Our military used to think they were on football fields, on the ninth down… Now it's surgeons: battlefields are their operating rooms. They excise the cancer, i.e. the enemy.
But the world doesn't work like an operating room or a football field. You can't just remove some "cancer" without removing the cancer-causing agent. That brings us to the not-a-war against Islamic State.
There is a reason Islamic State has many supporters among Sunni tribes in northern Iraq. The US appeared to promise Sunni tribesmen access to government jobs and money in the fight against al Qaeda in Iraq, then arranged for a sectarian Shiite government to take over. The latter not only cut them off; it has discriminated against them, against all Sunnis (the dominant sect until the end of Saddam) and finds excuses to kill a good many, while arming their own Shiite extremists, organized in militias, who carried out organized killings of Sunnis during the civil war before the surge.
IS speaks for that disenfranchisement and humiliation. It offers pride and power, although it's mode of governing is even more brutal and repressive than Saddam ever dared. Much may be forgiven for a return of pride and power. Some may like the piousity, as well. IS is an even bloodier version of the Inquisition, the witch hangings in Salem, the massacres of Protestants by Catholics and vice-versa from the Reformation all the way up to Northern Ireland. But it's similar.
"Taking out" Islamic State is an absurd plan. Unless Sunnis in both Iraq and Syria are offered a significant part of the pie, of power, of respect, IS, or another iteration, will continue to have a popular appeal.
What is needed is extreme political reform in both Syria and Iraq.
But, in Syria, the government, Alawite/Shiite dominated, is more powerful, bloody and repressive than any reformist or secular rebellion. Only Sunni militants have been able to successfully challenge the Assad regime: IS controls about a third of Syria--and a third of Iraq.
IS dared the US to attack them, and like idiots, we took the dare. What they wanted most of all was to have the US as their enemy, so they could recruit fighters from as far away as Chicago, London, Paris, LA, as well as Karachi and Jeddah. And money, of course.
Cutting off IS's cash--one of Obama's strategies--makes much more sense. An arms embargo of the whole region (of our regional friends, too) makes more sense than shipping boatloads of new weapons. How do you think IS arms itself? Capture, or purchase. Both are easier if the region is awash in arms.
What should the US do once an arms embargo is in place? Ensure it's in force, as much as is possible without drastically increasing our patrols of the skies and seas of the region.
The problem of Sunni extremists will not go away if we "surgically remove" IS emplacements, or even whole units. It will only go away, in one form or another, when the need for a radical extremist movement is superseded by real reforms and Sunni access to power and resources.
Finally, by bombing the s**t out of them, we're bound to miss, or to take out the wrong target enough of the time that we increase the ranks of the radical Islamists, who, notice, invited the attacks in the first place.
You can't kill an idea with bombs, nor a movement, no matter how noxious it may be.
Chelsea Manning suggested we should wall IS within its current conquests, and let it fail of its own weight. She's right.
IS economics' reminds me of Attila the Hun, whose power and wealth came from loot, ransoms and selling slaves. His warriors could keep all they could carry, except for the captives, who were all Attila's: IS's warriors are paid high salaries paid for by their loot and black-market oil. The Hun's career was cut short (assassin or stroke, either was possible), but his predecessor, the Roman Empire of the period demonstrated what happens to a warrior economy when it loses old conquests, instead of winning new ones: loot, ransom, slaves, new lands dried up, no longer powering the empire; it shrank rapidly. It disappeared in the West, in 476. (See Attila As Told to His Scribes, a fictional autobiography)
That same dynamic could be speeded up to a year or two, if IS were contained, quarantined by the world. Some civilians might starve, but that would be better than dying from bombs. And IS's failure to bring the good life would demonstrate that it's vision was flawed, even to the young, disaffected Muslim men who make up its ranks, certainly to the civilians upon which it feeds.
In any case, the US and Obama should get over the idea that the US must control events in the Middle East. I'd let the people of the region kill each other until they settle down and see reason; eventually they will. Until they do, the whole region should be left alone.
In the meantime, we have work to do: conversion of our energy sources from outmoded oil, coal and gas to the new, exciting "alternative" energies, that will cost less, require less capital and will be renewable and non-polluting: wind, solar, tidal, geo-thermal, compost gas and algae for fuel.
