Ultimately, & practically, the Syrian Civil War’s primary cause is not even Islam, or the plutocratic effect, but European impotence (except for the French Republic, which is engaged in half a dozen wars… but financially and diplomatically hobbled by most other European powers… and, of course, its occasionally ingrate progeny, the US). Europeans, Merkel, and especially European youth, talk big about peace, human rights, freedom. Yet, what good is talk when it is not followed by enforcement? Replacing action by the dream?
Refugees, you say? Millions of them? Well, six hundred million Africans and Middle Orientalists want to enter Europe. For starters. Any questions?
I guess not. Shall we reinstate European colonialism, so that Africans want to stay in Africa, as they used to?
Here are further observations of mine: Europeans (semi-) intellectuals talked big about imperialism, decolonization, peace, flowers, bad-mouthed the strong-arm of the USA. So who did they enable? Assad. Assad is smoother talking than Saddam Hussein. But as far as killing his own people, he is much better. Connection with the plutocrats in London made the British Parliament friendly to him. And his kind.
Obama refused, at the last moment, to strike Assad, in collaboration with France. French pilots were in their seats, ready to go unleash Scalp missiles on Assad’s palace, but The One in the White House changed his mind. Annihilating weddings, or Americans on the beach with drones in Yemen, OK. Hitting big bad dictator, whose family holds billions in assets in the West, not OK.
Alep, August 2016. Those “Leaders” Who Do Not Defend Humanity Justice & Civilization Are Culprit Of Leading The Wrong Way: European Peaceniks and Obama
What happened next? Putin saw the green light from Obama. Putin is an opportunist (see below). A much encouraged Putin invaded Ukraine, grabbing Crimea… which had been Ukrainian for eleven centuries. Now Putin is in Syria, training his army, extending his empire, and helping his fellow dictator Assad re-establish his rule (of terror). (Putin had seized parts of Georgia earlier. However Sarkozy intervened in various spastic ways, and Bush put a few hundreds US troops in the way of Russian tanks, persuading Putin to back off…)
Cynics will observe that the USA is the world’s number one producer of fossil fuels… Followed by Russia. Do those two have interest to see fossil fuel prices go too low for their own comfort? As long as there is a total war mess in the Middle East, most of the oil production out of Turkey, Syria, and especially Iraq, is shut down (by some measure, Iraq has the world’s second largest reserve of conventional oil). That lack of production keeps the prices up much better than the conspiracies from (a much weakened) OPEC.
In this light, Canada, which is trying to build a new giant pipeline, to exfiltrate the planet’s dirtiest hydrocarbons has also interest to extend the mess in the Middle East as long as possible. And sure enough PM Trudeau, that dashing ecologist in words alone, pulled the Canadian Air Force out of the Middle East.
Some will say Canada acted in a spirit of peace, alleluia, let’s save lives from horrid bombardment. By the same token, the Jihadists are all for eternal peace too. One does make peace with those who organize Auschwitz. Aleppo, right now is pretty much Auschwitz for all to see. Aerial bombardment is no panacea, but it remains the ultimate weapon. Who controls the sky and bombs from it has won more than half the war.
History will not be kind to Obama and those Europeans who pay only lip service to humanity, Socrates’ style (See Socrates on the lake of selfishness). To defend the position that one should not defend humanity and humanism is beyond vile, it is also illogical… if one is not a plutocrat of the most ferocious type.
Trump accused Obama to have founded the Islamist State, ISIS, or words to this effect. Then he explained this happened through Clinton and Obama’s lack of action. Of military action. I agree, and said so at the time. Now I am making the same charge about the Syrian war. I have been making it for several years, if anything Trump is parroting me, and not the other way around.
These are symptoms of the White Flag Syndrome.
Obama maybe vile, from a humanitarian point of view, by refusing to strike a mass-murdering dictator, but, he is in the best American tradition: the US has helped many a dictator during the Twentieth Century, starting with Kaiser Wilhelm II (from 1914 to 1917). Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, countless bananas dictators, and many others more recently (Nasser, the Shah Reza Pahlavi, the Saudis, etc.)
