponsoring ISIS.
Where’s the truth?
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Let’s just consider the possibility that both of our arguments are right as in “ISIS is sponsored by local partisan groups with finance coming from the US”.
Where does that leave you and me? Nowhere. We are simply watching the game those in power play. To hope that any of our governments care about us is a fool’s errand. We are simply economical units and numbers in their vote ballots. The same as citizens of Iraq and Syria. Look what happened to them. It can happen to any of us. The goal is to be prepared and have an “Exit”, that’s all I’m interested in.
Perhaps because there are more US government supporters than ISIS supporters browsing this website?
And while it seems we pretty much all agree that ISIS are bad guys, not that many Americans appear to be bothered by the fact that the politicians they voted for are bombing other countries at will.
If I drop an egg on the ground, can I blame the egg for cracking? If I rest an egg on an uneven bench top, and it subsequently rolls off the bench and splatters on the floor, who is to blame: the egg, gravity, or the floor?
If I give a suicidal person a gun when the rest of the community has been actively preventing that person getting a gun, and openly told me not to give the person a gun, who is most directly to blame for them killing themselves using that gun?
If I leave food on the kitchen bench after Mum told me to put it away, who is to blame for the ant infestation in the kitchen: the ants, my Mum or the pest eradicator?
It doesn't matter that we came back and tried cleaning up the mess later.
The logic of my question lies in the fact that the US played the biggest role in recent Middle East history. Why would a country with the biggest economy/military complex in the world bother to involve itself? This is an open question I don’t have an answer for. I’m sure that anyone in power does not do anything in altruistic nature though. That certainly includes Feds/governments.
You’re right on point though, free will is an illusion.
To say that the invasion of Iraq did not fuel the escalation in Syria is a little naive.
There is an endless debate between keeping Saddam Hussein in power and letting Iraq slowly reconstruct itself, and removing him and letting all the bad stuff loose.
The US (and specific US policy makers) are directly responsible for that.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/20/opinion/mills-truth-teller-ira...
https://smile.amazon.com/Was-Told-Come-Alone-Journey/dp/1627...
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/10/proceed... https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/11/the-fif...
There's a LONG list of people referenced here, including a number of military, intelligence, and foreign policy experts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_the_Iraq_War#Opp...
A key part to understanding this is remembering that blaming it on intelligence failures was the defense which the George W. Bush administration settled on to replace their earlier failed excuses. Before the invasion started, the intelligence claims used to justify it had fallen apart and the U.K. & U.S. Senate reports noted that significant pressure was placed by the White House on the intelligence agencies to justify what they were already planning to do.
(The former Treasury Secretary noted that is was planned starting before 9/11: http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/10/oneill.bush/)
The Downing Street memo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_Street_memo) had a similar conclusion, quoting the Foreign Minister:
> Bush wanted to remove Saddam Hussein, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy
The pattern through all of this was the White House choosing to ignore, override, or replace professional civil servants with political appointees who would produce the desired results. When the CIA and other analysts would not support those claims, Donald Rumsfeld setup a sham intelligence unit which did produce the claims they later used (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Special_Plans).
This happened with the planning for the invasion and occupation.
When the military sensibly pointed out that they needed to plan for the occupation:
> In fact, said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said "he would fire the next person" who talked about the need for a post-war plan. > > Rumsfeld did replace Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff in 2003, after Shinseki told Congress that hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to secure post-war Iraq.
http://articles.dailypress.com/2006-09-08/news/0609080088_1_...
When the State Department accurately predicted that the invasion and occupation would not be a cake-walk, it was largely ignored. As one example, that was the conclusion in 2003 — well before the full scope of the botch had become clear:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/world/struggle-for-iraq-pl...
I still think we should close the borders and focus on helping the neighbouring countries handle the situation.
Why would a person who care enough to
- want to pay more to help refugees and
- want to help the refugees who are already here
want to do that?
In my case simply because todays solution is very suboptimal:
It creates dangerous situations for refugees (paying huge amounts to criminals to be smuggled across Europe, crossing the Mediterranean in inflatable boats etc etc.)
It creates problems here as well. Lets not understate that either.
And last but perhaps not least: we are letting down the people who are hit hardest by spending the money on those who have the resources to cross Europe already instead of helping neighbouring countries.
Bringing up incidents of rape in the abstract like that is unwarranted and inappropriate in the context of the point you're trying to make.
Think about how you'd feel if you were in the situation of migrants/refugees.
As you should be able to tell from my earlier comment, I do empathize with the migrants. It's a shitty situation, and were I in one of these war-torn country, my top priority would be getting my family out of there. But the laws and immigration policies of Western countries are crafted by the current citizens and should be moulded to their benefit, not a universal altruistic ideal. By my interpretation, that would be limiting immigration to a number that can be reasonably integrated to the host culture. Immigration to Europe currently far exceeds this.
I'm sorry if my mentioning rape offends, but I don't think we can have an encompassing discussion of migrants without at least mentioning it. I could have also mentioned migrants' attitudes towards women, LBGTs, freedom of speech, or freedom of religion. These are not views I want any sizable number of people in my democracy holding.
I too feel strongly for the refugees.
I'll be happy to pay more tax if it helps solve the problem.
However I see Merkels let-them-come attitude as dangerous feel-good politics.
Why?
1. Because moving that many people around creates dangerous (for us and them) conflicts.
2. Because for every refugee we help in Europe we let down 100 in the middle east. Why? Because it costs enourmously much more to help people here than to help them down there.
So - IMO - today's feel-good let-them-come policy should be replaced with a targeted approach aimed at helping them where they are or in neighbouring countries.
As I said I'll be happy to pay more a little more tax for this.
Wake up. The political situation in Northern Africa, the Middle East and the Sub-Continent is DIRECTLY the result of Western actors going back over a hundred years and continuing today.
Will be interesting to see if long term certain psychic diseases (bi-polar, depression, etc.) get less prevalent on the Arabic peninsula.