The Glamor of Evil

As always, he's right on target. .

Several people on this thread, http://www.librarything.com/topic/187620, have already pointed out that that reading of what Obama said is a complete distortion.

>1 Doug1943: Thanks for linking me (without warning) to a page showing a photo of Muath Safi Yousef Al-Kasasbeh being murdered. I had been making considerable efforts to avoid seeing this, as I have all other hostage murders.

>3 librorumamans: It's usually a good policy to not click on links where the poster can't be bothered to explain why they are posting that link. Thanks for the warning. A troll at another site threw up a picture of a hanged man a few months ago and that picture is still vivid in my mind.

WARNING--this post refers to something I consider as bad as what is in the photo linked in that first idiotic post.

Out of curiosity--I didn't get what libro was referring to, so i clicked #2's link and then #1's. I don't see how anyone can know who the he of 'As always, he's right on target. .' is, so I can only assume the OP needed people to see this photo.

The first thing it brought to my mind was something I have never seen a picture of but read about many time: the torturers the west supports in Uzbekistan boiling people alive.

I'm one who doesn't "like" to characterize someone or "ones" as "evil" because it dehumanizes and dismisses -- "the devil MADE me do it!"

"The Islamic State" has "reasons" -- bombs "burn" people up; we did unto as was done unto us! Only it actually NEGATES the legitimate point because doing "it" to a very individual PERSONALIZES and the revulsion overcomes the uh moral "lesson."

No "society" can continue to function as "IS" does -- as the "vengeance is mine! state"; take THAT Christian-capitalist-western DOGS! (AND your Arab "puppet-puppies"!)

"IS" can only go on "in extremis"; it cannot exist outside its own "crusade"; it will indeed "burn" -- burn itself out. So time is its greatest enemy.

It isn't so much "evil" as "all too human"?...

Sorry, sorry, sorry for making people involuntarily see that horrible photo. I too had successfully avoided seeing any of the videos and photos of it until then (guess I'll never be a good Islamist). I definitely should have posted a warning.

On Uzbekistan: yes, for sure: the governments of the West support all kinds of horrible regimes who torture and murder their political opponents, and they should be roundly condemned for doing so. But note that they don't proudly show videos of their victims being boiled alive. Even the Islamist theocracy in Iran doesn't do this. Even the Nazis lied about the Holocaust. It's the tribute that vice pays to virtue.

In ISIS we have something new. And the thing that should really worry everyone is that they do it because it's good publicity for them: there are thousands of young Muslims in the West, including converts from other religions, who see these horrific things and think, "Whoa, that's for me. How soon can I join up?"

I don't think, by the way, that this is because of something inherent in "original Islam". You can be a pretty nasty fundamentalist without wanting to burn your captives alive and put it on YouTube. I think this is, in some way that I don't understand, a by-product of the dark side of modernity.

It might also be the dark side of having grown up in a country destroyed over and over by war.

>8 RidgewayGirl:

A large percentage of the IS fighters grew up in western countries, and an even larger percentage outside of Iraq / Syria, in countries not destroyed by any war. Iraq / Syria in many ways is the opportunity to express the IS ideology, not the cause of it coming to be.

Islamic extremism was after all one of the causes, not one of the results of, the Second Iraq War.

>7 Doug1943: 'But note that they don't proudly show videos of their victims being boiled alive.'

Unintentional humor, I suppose.

>9 hf22: you don't have any idea of the composition of IS in terms of country of origin. What IS known is that the leadership met in US operated prisons in Iraq.

Islamic extremism had nothing to do with causing the second Iraq War, and in fact that assertion may be as ignorant a posting as I have ever come across on LT.

If having your country destroyed by war turned young people into moral beasts, Europe would have been in pretty bad shape after WWII.

But the Germans have never been nicer since 1945. And Nagasaki and Hiroshima seemed to have worked a profound change in the Japanese appetite for war: these peoples -- or a significant minority from among them --committed their atrocities before they were pounded into the dust.

