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In recent history, yeah the US is the boogey man, but just about every superpower ever has had its fingers in there at one or the other point in time. The diffrence when compared to other areas is, that it never "could rest" and was allmost allways dominated by some foreign power. Europe also wasn't exactly a friendly place for a loooong time, but it wasn't like some culturally foreign empire from far away dominated (and exploited) it.
well i wouldnt call the ottomans totally cultural foreign and they were the dominant force in the region until the start of the 20th century. what makes the case of the arabian and north african countries different to other regions (i.e. east europe or some asian regions) is that the independence was followed by an economical and cultural downswing that could never be stopped by the ruling body. since the end of ww2 they are getting consistently poorer compared to the rest of the world and with that ultra conservative partys are on a rise which more or less killed all chances they have to get out of their misery by themselves.
On January 26 2016 18:32 hfglgg wrote: just to blame the u.s short sightedness and ignorance in the middle east isnt really cutting it though. the whole region is a racial and religious mess and is on the economic decline for decades. without a bright economic future existing racial and religious tensions almost always rise. the whole region was bound to explode eventually. the rise of a backwards islam in those countries is also a consequence of the economic downfall.
Yes, the middle east has been a complete shit hole since the failure of Nasser and all those kind of people who tried to reform it for the better. Since then, the rise of salafism has laid waste years of improvements, and now we have nut jobs in power, with a dangerous doctrine to justify their actions.
On January 26 2016 08:20 Deathstar wrote: This crisis is very similar to the problem the US faces with Mexico. The conclusion is that you're not going to stop people from coming in. North Africans and Middle Easterns are as interconnected to Europe as Mexico is to the US. What you can do is help your neighbor rise up to be stable and strong and it will cease the refugee issue in addition to having other bonuses.
Look what's done is done. What matters if how the EU will handle its new challenges.
you must be trolling at this point, or at least feign total ignorance? you are aware of the reasons that totally set the middle east on fire?
//edit: and that last sentence lol. I will try to translate.
"we messed up and you only halfheartedly tried to stop us. now please deal with the massive symptoms of the mess yourself. your's truly, uncle sam."
Yeh I know what you mean, the middle east has been a complete shit hole only since the U.S got involved.
Also, the crusades just happened one afternoon in a pub for no reason at all.
Before US fucked up with Saddam, middle east was basically a bunch of dictatorships vut it was STABLE. From a selfish EU point of view, yes, US fucked up badly. Furthermore, I'm not sure that the people there that got "help" from the US think differently...
that was my point. could I have also written that it has been a hot spot for basically millenia? yes. was it necessary to get my point across? no, not really.
All people long to live in freedom. Even Muslims (shockers!). All in power become dictators if allowed to. Even western politicians (shockers!).
(Corporate entities, which are legal persons that would be classed as psychopaths is they were real persons, can act like dictators already, as long as they aren't fired and don't break the law too blatantly)
So we have the middle east where we had dictators in place. We drew their borders back after WWI. So we already have people who had been fighting each other for thousands of years, exactly as we Europeans had, now in one country.
Then, oil was discovered. So we need stability to let the oil flow. What we did? We funded all those dictators and made them buy our weapons with their oil money. We get the oil, the dictator gets out backing to keep the country stable, the people oppressed and the oil flowing.
So many of these people went extremist, because of the tyrannical government and suppression of normal political process.
Then some genius figured out you can do even worse than just supporting brutal dictatorships. You can bomb them, destroy all the tyrannical structures you already have, make it a power vacuum, and then ship in as many weapons as we can, arming everyone willing to kill.
It's so fucking easy. Stop supporting dictators. Block all weapons from flowing in. But don't block food and medicine, killing millions of children just to tell your own voters you are hurting the dictator you decide you don't like. Bombard them instead with values of freedom of speech, tolerance, reconciliation and democracy. And don't do it by talking but by acting. Yes, they won't listen for two generations, but that is no surprise. We try to reach the children of their children.
And most important of all, stop the fucking underhanded backstabbing hypocrisy that almost every western country has towards the middle east.
It's shameful to see, after all the politicians said Iraq was a honest mistake(when we know it wasn't), how butcher Assad wipes the floor with our western foreign policy.
The only difference between Assad and our western politician is that our politicians are on a leech, and Assad is not. Release the leech, and they are equally bad.