We have to direct all our energy to reducing global warming as much as we can: IS is an unnecessary and dangerous distraction.
Showing posts with label Attila the Hun. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Attila the Hun. Show all posts
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Monday, October 28, 2013
Government For the Few
There was a brief period in European and American politics, when the governors believed, at least, that they were working for the good of all. In the US, this spanned from the Progressive era to the Great Society.
The end, and the ultimate failure, of the Great Society was the result of imperial hubris: the quagmire of Vietnam. It made the trend toward social democracy unaffordable, while enriching and empowering a few. Many of the new rich financed the counterrevolution against "welfare as we know it," and highly progressive income taxes, and, well, the whole Progressive to Liberal to social democratic tendencies in governance, i.e. government that aids the many who need help, not the few who are privileged enough already.
There were similar movements of reform and social democracy in most of Europe in this same period: some earlier, some later.
But that era is past; it was a short interlude between the thousands of years when governments naturally existed to benefit the very few at the expense, or misery, of the many. The Roman Empire was no egalitarian paradise, certainly. From start to finish, it depended on the labor of slaves, who probably made up well over half the population. Slaves had to be continually replaced. Bad ones sent to galleys and mines only lasted a few years. Even good slaves would have to be replaced after 40 years of service.
Even the vaunted Athenian Democracy, of course, depended on slaves.
Where do slaves come from? Conquest. This was even true of African slavery in the Americas. Europeans conquered Africa first by taking advantage of the absence of effective states (ones that controlled their territories), and the multiplicity of potential allies, as well as enemies. Europeans did, ultimately take over, i.e. conquer most of Africa, no longer to sell slaves, but because they had penetrated the continent in order to buy them, in the first place.
When Rome began to lose territory, instead of conquering new lands, the supply of slaves became more erratic. There were floods of them when an invading barbarian army was defeated, but many more were carried off by successful barbarian raids and wars, and then sold back to the slave-hungry Romans. Attila did that after all his successful campaigns of pillage, rape and slaughter. Slaves were the most valuable spoil of all.
What does this have to do with today? Today's Roman Senators are the billionaires who finance and inspire all the attempts to roll back or abolish all the reforms and programs benefiting the many. Even though they, the one-percent, the .001 percent, have prospered beyond even the imaginings of Hollywood sycophants, they want more, much more. Where can the predators turn now, since government has already given them so many favorable contracts, and breaks in taxes like the hedge funders' "carried interest" clause?
Let's raid Social Security and Medicare! they chorus.
They are more like Attila than they know!
Comments? Click on 'continue;' scroll down.
The end, and the ultimate failure, of the Great Society was the result of imperial hubris: the quagmire of Vietnam. It made the trend toward social democracy unaffordable, while enriching and empowering a few. Many of the new rich financed the counterrevolution against "welfare as we know it," and highly progressive income taxes, and, well, the whole Progressive to Liberal to social democratic tendencies in governance, i.e. government that aids the many who need help, not the few who are privileged enough already.
There were similar movements of reform and social democracy in most of Europe in this same period: some earlier, some later.
But that era is past; it was a short interlude between the thousands of years when governments naturally existed to benefit the very few at the expense, or misery, of the many. The Roman Empire was no egalitarian paradise, certainly. From start to finish, it depended on the labor of slaves, who probably made up well over half the population. Slaves had to be continually replaced. Bad ones sent to galleys and mines only lasted a few years. Even good slaves would have to be replaced after 40 years of service.
Even the vaunted Athenian Democracy, of course, depended on slaves.
Where do slaves come from? Conquest. This was even true of African slavery in the Americas. Europeans conquered Africa first by taking advantage of the absence of effective states (ones that controlled their territories), and the multiplicity of potential allies, as well as enemies. Europeans did, ultimately take over, i.e. conquer most of Africa, no longer to sell slaves, but because they had penetrated the continent in order to buy them, in the first place.
When Rome began to lose territory, instead of conquering new lands, the supply of slaves became more erratic. There were floods of them when an invading barbarian army was defeated, but many more were carried off by successful barbarian raids and wars, and then sold back to the slave-hungry Romans. Attila did that after all his successful campaigns of pillage, rape and slaughter. Slaves were the most valuable spoil of all.