America first, make America ever greater is a policy which has been most profitable. President Franklin Roosevelt in World War Two, following President Wilson in World War One, refused to come to the help of the French Republic in a timely manner, after being begged to do so. That did not work very well for humanity, but it worked very well for America.
Roosevelt’s refusal to help France in 1939 and 1940 against Hitler, although Auschwitz had just been opened for business by the Nazis, for all to see, was despicable, anti-humanitarian. However, it brought the death of 50 million Europeans, the loss of the European empires, and, not the least, the coming of the so-called “American Century”.
Europeans, though, do not seem to have learned history as well as US think tanks did. Weakness in front of fascism and its associated plutocrats (Yesterday Mussolini, Salazar, Hitler, Franco, now, Assad, Putin, etc.) brought calamity to Europe. Syria, like Libya, should be part of the European empire of justice and peace, because it is the neighborhood of Europe. Actually, Syria was, until it was devastated by the brutal Muslim assault, the richest part of the Roman empire.
The king of Jordan believes World War Three has started. What is sure is that, for World War Three to start, the surest strategy is weakness in the face of infamy. It is known that many in the Russian chain of command believe that a surgical nuclear strike would intimidate the Western Europeans into abject surrender. Whomever the next US president is, Trump, Clinton, Kaynes or Pence, I would not bet on it. Indeed any of these four is clearly more aggressive than Obama. And the US chain of command is very deep.
Here is an example:
Low key and calmly cerebral, four star Admiral Haney, whom some would probably insist to call an “Afro-American” is Commander, United States Strategic Command (four star is the greatest number of stars, aside from times of world war). As such he would be the one talking directly to the president in case of nuclear war, real or potential. Haney commands not only this country’s nuclear forces but its cyber weapons and space satellites as well.
David Martin, “60 Minutes”: Is it riskier today?
Cecil Haney: Well I think today we’re at a time and place that I don’t think we’ve been to before.
It is Haney’s job to convince Vladimir Putin that resorting to nuclear weapons would be the worst mistake he could possibly make.
David Martin: When you look at what would work to deter Russia, do you have to get inside Putin’s head?
Cecil Haney: You have to have a deep, deep, deep understanding of any adversary you want to deter, including Mr. Putin.
David Martin: So how would you describe him psychologically?
Cecil Haney: Well, one I would say I’m not a psychologist. But I would just say he is clearly an individual that is an opportunist.
[Sell, most politicians are opportunists. The job selects for opportunists. This is the major problem of representative democracy. Any politician is going to be a variant on Trump or Clinton, just those two make it more blatant. However, in the case of Putin and the nationalist mood in Russia, the sky seems to be the same limit as it was for the Nazis.]
David Martin, loaded question: Does it concern you that an opportunist has a nuclear arsenal?
Cecil Haney: It concerns me that Russia has a lot of nuclear weapons. It concerns me that Russia has behaved badly on the international stage. And it concerns me that we have leadership in Russia, at various levels that would flagrantly talk about the use of a nuclear weapon in this 21st century.
Well the psychological scenario for the use of nuclear weapons is in place. It came from weakness. No force, no moral. Only a perspective of great ferocity and fury, in defense of democracy, the republic and optimal human ethology will convince those seduced by the most devilish and oligarchic instincts to refrain from acting up.
Patrice Ayme’.
Tags: Europe, Obama, Pacifism, Syrian War, war
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 
October 7, 2016 at 6:03 am |
I agree Putin is an opportunist, but who gave him the opportunity? My view is the West, and particularly the US, whose policy under Obama is just confused. (Or at least it has confused me.) Putin, at least has a clear objective. You may not agree with its merits, but at least he has one. If Obama has an objective on Syria, it eludes me, or it is so feebly acted on that I can’t detect it. As for Aleppo, as far as I can see the Islamist fanatics are using the citizens of eastern Aleppo as human shields. Assad, and Putin, don’t care. Blood will flow.
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October 7, 2016 at 6:23 am |
It seems pretty much to be what Patrice is saying: Obama gave Putin the opportunity. Patrice even says that’s deliberate, and it gas to with oil,its price.
