I have turned today’s post over to Awesome of the Loose Trucking Company, who appears to be a better writer than I am; therefore, I’m hiding in the closet in a blue funk for now. Here is his email message in reply (finally) to the depraved blog post I made about defeating ISIL; which used a parody of General Patton’s speech made to U.S. troops on entering World War II.
Ravo,
I hear you, brother! And I agree.
Now, however….just thinking academically, is ISIS any worse than those North Korean dudes hangin’ with Kim Jong-il? Are they any worse than Putin and his gangs of thugs? They are just “nobodies” compared to Joe Stalin and Beria. Or to Pol Pot and his vicious Khmer Rouge (the U.S. supported those assholes when they were fighting against the newly unified, Vietnam. Talk about “sour grapes”). Truly now, are the ISIS any worse than the Latin Americanos of Torture, the militarized drug cartels who are using the terrorism of murders to take over various localities? Those cartel assholes are way more integrated in America than the ISIS.
All the cataclysmic unrest in the world reminds me of the wild orchestral instrumental leading to the final NOTE in the Beatles song, Day In The Life.
The integration of terror, the ugly civil unrest, brutality, murder and repression into a society definitely weakens the health, the vibrancy of that society. What is to be done about all the various gangs in America, from the street hoodies to the Russian mobs, the American Mafia, and the Mexican-Sinaloa cartel gangs? Invite them into the mainstream? So, in Iraq, and throughout other areas of the “Islamic world”, there is the spreading “cancer” of “Religious Nihilism” inside the “body” of society that is crippling the body.
Which fire does one put out first with limited amounts of water? This country is 17 trillion dollars in debt, (world’s greatest debtor) with a large percentage of National Budget going toward paying Social Security and Medicare. How badly does The Cost Of War further erode our cultural equanimity? (look what our war in Vietnam cost, and is still costing us) How much time, money and energy do we spend fighting a never-ending war on terrorism at the expense of the health and well-being of our own country? You remember what happened to Brer Rabbit when he got entangled with the Tar Baby. Of course, I have no answers to the endless plethora of questions.
The War on Terrorism is just getting started, but just as the War on Drugs, begun in 1973, created monumental suffering, massive international proliferation of gangs, thieves, thugs, smuggling and massive ineffective expense by the Federal Government, the U.S. War on Terrorism, now in its “official” 13th year, will continue to spawn more expense, more terror, more chaos, more psychological and physical pollution world-wide. Can Terrorism be killed with violence? Statistically, the U.S. spends more on its military than all other countries combined, and we sell the most weapons of any country in the world. (an interesting conundrum) The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a horrendous blunder. One wonders idly, are Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld the “Founding Fathers” of ISIS?
Thinking of all the indigenous peoples of the “middle east” as “Arabs” is misleading since it is purely a European term.
The entire vast region is really not unified at all, in the sense of “Nation-states”. It is thousands and thousands of square miles sparsely inhabited by various levels of backward repressive, superstitious, vindictive, vengeful, ignorant, barbaric, small-minded peoples living under the edicts of religious despots, and War Lords. Yes, within all that, there are definitely educated open-minded people, but they are a minority and often for the sake of their own lives, a silent minority. The female part of the population has no say whatever in any meaningful way and no way of ever having any kind of self- determination. There is no real “Arab” identity to any “country” as we understand it in the U.S. No “national unity” per-se. Which is why, when confronted with ISIS the “Iraqi” army gets mauled. The “Iraqi” army isn’t really fighting for a Nation.
The European-controlled “balance of power” of “national borders” in the Middle East region (that was established after WW1) was put together purely arbitrarily with European diplomatic wrangling to control what had previously been the fiefdom of the Ottoman Empire. Prior to, and during WW1, (and after) Britain was pouring huge amounts of gold into the hands of a few individuals (ruffians and holy men) in the Middle East that the Brits thought they could use as post-war leaders. Ibn Saud was one of these. The borders we see in the Middle East today weren’t there until about 1920. British involvement in the region, strategic planning, was really about keeping the upper-hand in the up-and-coming “oil game”.
In the Philippines, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Cuba, Iran, Chile, the U.S. “installed” its own “Bully Boys” to create stability. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein eventually murdered his way to the top, and the U.S. (whose dominance had eclipsed the Brits after WW2) embraced him as our own bully boy. And we slapped that boy hard when he got “too big for his britches” and invaded Kuwait, but kept him on as “rascal-in-residence”, not exactly “our boy” any more, but one the planners of these things thought would keep a semblance of stability in that part of the world. The U.S. leadership had to turn a “blind eye” to all the multiple crimes against humanity that their “strongmen” would commit during their long tenures as despotic (but stabilizing) rulers. Joe Stalin (obviously not our “boy”) was a cruel, ruthless psychopathic stabilizing despot. Thirty million innocents murdered and people still want to sanctify that fellow, dear “Uncle Joe”. Never underestimate the human capacity for cruelty. Just when you think humans couldn’t get any worse, they do anyway. Human cruelty seems to have no limit, and is unbearably appalling. One minute “they” are your neighbor, the next minute they are hacking you and your family to death with machetes.
