[sparkscoffee] Re: Butchers Of The Islamic State
- From: "" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "Sblumen123@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
- To: sparkscoffee@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2014 12:28:52 -0400 (EDT)
JS
You got a valid point but non the less showing a picture of a GI pissing on
a dead enemy is not good
for any subsequent happenings. War is horrible as is, best not to make it
even more horrible.
Comrade B
In a message dated 9/4/2014 11:59:26 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
schalestock@xxxxxxxx writes:
RR
Just wondering...is this supposed to represent some kind of moral
equivalency?
I notice he didn't mention any details about why the Marine recon team
urinated on that dead Taliban. Here's some genuine moral equivalency. One of
their team members had been captured, tortured then mutilated. Penis cut
off and stuffed in his mouth. (didn't see any mention of that in the article.)
When the team wiped them out in a firefight, pissing on the corpse of one
of these animals was pretty light payback in my opinion. I would have
joined in.
At any rate, this kind of "journalism" which is transparently predicated
on some kind of supposed "moral equivalency" is pathetic. No one said war was
a soccer game. Nor that atrocities are not committed. But presenting
this article as some kind of "proof" that we are the cause of all the
trouble over there is less than convincing to say the least.
JS
---------- Original Message ----------
From: Ron Ristad <ristad@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: [sparkscoffee] Butchers Of The Islamic State
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2014 08:35:12 -0600 (GMT-06:00)
by _Tom Engelhardt_
(http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/author/tom-engelhardt/) • September 3,
2014
In that largely Muslim part of the world, the U.S. left a grim record that
we in this country generally tend to discount or forget when we decry the
barbarism of others. We are now focused in horror on ISIS’s video of the
murder of journalist James Foley, a propaganda document clearly designed to
drive Washington over the edge and into more active opposition to that
group.
We, however, ignore the virtual library of videos and other imagery the
U.S. generated, images widely viewed (or heard about and discussed) with no
less horror in the Muslim world than ISIS’s imagery is in ours. As a start,
there were the infamous “_screen saver_
(http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175836/tomgram:_karen_greenberg,_abu_ghraib_never_left_us/)
” images straight
out of the Marquis de Sade from _Abu Ghraib prison_
(http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=8560) . There, Americans tortured and
abused Iraqi
prisoners, while creating their own _iconic version_
(http://www.executedtoday.com/images/Abu_Ghraib_abuse.jpg) of crucifixion
imagery. Then there were the
videos that no one (other than insiders) saw, but that everyone heard about.
These, the CIA took of the repeated torture and abuse of al-Qaeda suspects
in its “black sites.” In 2005, they were _destroyed_
(http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/jose-rodriguez-and-the-ninety-two-tapes)
by an
official of that agency, lest they be screened in an American court someday.
There was also the Apache helicopter _video_ (http://collateralmurder.com/)
released by WikiLeaks in which American pilots gunned down Iraqi civilians
on the streets of Baghdad (including two Reuters correspondents), while on
the sound track the crew are heard wisecracking. There was the _video_
(http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/24/us-marines-charged-dead-taliban)
of U.S. troops urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban fighters in
Afghanistan. There were the _trophy photos_
(http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-afghan-photos-20120418-story.html#page=1)
of body parts _brought home_
(http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/04/afghans-revolted-by-us-troops-posi
ng-with-dead-suicide-bombers.html) by U.S. soldiers. There were the
_snuff films_ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXgGCH36fzM) of the victims of
Washington’s drone assassination campaigns in the tribal backlands of the
planet (or “_bug splat_
(http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/09/world/asia/pakistan-drones-not-a-bug-splat/) ,”
as the drone pilots came to call the dead from
those attacks) and _similar footage_
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGYV3JirmyA) from helicopter gunships. There
was the bin Laden snuff film video
from the raid on Abbottabad, Pakistan, of which President Obama _reportedly
watched_ (http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/05/02/bin.laden.video/) a live
feed. And that’s _only to begin_
(http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/31/opinion/sunday/stop-hiding-images-of-american-torture.html)
to account for some of
the imagery produced by the U.S. since September 2001 from its various
adventures in the Greater Middle East.
All in all, the invasions, the occupations, the drone campaigns in several
lands, the deaths that ran into the hundreds of thousands, the _uprooting_
(http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174892/michael_schwartz_the_iraqi_brain_drai
n) of millions of people sent into external or internal exile, the
expending of _trillions_
(http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/27/opinion/iraq-opinion-united-states-cost-of-war/index.html)
of dollars added up to a bin Laden
dreamscape. They would prove jihadist recruitment tools par excellence.
When the U.S. was done, when it had set off the process that led to
insurgencies, civil wars, the growth of extremist militias, and the collapse
of
state structures, it had also guaranteed the rise of something new on Planet
Earth: ISIS – as well as of other extremist outfits ranging from the
Pakistani Taliban, now challenging the state in certain areas of that country,
to Ansar al-Sharia in Libya and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen.
Though the militants of ISIS would undoubtedly be horrified to think so,
they are the spawn of Washington. Thirteen years of regional war, occupation,
and intervention played a major role in clearing the ground for them. They
may be our worst nightmare (thus far), but they are also our legacy – and
not just because so many of their leaders _came from_
(http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/28/world/middleeast/army-know-how-seen-as-factor-in-isis-successes
.html) the Iraqi army we disbanded, had their beliefs and skills honed in
the prisons we set up (_Camp Bucca_
(http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/07/was-camp-bucca-pressure-cooker-extremism)
seems to have been the
West Point of Iraqi extremism), and gained experience facing U.S.
counterterror operations in the “surge” years of the occupation. In fact, just
about
everything done in the war on terror has facilitated their rise. After all,
we dismantled the Iraqi army and rebuilt one that would flee at the first
signs of ISIS’s fighters, _abandoning_
(http://abcnews.go.com/International/iraqi-army-left-weapons-hands-terrorists-today/story?id=24070848)
vast
stores of Washington’s weaponry to them. We essentially destroyed the Iraqi
state, while fostering a Shia leader who would _oppress enough Sunnis_
(http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175869/tomgram:_dahr_jamail,_incinerating_iraq/)
in enough ways to create a situation in which ISIS would be welcomed or
tolerated throughout significant areas of the country.
The Escalation Follies
When you think about it, from the moment the first bombs began falling on
Afghanistan in October 2001 to the present, not a single U.S. military
intervention has had anything like its intended effect. Each one has, in time,
proven a disaster in its own special way, providing breeding grounds for
extremism and producing yet another set of recruitment posters for yet another
set of jihadist movements. Looked at in a clear-eyed way, this is what any
American military intervention seems to offer such extremist outfits – and
ISIS knows it.
And keep one thing in mind: if the U.S. were truly capable of destroying or
crushing ISIS, as our secretary of state and others are urging, that might
prove to be anything but a boon. After all, it was easy enough to think,
as Americans did after 9/11, that al-Qaeda was the worst the world of
Islamic extremism had to offer. Osama bin Laden’s killing was presented to us
as
an ultimate triumph over Islamic terror. But ISIS lives and breathes and
grows, and across the Greater Middle East Islamic extremist organizations are
gaining membership and traction in ways that should illuminate just what
the war on terror has really delivered. The fact that we can’t now imagine
what might be worse than ISIS means nothing, given that no one in our world
could imagine ISIS before it sprang into being.
http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/the-islamic-state-spawn-of-washingtons
-wars-of-terrror/
-RR
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