Now maybe Obama is manipulated by think tanks and the deep state?
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October 7, 2016 at 2:23 pm |
Yes I doubt Obama originated much of his own “ideas”.
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October 8, 2016 at 5:45 am |
I wasn’t arguing – I was just elaborating on what I think is an important point 🙂
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October 7, 2016 at 2:23 pm |
Sometimes, confusion itself is a cover-up for even darker motives, as I tried to suggest. Example: US policy in Europe, 1919 to 1941. Or the US supporting the Viet Minh militarily in 1946 and thereafter, against France, before supporting the French sort of, but not really, and then finding itself at war with the Viet Minh (“US Vietman War”), and now finally allied, just as in 1945… Carefully organized confusion enables to feed conflicts (“divide”) and thus, rule…
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October 7, 2016 at 12:38 pm |
Why has Syria become expendable? Is it because it has no appreciable oil reserves or something less obvious? The chief value of the Middle East in the last hundred years or so has been its oil. There is the religious significance with Israel but otherwise oil is the geopolitical prize. Yet Syria is adjacent to Iraq so there is the value of its proximity to the oil.
Its refugees are unwanted by Europe or the US. Yet little is being done to give them a reason to stay home. Hence your Auschwitz analogy. But Europe is their nearest reasonable place to escape so it is more a European issue than a US issue, at least in the immediate sense. Why did not France act alone without US support? Would no other European power join them? Were their forces inadequate on their own?
If Europe won’t take appropriate measures by joining together to stop a problem at its doorstep. then there is much more disunity from the West. The EU is in jeopardy and do you suggest that US interests , pluto or otherwise, have a long game that favors this?
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October 7, 2016 at 3:13 pm |
The number one fossil fuel country in the world is the USA. It has been ever since oil was massively exploited in Pennsylvania (by comparison, there is basically no oil in Western Europe). This is one causal ingredient often neglected, but fundamental. In the end, Nazi Germany ran out of fuel, completely.
If France had attacked Syria alone (something France did more than once in the past), France would have been the bad guy, once again. France had long a bit more planes, and better quality, than Russia, on the battlefield (the difference being that Russia makes indiscriminate carpet bombing with submunition… instead of high precision bombing). The question would have been where would French planes be durably based?
Europe is completely disunited, especially philosophically (Germany supports France in spirit, but not much in practice; yet Merkel opposed France on destroying Qaddafi…)
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October 7, 2016 at 2:28 pm |
“and, of course, its occasionally ingrate progeny, the US”
Occasionally?
Doesn’t this very word clashes with some recurring “behaviours” that your essays mention rather often (this one just does, a few paragraphs down), and that look like systematic, ingrained patterns rather than “occasional” lapses?
A bit like your notion that the UK, USA and France are “sister Republics”, whereas your own writing points in substance to either this being untrue, or to a rather dysfunctional kind of sisterhood (well, some spiders do eat their mother once hatched, I believe, so you might still have a family metaphor to thread, one possibly more suited to those relationship dynamics).
Unrelated, an older article, but with some points that you may find relevant to your assessment of this Syrian, right in the beginning, and its possible hot war in a not-too-distant future :
http://echoradar.eu/2016/09/02/al-qaeda-a-t-perdu-branche-syrienne/
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October 7, 2016 at 3:41 pm |
Patrice was no doubt sarcastic about the US behavior. The US was built on slavery, and the Holocaust of the natives. Satan is the true God, smack dab from the holy book. France is like the bad conscience of the US, hence the love hate telayiondhip, typical of dysfunctional families, like Tolstoy says.
Maybe France has to become more assertive and embrace Marine Le Pen?
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October 9, 2016 at 4:08 pm |
“Maybe France has to become more assertive and embrace Marine Le Pen?”
No idea; I’d imagine that a MLP presidency would be a disaster of sorts, at least in the present situation (in a further degraded context, it might have a better chance of working out, possibly?), in the sense that she/her “administration” would be eaten alive by the system, prevented from using the State apparel to compensate for the low overall ‘governing potential’ of the FN cadre, and more generally speaking, blocked at very turn by opposing political and civil forces, for good or bad reasons.