Positive or negative changes in Cultural Mindset are rarely won (entirely) by violence, (The Chaos of the Khmer Rouge notwithstanding). Its propaganda, and push (the Nazi Brown Shirts, the KKK, et al, etc. etc. etc.) but more by long-term social influence, the “propaganda” of social conditioning. The Catholic Church was a great example of using both violence and propaganda for centuries as a method of control, of social influence and social conditioning. But the closer one looks at everything, the more complex it all gets. “The closer you look, the bigger it gets, until you see it is infinite.”
Ahhh, the Doors of Perception, we see things as we are and all that is in front of us is only our perception.
Since 2003, over 500,000 war related deaths in Iraq (population about 25,000,000) and still…..it’s only getting worse. “Mission Accomplished”? Maybe, if it was a mission of destruction and destabilization.
So what can we do? Well, vast numbers of nuclear bombs immediately come to mind. Why not just kill everyone? Literally. That would solve the problem of human conflict! Just do away with all the humans. Nuclear Medicine: a bitter pill to swallow.
Barring that, it would be interesting to gather a combined D-Day-type invasion that put together forces from Saudi Arabia, Iran, Jordan, Turkey, Israel, Lebanon, England, USA, China, Russia, France, India, Pakistan, et al. (a Real focused effort) to root out and destroy the cancer of the ISIS, and then march on and occupy Syria and Libya. We’ll kill your cancer with our cancer.
Even if we could just gather a force of 1% of our entire U.S. population (a little over three million, and about twice the total amount of current U.S. armed forces) for an armed invasion of Iraq to stamp out terrorists, I don’t think it would be enough to change the centuries of social conditioning of the various peoples of the region. Perhaps a force of 10 percent of our population (30,000,000) just moving into the region…in a campaign of: ”all the way-we’re here to stay”…could be enough to change, say over a period of a couple of hundred years, the awful repressive mind-set of that “Arabic Region”. (But probably not).
In the Latin American“New World” look how much of the influence of the Spanish (a solid 300 years of occupation) and the Moors (who occupied Spain for over 700 years up until about 1492) are now totally ingrained throughout those lands.
In the U.S. for over a century after the first tentative step of emancipating the slaves in the states in rebellion during the Civil War, the narrow-minded white southern populace (not everyone, but enough) kept the black peoples in conditions of apartheid and economic and social slavery. Lynching was tolerated. Murder was sanctioned by the white supremacy.
Sixty five years ago bi-racial marriage in America was not only shocking but, in many states, illegal. Disseminating information on birth control and distributing birth control devices was also illegal in many states. Homosexuals were not only anathema, but by their sexual orientation, lawbreakers too. Sixty five years later, things have changed. Birth control is mostly a way of life. “Rubbers” are sold in supermarkets, and free at many medical clinics. There are hundreds of thousands of blended marriages and even more bi-racial children. Homosexuals are getting married legally now. They are merely labeled “Gay”, and often openly kiss in public. (well, maybe not in Texas)…..
So, we live in a kaleidoscopically ever-changing and brutal world. I think that in America there have been many wonderful benefits from Social Progressivism. In England, the world that Charles Dickens so roundly (and rightly) criticized in his written works has gradually “gone away” due to efforts of social progressivism. (and, look at the Struggle, the suffering, the focus, the lifetimes of staying-the-course it takes to implement changes like voting enfranchisement for women, labor unions, child labor laws, birth control, equal rights, the end of segregation, et al). The social empowerment of the One can be a sum-sum (win-win) result for the Whole. Conversely, “Cripple the One, Cripple the Whole.” Yes, we live with the brutal, struggling, domineering masses. We are the struggling, brutal, domineering masses. The basic concept that Control is the essence of all human interaction (for good or bad) is most probably accurate. And while we, the people of means, in America are reaping the benefits of The Struggles that resulted in our Democratic freedoms, in our Republic, and all the benefits from having a large portion of a Rich Continent to Plunder, there are many here in America who are still struggling to just “get by”, who are homeless, who are demonized for their color, and all the Social Progressive programs “in the world” are not going to change the fact that everyone will not ever share an equality in Quality of Life or Thought, or Standard-of-Living here in America or anywhere else. It just ain’t possible. Meanwhile the rapacious plunderers suck the life out of every living thing, and eventually it’ll all be over for both the poor and the rich.
And Thus endeth Awesome’s Musings of The Moment.
Awesome
An analogous representation of the US empire being overrun by the “Hordes of Change”.