Many western countries are now bombing Syria and Iraq. These politicians will sleep just as sound as Assad, while at the same time in both cases children die by jets they ordered to bomb. Both have their own internal rationalizations that they are the good guys.
What about defusing the conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia? We have only been fueling that fire. Normalization of relations with Iran is a hopeful change. But then there is also the more minor case of Israel and Palestine.
The west is picking a side, playing out people against each other and fueling the fire. We reap what we sow. We divide and conquer. We aren't a honest broker in reconciliation or a catalyst for better relationships. Almost all western countries that can actually project some power onto the middle east have been stirring the bee's nest.
On January 27 2016 00:09 trulojucreathrma.com wrote: All people long to live in freedom. Even Muslims (shockers!). .
I would say this is WAY too simplistic.
Everyone wants society to be free to do the things they like, and UNFREE to do the things that bother me in various ways (we need order/security to stop that..things like murder, mass groping, theft, fraud, public urination, religious proseletization, insulting political leaders, causing unrest, acting improper for your social status, or wearing the wrong clothing*).
So everyone wants some freedom and some order ... and in every society in human history there has been Some freedom and Some order. Dictators can provide freedom Democracies can provide order
The idea that democracy is actually a good government is fairly new and hardly proven to any significant degree. (its only been successfully tested in certain situations)
Politicians become dictators not just because politicians are horrible people, but because people sometimes want dictators. (even though some of them end up regretting it....some people also end up regretting democracy/limited government)
Now the issue of foreign interference definitely complicates a society's development (why the first Big successful democracy was isolated from major competitors by an ocean). The Middle East is really not unique in this sense, everywhere in the world had to deal with the meddling of other local, and then global powers (Europe was lucky in that the global powers all were local powers for a long time)
*not my personal list, just some things that would be on some people's lists
On January 27 2016 00:09 trulojucreathrma.com wrote: All people long to live in freedom. Even Muslims (shockers!). All in power become dictators if allowed to. Even western politicians (shockers!).
That's actually not true, many people value the hierarchy, many societies are based around hierarchy - see the cast system in india for exemple. In many countries, people are not considered equals by nature. You propose a really poor vision of the arabic world in my point of view - like its a completly dominated part of the world that has no kind of autonomy. We, the big bad occident, are not at the core of every problem the middle east or in the arabic world. Look what we did in Vietnam, do you see vietnamese doing terrorist attacks on US soil ? There is a specific dynamic in the arabic world (which is basically the failure of all the democratic try outs since the end of colonialism), and closing our eyes on this will not make it go away.
On January 27 2016 01:11 WhiteDog wrote: Look what we did in Vietnam, do you see vietnamese doing terrorist attacks on US soil ? There is a specific dynamic in the arabic world (which is basically the failure of all the democratic try outs since the end of colonialism), and closing our eyes on this will not make it go away.
That's always a somewhat weird argument because until the 80's there were less than 200k Vietnamese people in the US. No Vietnamese people = no conflict on home soil. The struggle about how to react to the South African apartheid government was fought out in the US however as well.
On January 27 2016 01:11 WhiteDog wrote: Look what we did in Vietnam, do you see vietnamese doing terrorist attacks on US soil ? There is a specific dynamic in the arabic world (which is basically the failure of all the democratic try outs since the end of colonialism), and closing our eyes on this will not make it go away.
That's always a somewhat weird argument because until the 80's there were less than 200k Vietnamese people in the US. No Vietnamese people = no conflict on home soil. The struggle about how to react to the South African apartheid government was fought out in the US however as well.
Because the guys who did the 9/11 lived on US soil ? The African apartheid question used to ecchoes with the segregation and the civil right movement that existed in the US, not to mention politicians back then took stance in regard to this conflict, making it a national question.
9 / 11 was almost an act of war organized by a professional terrorist organization planned over years. That's not what Jihadist terrorism today is, with people self-radicalizing and being at best loosely connected to actual groups in the Middle-East. It really wasn't a domestic conflict.
If there had been five or ten million Vietnamese in the US you might as well have seen the conflict erupt there. Not to mention that the Vietnam war did spawn resistance and huge Anti-American sentiment especially in Western Europe, and definitely influenced far-left groups that later also turned violent, the RAF was founded in '68 and drew from the anti-war left. The ETA was founded in the same year as well.