IMHO, a MLP presidency would be disastrous, if only because it would be a failure even at her core selling points – and Gods know the FN has a schizo party line, straddling the left & right divide rather shamelessly, an ambivalence between being a “workers party” and a run-of-the-mill rightwing “business party”, that actual political power would test to its logical breaking point, probably.
And the fallout from such a failure would be worse than anything fantasied about a FN rule; it would further the learned helplessness and apathy of the French population, further cement the TINA mindset of the French oligarchy, and it would likely free a real potential for violence as a result. One untold virtue of the FN has been to channel the right-wing/far-right away from the use of political violence, by letting it think it could win power through standard means; once proven a mirage, one may well expect a return to violence, especially if the French “crisis” gets worse, as it is bound to get, leading to an OAS 2.0 type of trashing around.
As for what France has to be or to do, again, I don’t know.
I’d say a deeply reactionary turn, to purge itself from outside (Anglo-centric world order, basically) and inside (post 60’s useful idiots and/or actual collaborators of said world order).
A “Gaullist” sort of Juche, if you wish, with an idealized 3rd Republic as a model (frontal assault against islam mirroring the one against Catholicism, a militarised, “garrison” type society along enforced “National myths” to forge a common National identity and sense of belonging, stuff like that).
Of course, this would run 180° against France as it currently stands, with its bullshit “Republican values” making a very poor fig leaf for the non-existence of the Nation, with only the worms-eaten husk of the “Republic” remaining. Not to say anything about how it would clash with outside interests.
In any case, it would be a very painful, unpleasant experience, with our without actual violence, because it would at the very least least mean symbolical and ideological violence, tearing up the old entirely, to try and rebuild something new and yet unknown.
More generally, I’d say that this is not yet the phase when “the power is laying down on the ground, ready to be picked up” (with, from there, just about anything… I’d have zero trouble believing our Dearest Friends in the UK & US having little qualms pulling a “Syria” on France, in fact that would be a wet dream for many), but this is in the future, most likely; and a FN presidency would not be it, but a pretty significant step toward that, the “everything else has failed, let’s try it” phase before.
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October 8, 2016 at 1:44 am |
Pretty heated accusations of the White House against Russia, October 8. Could this turn into a hot war? Russia is loudly moving some nukes. Could NATO interdiction the Russian air force over Syria? I mean using force?
Anyway, good timing, Patrice
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October 8, 2016 at 4:09 am |
Mike Griffith: I think you are right. We need to stop the massacre!
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October 8, 2016 at 1:34 pm |
more food for thought http://www.truthdig.com/report/page4/do_we_really_want_nuclear_war_with_russia_20161006
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October 8, 2016 at 6:05 pm |
General Wesley Clark has told us the neocons have had an agenda to trash the entire Middle East for about twenty years. Now the US economy is about to complete its implosion, which has been going in slow motion for a while, and the Russians are challenging us in Syria. The politicians now need a war desperately to distract the public. How is this any different from the Russian situation, from the point of view of the domestic political desirability of war?
There is plenty of evil on the US/NATO side, methinks. One hopes that MAD thinking still prevails.
cheers,
benign
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October 16, 2016 at 7:08 pm |
Thank you for your reply. As for where to put my comments, I was replying to your post on Syria, maybe it would be more appropriate to put it there.
Regarding Syria, I do not think anything I can say will make you change your mind. You seem to take for granted or even encourage foreign military interventions in the name of “human rights” or other, I do not. Modern geopolitics had a twist in its narrative, and now represents itself when times are right as “civilization”, “democracy”, “human rights” against “dictatorship”, “civil unrest” and “chaos”. But it has only always been about a single, simple thing: national interest. As you seem to like FD Roosevelt, he coined the famous “he may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch” about Somoza in Honduras. That sums it up really well: after all, Western powers (and the US in particular), were happy setting up coup d’état and promoting dictatorship all over the world for decades (the Pinochets, Suhartos, Iran Shahs…). That is Assad’s main problem : he is not OUR son of a bitch, worse, he is THEIR (Iran, Russia) son of bitch. Just like Gadaffi was.