What does this have to do with today? Today's Roman Senators are the billionaires who finance and inspire all the attempts to roll back or abolish all the reforms and programs benefiting the many. Even though they, the one-percent, the .001 percent, have prospered beyond even the imaginings of Hollywood sycophants, they want more, much more. Where can the predators turn now, since government has already given them so many favorable contracts, and breaks in taxes like the hedge funders' "carried interest" clause?
Let's raid Social Security and Medicare! they chorus.
They are more like Attila than they know!
Comments? Click on 'continue;' scroll down.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Attila as told to his Scribes
Attila the Hun, the most powerful man in Europe for almost a generation (circa 433-453), evolves in his account, from romantic young prince betrayed by his uncle, to ruthless conqueror. To his followers, he was famously generous, yet his stay in the Empire as a Roman hostage, he claims, taught him all he needed to know about cruelty and torture. His Roman interlude also motivated him to avenge his father, and to overcome all odds: he became the greatest king of all the Huns and war-leader of a huge confederation of steppe peoples.
This is a fictional autobiography--yes an autobiography …as told to his scribes: what he tells them, what they think, and what he thinks, or sees, when he's telling them. He's not a nice guy, although his tale (based on history and folktales) begins when he is an attractive boy on the cusp of manhood--when he witnesses his beloved father's murder. Attila is a lover and a megalomaniac, an attractive one--up to a point.
Sigidinum and Ravenna taught him to despise urban living; later, nothing pleased him quite so much as destroying Roman cities like Acquilea and Sigidinum (modern day Belgrade).
Of course, Attila's greatest weakness was his thirst for conquest. He was not an imperialist, like Alexander the Great, or Julius Caesar, nor like the conquistadors Cortez and Pissarro. Nor, like the Europeans and Americans after them. He was partly driven by a prophecy, only half remembered, from his youth. He wasn't interested in holding a piece of land; he only wanted to assert his will, and to carry off the wealth of settled lands. He believed (with some justification) that Roman wealth had been stolen already, anyway. He depopulated a whole region north of the Danube, and kept people out--a buffer for his people's protection, he claimed, but that gave him greater power over them, too. Paradoxically, he often wished he were on the open steppes, where he couldn't see a tent from one horizon to the next.
And, Attila had a weakness for women. He had numberless wives, who he justified as his way to cement ties with his allies and, later, with newly conquered tribes. It was, ultimately, a risky game and his first wife, his queen, Erekan, knew it. And so, finally, did his last scribe--and his last bride.
Attila as told to his scribes, will be out on Kindle soon. I will keep you posted.
This is a fictional autobiography--yes an autobiography …as told to his scribes: what he tells them, what they think, and what he thinks, or sees, when he's telling them. He's not a nice guy, although his tale (based on history and folktales) begins when he is an attractive boy on the cusp of manhood--when he witnesses his beloved father's murder. Attila is a lover and a megalomaniac, an attractive one--up to a point.
Sigidinum and Ravenna taught him to despise urban living; later, nothing pleased him quite so much as destroying Roman cities like Acquilea and Sigidinum (modern day Belgrade).
Of course, Attila's greatest weakness was his thirst for conquest. He was not an imperialist, like Alexander the Great, or Julius Caesar, nor like the conquistadors Cortez and Pissarro. Nor, like the Europeans and Americans after them. He was partly driven by a prophecy, only half remembered, from his youth. He wasn't interested in holding a piece of land; he only wanted to assert his will, and to carry off the wealth of settled lands. He believed (with some justification) that Roman wealth had been stolen already, anyway. He depopulated a whole region north of the Danube, and kept people out--a buffer for his people's protection, he claimed, but that gave him greater power over them, too. Paradoxically, he often wished he were on the open steppes, where he couldn't see a tent from one horizon to the next.
And, Attila had a weakness for women. He had numberless wives, who he justified as his way to cement ties with his allies and, later, with newly conquered tribes. It was, ultimately, a risky game and his first wife, his queen, Erekan, knew it. And so, finally, did his last scribe--and his last bride.
Attila as told to his scribes, will be out on Kindle soon. I will keep you posted.
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