We must beware of facile explanations for evil, and of facile explanations for how to end it.

Rick: so the the Uzbek dictators do proudly show videos of their victims being boiled alive? I hesitate to ask this, but ... got a link?

>12 Doug1943: Probably, but my point was a different one. Or many different ones. Was there a point to mentioning whether the Uzbek dictator (singular) 'proudly shows videos'? does it matter in any way? No, one of my points is that you have no point.

>11 Doug1943: More unintentional humor, I have to guess. Digging through the rubble of those three sentences I find the body parts of three different people. Unless the intention is to argue that someone should drop nuclear bombs on IS.

(A side note: sometimes when one begins drifting into an extended psychotic episode, one should go off alone somewhere, or into the bosom of family, find a comfortable place at any rate, and stop publicly humiliating himself.)

>7 Doug1943: You can be a pretty nasty fundamentalist without wanting to burn your captives alive and put it on YouTube. I think this is, in some way that I don't understand, a by-product of the dark side of modernity.

I'll grant you the YouTube part, but making a public spectacle out of burning people alive is by no means a new phenomenon. If anything this is a reversion to the past. Aren't you the one who keeps pushing the idea that there is a long-term upward trend in morality?

JJ Wilson: Okay, yes, it's a reversion to something that, in our longterm upward trend in morality, we thought we had put in the past.

Civilized countries stopped executing people in public a century ago. Even the Nazis, even the Uzbek dictators, wouldn't burn people alive today. (I'm sorry if this point is incomprehensible to some.) But ISIS not only does it, they do it because it helps them recruit.

The very fact that there is widespread revulsion about this proves that there has been a long-term upward trend in morality.

Five hundred years ago, burning someone alive, as the Christians did to each other, was occasion for public entertainment. Not any more, for most of us.

You're probably aware of this book, but the question of whether we are "getting better" is explored more thoroughly in Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature.

But, you know, it's interesting. The concept of human progress was widely accepted until very recently, above all by people on the Left. (That's why they called themselves "progressives".) Only a small minority of reactionaries denied it. It's worthy of note that for many people now, it's a controversial idea.

>10 RickHarsch:

you don't have any idea of the composition of IS in terms of country of origin.

We have a fair idea of the number of foreign recruits and total numbers from the stuff put about by Western intelligence agencies. Which also has a fair chance of being ball park correct, because we mostly know who has left our own countries to fight, and we are in field against IS conducting air strikes etc.

Wikipedia has a reasonable summary of the various estimates of IS fighter numbers which have been published (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_ISIL#Troops). Hard to be precise, but the number of Western / Foreign fighters are substantial, particularly for IS as IS (i.e. many local fighters whom are aligned with IS seem to keep some organisational distance, being firstly aligned with their Sunni tribe etc).

Islamic extremism had nothing to do with causing the second Iraq War, and in fact that assertion may be as ignorant a posting as I have ever come across on LT.

9/11 had nothing to do with the second Iraq War? Nothing? Plenty of other factors as well, I don't think any re-invasion would have been politically possible for the Bush without 9/11.

To say it had nothing to do with it, that it did not precede it, is to completely ignore reality. The twin towers fell first.

Since some of us (for example, me) are uncertain which was the first Iraq war, there is plenty of room for confusion about what and when the second Iraq war is/was.

Not all the wars in Iraq that I can count on my fingers involved the US, let alone the West. I could be wrong, though.

>17 librorumamans:

Apologies. I mean to refer to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and following, which is sometimes called the second Iraq War (the first being the Gulf War following the invasion of Kuwait).

>16 hf22: 'in field against IS conducting air strikes' No need to comment on that one.

It was known at the time by most of us who did not view the attacks on NY as an epic clash of civilizations that the event had nothing to do with Iraq. It has been thoroughly established since that there was absolutely no connection. Yes, it had nothing to do with the Iraq war as a cause. Cynically used as an excuse? Perhaps. But no, not in the least a cause.