Assad, Gadaffi, Castro and others, while true dictator repressing opposition and democratic progress (add to the list any of the CNN-BBC “dictator package” tropes), also enabled their countries to reach a certain level of prosperity: Libya had the highest GDP per capita and life expectancy of Africa, these countries were mostly secular, with free education for both sexes. Of course of course, as all predatory dictatorships, they favor an ethnic or religious groups and repress opponents violently but I think it would be fair to consider the average Libyan lived a better life under Gadaffi than now.
It is highly relevant to consider the parallel rise of radical Islam and American foreign policy in the Middle East. With the unholy alliance with Gulf States, the US has de facto enabled them to export their nefarious Wahhabi Islam in the Sunni (80% or so) Muslim world. In the form of aid, mosque construction, Koranic schools…, this abomination of a religion has spread incredibly quickly, including in European Muslim communities, filling the void left by failing education and integration systems. And we now have to deal with this new form of terrorism (not only bombs, but burqas, Shariah laws et all), whereas only 30 years ago, sighting a burqa in Egypt. Algeria or Tunisia was a very rare occurrence that left locals talking as if a bikini clad woman had walked up the street. This has contributed in making a smaller, more dangerous, stupider World for anyone.
Where does Syria fit in all this? Syria is the only country with a sizeable Shiah population in the region, together with Iraq. A secular state, but with strong historical ties with Iran and a long history of opposing Israel (Hezbollah support…). This makes it stand out against the “Allies” in the Middle East, and put it on everyone’s crosshairs: Saudi and their vassals (Iran is the archenemy) , Israel (Hezzbollah and Iran are the only opposition they have to go to war with regularly) and the US (Iran will always be part of the “axis of evil”). With the Arab Spring popping out here and there (spontaneously of course, thanks to Twitter (TM) and a democratic wind), the Syrian fruit was ripe after Libya and the attempt on Egypt.
But let’s blame Assad, just like we blamed Saddam and Fidel before (notice how diminishing and despising it is not to call people by their full name?). Let’s justify a bloodshed that could only happen because foreign fighters were called in, arms and training provided by us, with the bloodthirsty actions of a dictator, let lies spread over chemical weapons, barrel bombs on one side but not the other (gas canister rockets and suicide trucks are precision weapons, no collateral damage) and Allepo hospitals being destroyed. Let’s utterly destroy and stomp on another beautiful place with a history so rich and so old that it becomes an eyesore for modernists (or Wahabbists).
To address your other points (but my reply is getting a bit long and a tedious read I am afraid), I don’t really get your point on Hiroshima. No one is posing here, it is a well known fact that the Japanese were looking to make peace by (among other signals) sending their foreign minister to Stalin (poor decision but still…) in the summer of 1945, and that dropping the bomb could have been avoided if not for preventing Soviet advances in the North. And on the origins of the War, falling to the traditional explanation of the treacherous, out of the blue attack on Pearl Harbor is a bit easy, especially when one chooses to ignore the context that led to the attack. Let’s just say the Japanese were cornered, and they acted stupidly (it was a bit of a specialty for them at the time it seems…). Now I wish I had your clear cut vision of history and morals, but you ought to read about Operation Paperclip, the pardons given to war criminals in Germany or Japan to add a bit of grey to your nterpretation.
I find it strange you keep mentioning how your family’s experience in the countries we mention in these discussions can serve as an objective take on reality there. I myself have extended roots with Muslim countries, have family there, and have been visiting them before I can even remember it. Does this anecdotal experience makes my point of view more relevant? I do not think so, on the contrary it is important to keep a distance between oneself and a subject/ matter/ object/ concept to stay free.
Now on morals. I do not believe concepts of utility or usefulness (everything has to be useful, otherwise let’s throw it away – that’s how monotheism works) are relevant for ontological explanations. When you say morality is what works in a given society, I fully agree with you, nothing new since Schopenhauer, Nietzsche or Levi-Strauss here. Good and Evil are both wide and tainted concepts, let’s say I see Evil as potential negativity, a counter force in the hidden, an unintended consequence, as the urging and uncontrollable necessity to take a dump in the middle of a philosophical conversation. In other words, Evil (for lack of a better word maybe?) as the tiny yet most important part mankind will never fully get a grip on. Some may call it Part Maudite (the Accursed Share of Bataille), chaos, Death, destiny or transcendence. By acknowledging its persistence, by conjuring its presence, human beings have become Human.
Now when something grotesquely bad happens (child beheading, rape, mass murderers and torture, or the flogging of an old horse that drove Nietzsche insane in Torino), Evil takes the face we have grown accustomed to. But it does not end there.
Thank you for the discussion and creating a place that permit them, I look forward to your comments.
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October 16, 2016 at 7:12 pm |
I was not advocating an attack in Syria as in Libya. Not at all. The Assad family has to be removed from power. Libya was different, because Qaddafi’s army was too tied to Qaddafi’s family, and Qaddafi’s state was too tied to him, and Libya not just tribal, but multi-civilizational. Libya can only become an extremely loose confederation, and I am for re-introducing the 3,000 year old Libyan civilization, let alone the Punic element which succeeded it. Back by popular demand.
There has already been foreign intervention in Syria. For decades. First from Egypt, Iraq, then from Iran. Syria itself messed with Lebanon forever (and calmed a bit only after being hit by a French bombing).
Syria was at peace only when it was… occupied by the French army.
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October 17, 2016 at 7:30 pm |
Dear Purasuchikku: I am preparing a long answer. You are obviously new to this site, because I covered many of these issues in great detail in the past, and often in agreement with you, while going much further. Ironically, this site is reproduced in a number of electronic media, and it is imaginable that it is my own long-held positions which have trickled back to… you. I was totally against the Iraq invasion of 2003… Or even against the First Gulf War (although my position there is arguable)…
More than three decades ago, I remember such strong exchanges with some Americans about US foreign policy in the Middle East, which I viewed as I do now, that precious friendships, with people who ad been kind with me, were broken, never to be born again… Sorry for the personal angle… But even Plato cultivated the personal angle, and so did Aristotle…;-)
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October 18, 2016 at 11:02 am |
Hi Patrice, no worries about the reply. I agree we might have some common ground, although I do not fall for the “Assad must go” (or Gadaffi, or anyone for that matter) on many levels. The first of which, is basic consideration of national interest: acting in the name of “civilization” in a third party country always brings unforeseen dangers and very often, make things worse at home. The whole idea of the West (well, the US only) as bearer of a beacon of human rights and democracy just makes me want to puke, as many.
It is surreal to see how traveling in some parts of the world has been made impossible or suicidal in the last 20 years. And this is just to give an actual example of the impoverishment of education and culture, of the eradication of ontological diversity that we are witnessing. This long path towards the end of transcendence, the end of the real, the end of death, the emergence of an enlightened individual (though alone and desperate), the coming of the Last Man of Nietzsche together with the new Machine-God called Technique, is the fruit of a long history of thought in the West. That Europe or the US are slowly agonizing from this poison only seems in the order of things. But cynically spraying false values as “Good” everywhere is dangerous, irresponsible and downright destructive, especially when everyone knows that these values are just that, cynical instruments to justify the use of force and the abuse of power. Nothing here has ever changed since the dawn of Man.
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October 18, 2016 at 7:03 pm |
Gaddafi certainly had to be removed, and certainly the descendants of the Punic civilization ought to be able to use their alphabet, which is more than twice older than Islam. Even the son of Gaddafi, Saif Al Islam has become the main defender of that point of view, right now. And certainly Cyrenaica does not have to be under the order of Tripoli, having been independent of it since ancient Greece, when Greeks controlled it.
I do agree about the surrealism. Once my Mom got lost in the desert, right in the exact middle of the Sahara desert, she had no water. She met a Touareg, on his camel, who came her water, and helped her find her way back. Nowadays the exact same area has been the scene of bitter fighting between the French army and Jihadists. My parents also visited Afghanistan several times. You say I am too personal, etc. However, my dad was doing geology for the Afghan government (with several of his friends, including the geologist Lapparent who was the point man of the French geology team). Result? The country was mineral rich). So what happened? The US decided to attack, because they did not like the Afghan-French-Russian conjunction developing in Afghanistan.