Libro: probably we should simply refer to them by year of the beginning of US involvement

>19 RickHarsch:

Cynically used as an excuse? Perhaps. But no, not in the least a cause.

False distinction. 9/11 provided a pretext, without which President Bush could not have invaded Iraq. Therefore 9/11 was an immediate cause of the invasion. The point is not that Iraq had anything to do 9/11, as it did not. The point is 9/11 had a lot to do with the subsequent US actions in Iraq.

The order of timing is also important for another reason - It reminds us that our problems with radical Islam do not stem from the Iraq conflict. 9/11 preceded the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Indeed, the US international military involvement which preceded 9/11 was in support of Muslim interests in the Balkans.

That is of course not the say the US invasion does not share significant blame for the current mess with IS.

The US invasion achieved, in some ways, what was promised. It destroyed the existing oppressive political order in the middle east. Sadly what took advantage of that destruction was not the democratic order idealistic US foreign policy types hoped would emerge, and looked like it might emerge in the Arab Spring, but instead violent Islamic totalitarianism.

This was, of course, predictable. Particularly for those who looked to historical examples such as France and Iran - The most violent radicals often seems to rise to the top in the short to medium term in such situations.

But the short coming of the "neo-con" project are well know by now. Burkean conservatives they were not.

You are simply a fool.

>21 RickHarsch:

Nah, I don't have the funny hat. Lots of other funny hats, but not the right one to play the fool.

But what, pray tell, do you find objectionable? That 9/11 changed the political possibilities in the US and other Western powers regarding foreign wars is hardly a matter of controversy amongst those with even a passing knowledge of the matter.

To suggest that President Bush's foreign policy would have been the same without it is ludicrous. Clearly there was a feeling pre 9/11 in some parts of the Bush Administration that Iraq was an open matter which would be better closed. But without the white hot anger in the US and elsewhere which 9/11 created, and which the Bush White House misdirected against Iraq, nothing on the scale of the 2003 invasion could have been attempted (something significantly smaller might have been). The political will did not exist.

Despite Paul O'Neill's contribution to the historical record, US Administrations consider all types of things which will never happen, because the opportunity will just never arise. 9/11 was, for the Bush thinking on Iraq, a unique and irreplaceable opportunity.

'False distinction. 9/11 provided a pretext, without which President Bush could not have invaded Iraq. Therefore 9/11 was an immediate cause of the invasion. The point is not that Iraq had anything to do 9/11, as it did not. The point is 9/11 had a lot to do with the subsequent US actions in Iraq.'

Find where the logic offs itself!

Hint: Passing the third grade provided the pretext for George W Bush to go to fourth grade.

eta: 'To suggest that President Bush's foreign policy would have been the same without it is ludicrous. ' Who suggested that?

>23 RickHarsch:

Find where the logic offs itself!

The logic is fine.

eta: 'To suggest that President Bush's foreign policy would have been the same without it is ludicrous. ' Who suggested that?

You seem to be suggesting the US invasion of Iraq would have occurred regardless if 9/11 did not happen. I am suggesting while President Bush clearly had some pre-existing ideas about Iraq (hence why it became a post 9/11 target), US action against Iraq on the scale we had historically would have been implausible without 9/11.

You're saying a lot of things and your final statement in 24 regarding the implausibility of what happened without 9/11 is one I agree with.

The logic is not fine. You leap from pretext to causation.

>20 hf22: The order of timing is also important for another reason - It reminds us that our problems with radical Islam do not stem from the Iraq conflict.

Of course not if you're just taking about the second US/Iraq war, but 9/11 did come in large part due to the first one when the US for a time had troops stationed in Saudi Arabia.

I believe hf22 is correct. The invasion of Iraq was done on the pretext of "WMD". The interesting question is, what was the motivation?

It's tempting to simply say, "economics" the desire to grab the oil. Or, hostility to the socialist government of Iraq ( "Socialist"? Well, sort of, although most socialists I know would consider it a vicious right-wing slander to associate their political goal with the regime of Saddam Hussein).

I wouldn't rule out either of those, as always-present realities, from a full and complete explanation of why the invasion happened, but they don't address the very great role that Bush's neo-conservative advisors had in the whole affair. And they had a vision: a democratic (or, as Marxists would say, a bourgeois-democratic) transformation of Iraq to "drain the swamp" from which Islamism springs, something uniquely possible in Iraq because of the internal alignment of forces there -- a Sunni dictator ruling a majority-Shia population -- plus the fact that a democratic Iraq would have substantial resources available to it to make the transition to liberal democracy.

Unfortunately, the United States is not a revolutionary power, especially under a conservative Republican (even a neo-conservative) government. Its cadres have little concept of the power of nationalism, coming from a nation which has never had its national independence seriously threatened, and a positive revulsion for mass social movements fighting for democratic or, worse yet, socialist goals. Thus it saw the Iraq problem as mainly a military one.

The mentality which dominated during the first phase of the occupation could be summed up in the macho line, "Get 'em by the balls, and the hearts and minds will follow", which worked so well in Vietnam.

It was only after a year of growing chaos that Condolizza Rice called for help from a fellow Stanford academic, Larry Diamond, a (liberal) specialist in the emergence of democracy in Third World countries, but it was too late, if it had ever been possible, to change course. Diamond wrote about his experiences in Squandered Victory, well worth reading, reviewed here . History won't repeat itself, but the same conditions that gave rise to a mass, secular party which led significant sections of the Iraqi working class, will come again.

One more point: let us assume that, as some posters here seem to believe, the United States is a wholly, irredeemably evil country, whose only motives are to crush socialism and steal resources.

Presumably, it has always been this way. But if that's the case, how did it play a progressive role in stopping German fascism and Japanese militarism? Let's stipulate, as the lawyers say, that its motives in doing so were purely wicked: it saw the Germans and Japanese as competitors in the struggle to dominate the world.

But ... so what? Did the people who were fighting the Nazis and the Japanese make the right decision, when they allied with the US? Did Mao's Communists do the right thing when they accepted American help in their fight against the Japanese?

People in the Third World who are fighting for democracy (and, for argument's sake) socialism, should take aid wherever they can get it. And it's simply not the case that foreign policy decisions are made on the basis of world-historic antagonisms: although it was never offered, Lenin pronounced himself in favor of the young Soviet Republic's accepting "arms from the Anglo-French bandits" to fight the Germans. He understood that the long-term hostility of capitalist France and Britain to Soviet Russia could possibly be overruled by the necessity to defeat fellow-capitalist Germany.

So there may be some conjunction of forces which makes even the most reactionary power need to ally itself with progressive forces. Those forces would be foolish to refuse such support.

Another example: in 1936, a newly-elected Leftwing government in Spain faced a revolt by its own fascist military, which was soon aided by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The democracies (okay, the capitalist/imperialist bourgeois democracies) stood aside, and refused to help the democrats in Spain. As a result, the fascists won.

Was that refusal to intervene good, or bad? I'd say it was bad. Progressives (anybody who favored democracy) should have pulled out all stops at that time to force their governments to aid democratic Spain.

Similar situations may arise in the future. In fact, we have one right now, with respect to ISIS. It's a good thing that the West is arming, however feebly, the Kurds. We should demand that they step this aid up.

>25 RickHarsch:

Huh? I am positing a "but for", which you now seem to agree with.

The logic is fine - "But for" 9/11, no 2003 invasion on the scale seen.

>26 jjwilson61:

Yeah, the Gulf War had some influence. It was certainly high in Bin Laden's list of explicit grievances.

>28 hf22: What you posit that I agree with, I think is possibly true, not necessarily. But it has nothing todo with you previous anti-logical progressions in which, for one, you mistake a context that does not eliminate a possibility as the cause of an event.

>29 RickHarsch:

I was not speaking in technically precise language. By cause I was meaning to indicate a "but for" relationship.

My apologies for being unclear.