Just as In Iraq, the US Deep State prefered to destroy the place rather than seeing others develop it (thus augmenting their own power). What did the US do? Use the Pakistani Muslim Fundamentalist dictatorship. The ISI (Inter Service Intelligence, notice proximity to ISIS) of Pakistan got a green light to sabotage Afghanistan. A few years later, Carter declared secret total war.
So this is all very simple, very practical, no need to evoke Nietzsche’s weird, not to say erroneous, metaphysics. Plus “technique” has been human for at least 2 million years, ever since Homo Ergaster withstood cold Caucasian winter with thick clothing….
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October 18, 2016 at 7:06 pm |
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October 19, 2016 at 12:04 pm |
I did not mean to despise or diminish your personal experiences, far from that, and do not want to sound like I think these should be discarded altogether. The example of your mother illustrates the point very well.
I think you take the historical side of things a bit too far, and going back to Punic civilization to justify the take down of a whole country is truly far stretched. I understand this is not your main point here, but still, it is hard to see the practical and simple point in this kind of argument.
Why did the West topple Gadaffi? Because they could. All the usual ingredients were in place: a bloodthirsty dictactor repressing a popular uprising for freedom, a history of alliance with Soviet Russia, a past of terrorist support and hard stance against the US. France in particular was very vocal and active, nothing like emulating our American big brother after jogging in a Washington park.
As I was explaining in my previous comments, I do not buy the human rights defense for a minute, especially coming from the likes of BH Levy or Glucksman (ironic to see how the latter shifted from Mao to Atlanticism in his latest years). Well, it is a French specialty, it once maybe had a meaning, but it is now just revolting in how its proponents put themselves on a moral high ground with such an empty base.
What kind of national interest were we preserving then? None. But a vacuum of power ridden with salafi terrorism and tribal warlords at Europe’s doorstep.
Technique has changed since industrialization and mass production in the 19th Century and the birth of modern capitalism. From Baudelaire to Benjamin and Habermas, this field has been and still require analysis. Your comparison with early mankind in the Caucasus is nothing but a moot point preferably used in a prime time TV debate…
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October 19, 2016 at 10:02 pm |
I know, or have known, Tunisians, Libyans and Egyptians (of both genders). They all thought Gaddafi was crazy. I am pretty sure that, to save his life and become the spokesperson of the Berbers, Saif Al islam probably argued the same thing: his dad had become medically deranged. Libya, and other countries of North Africa are artificial constructs, mostly from Arab and then Ottoman invasion and occupation. Algeria, for example, should have three OFFICIAL languages: Berber, the original language, French, the modern form of Latin, and Arabic (because the brutal invaders implanted it well).
Tunisia and Libya have to recognize, on top of that, their PUNIC inheritance. The Punic alphabet is the oldest still used today.
I am pro-Berber, pro-Touareg (my first memories are from the desert). I know the desert has its own culture, but not just that, it is extremely superior and precious. It’s good for civilization, let civilization know it, but, for that to happen, it has to survive. Libya is the first occasion for that (there are others; De Gaulle, that racist white supremacist, gave the desert to the Algerians (people living around Algiers). Time to reverse that.
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October 20, 2016 at 4:31 pm |
Well, Libyans have always been Tunisians’ favorite jokes. As Belgians are for the French. Gadaffi was indeed crazy, but what does it matter on a geopolitical basis, where NATIONAL INTEREST should be the only motive of foreign policy? As mentioned in my previous comments, his leadership on Lybia can be assessed in a less biased way (Lybia GDP per capita, education and so on…), and he was more and more perceived as somewhat of a secular wall against surging extremism right before the “intervention”.
Coincidentally, here is an article from a source you’re going to love:
https://www.rt.com/news/363525-western-leaders-gaddafi-libya/
I would rather not start arguing with De Gaulle (isn’t it a bit contradictory in your theses of cultural superiority of the Francs and whatnot?) and other fantasized ideals of a Great Touareg Nation or the proclamation of a Federation of Punic Cyrenaica States…
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October 20, 2016 at 6:59 pm |
The division between Belgium and the rest of Gaul was entirely artificial and a trick used to weaken France. The Franks were Dutch, and the Netherlands became independent because France made a two centuries, 200 year war against Spain, and won. In the middle of it, there was the 80 year war of independence of the Netherlands, which was won only thanks to France, as I already said. So jokes are in order. Caesar would have shrugged if he had learned the Belgiae had their own country. Autonomy is good, full independence just weakens the empire (Catalogne too used to be part of France, and came to exist, thanks to France).
NATIONAL religion De Gaulle and his followers had. However, most nations today in existence are artificial constructs, with few exception (France, japan being some of them). Why did De Gaulle get his definition of France from 1713 CE (Treaty of end of the war of Spanish succession, which brought losses of French territory), or 1815 CE (disintegration of much of France), or 1860 CE (House of Savoy, made master of Italy by France, splits in two, with Piedmont and Liguria going to Italy), etc.
GDP means nothing independently of GINI. When Gaddafi built a rape center below one of a university campus, that augmented GDP, but, well, was no progress… De Gaulle was not a Frank, because he was way TOO nationalist. The franks were extremely open, tolerant, and practiced integration, whereas De Gaulle was a racist separatist and a Catholic fanatic (the Imperium Francorum tolerated all non terrorist religions, including peaceful Islam, which De Gaulle hated; I love pretty minarets, De Gaulle hated and feared them, so he caused a racist war we are enjoying presently; I think De Gaulle was a disaster, except in 1940…).
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October 20, 2016 at 7:56 pm |
OK, if GDP per capita as an example does not measure up to your scrutiny, let’s have the Human Development Index or the Multidimensional Poverty Index from the UNDP, where Lybia was ranked 1st country on the African Continent until 2011. In any case, here you go: http://hdr.undp.org/en/countries/profiles
I do not think your historical examples are relevant at all, especially when you put them together into the same perspective. I wonder how your tolerant, peace loving (and Christian, at least since they started leaving a trace in history) Franks would have reacted to Muslims building mosques here and there on their territory…
I am not an admirer of De Gaulle, but I respect the kind of man he was, especially regarding his views on foreign policies (the US, UK and NATO especially). As for being too nationalist, is it ever a bad thing for a politician as long as it does not derive into grotesque? It does not seem to bother our American friends so much…
De Gaulle’s views on mosques does not strike me as racist (and at the time, the word had not yet been manipulated ad nauseum), try building a church for a christian community in an Arab country and let me know how it goes… I love minarets too, where they belong. And I do not expect to see a gothic cathedral or a Buddhist stupa there either.
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October 21, 2016 at 1:04 am |
The Franks were a confederation created in the third century. They were not necessarily Christian. And certainly not in their first two centuries. Patrice explained all this in details in years passed. Considering De Gaulle had millions of Muslims in his realm, he was racist towards his subjects
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October 21, 2016 at 3:38 pm |
Muslims left in France after the THREE (3) invasions of the 8C and the one of the 10C were left in peace. They did not have to convert, had no special tax, etc. There were so many that genetic traces are massive and unambiguous. A beautiful example of integration.
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October 21, 2016 at 5:59 pm |
Much of the electronic industry (transistors, integrated circuits, even the PC) were actually pioneered in France (for example, mass production of transistors in France started within days of the announcement of its invention in the USA!)
https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2015/01/10/
Sweet for the first country to sink a battleship using a cruise missile, or to use rocket interceptors (Heinkel 163). By the way the fancy electronic in that drone which sank that big ship came as no surprise; (basically) German scientists invented the first transistors, as early as 1925 (the American “discovery” of the transistors was more than 20 years later and was proven, scholarly, and judicially, to be a copy of the German germanium transistors and their patents). Another German sweet vengeance was that 100 Nazi rocket engineers were working on Von Braun’s Apollo moon landings.
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