Foreign wars being transported over to Europe and the US surely has reached a new dimension, also probably because the means of communication have changed so much, but it's not new or exclusive to Middle-Eastern conflicts.
On January 27 2016 03:03 Nyxisto wrote: 9 / 11 was almost an act of war organized by a professional terrorist organization planned over years. That's not what Jihadist terrorism today is, with people self-radicalizing and being at best loosely connected to actual groups in the Middle-East. It really wasn't a domestic conflict.
If there had been five or ten million Vietnamese in the US you might as well have seen the conflict erupt there. Not to mention that the Vietnam war did spawn resistance and huge Anti-American sentiment especially in Western Europe, and definitely influenced far-left groups that later also turned violent, the RAF was founded in '68 and drew from the anti-war left. The ETA was founded in the same year as well.
Foreign wars being transported over to Europe and the US surely has reached a new dimension, also probably because the means of communication have changed so much, but it's not new or exclusive to Middle-Eastern conflicts.
What happened in Paris is not an act of war organized by a professional terrorist organization ? You are conflating many things, I do not deny the fact that the acts of the occident are criminal, and have been problematic since years. But if you think everything that happens today is nothing but a reaction to that reality, then you don't understand much of the arabic world - it has no history nor identity in your narrative.
Also, of course there were anti american feelings in regards to the vietnam war : it is perfectly understandable if anyone take into account what the US did there. But has there been any terrorist attack on US or european soil at this moment ? No.
Parris was probably the closest thing to 'a 'traditional attack' in terms of organisation, but I think generally terrorism has moved from being orchestrated abroad to decentralized small attacks with people radicalizing themselves, and I think that needs a different answer.
Also as I said, pretty much any socialist / separatist group that was created in the 60's and 70's drew huge support from the Anti-American counterculture that came out of that time. Just because they're not literally screaming "death to America" or something doesn't mean that their existence isn't connected to these conflicts. And they sure did kill a lot of people.
On January 27 2016 03:47 Nyxisto wrote: Parris was probably the closest thing to 'a 'traditional attack' in terms of organisation, but I think generally terrorism has moved from being orchestrated abroad to decentralized small attacks with people radicalizing themselves, and I think that needs a different answer.
Also as I said, pretty much any socialist / separatist group that was created in the 60's and 70's drew huge support from the Anti-American counterculture that came out of that time. Just because they're not literally screaming "death to America" or something doesn't mean that their existence isn't connected to these conflicts. And they sure did kill a lot of people.
I'm not even sure what you're talking about anymore. Sure there was an anti american feelings, but there is a huge difference between pushing occidentals out of your country, and going in the EU or in american to attack them on their soil. If you look at the various anti colonial movement in old colonies, after kicking the colonial power out, some had huge difficulties in creating a viable democratic state, and in the arabic world, it is almost a rule : the few democratic power were, in fact, didactorial powers oftentime linked to the military and usually failed to reform the country as they wanted (algeria, egypt are good exemple of that). It is this state of affair that is also greatly linked to the situation we have today, and not only the behavior of the occident. To say it in another way, it is the history of those country, their own incapacity to create a stable government, democratic, free of occidental influence, their incapacity to pass through the clanic or tribal conflicts (like the opposition between sunni and shia), that is at the core of the current situation.
I'm not sure what's the point of your link too. There's no explanation on the perpetrator, it is utterly pointless. Most of the terrorists attacks before 90 were made in the UK, which is a specific situation, almost none came from old colonial countries or socialists movements, and most that did come from old colonial countries came from arabic countries in state of civil war (like most terrorists attacks in paris).
It’s a section of the world that hasn’t gone through the process of creating nationalism. Its not really surprising that they haven’t “gotten over tribalism,” since most of their nations were not created through the “natural process”. Many of the boarders were dictated, which does not create a sense of national identity.
And when it comes to Vietnam, do we get to count all acts of violence done in the name of communism? And people who protested against the war itself? What about US nationals that committed violent acts in opposition of the war? How spies and double agents? If we got back to WW2, do we get to count British nationals who attempted to sabotage the war effort because they were convinced the Nazis would win?
There is a reason people don’t make these comparisons, because finding on point examples is almost impossible. The “war against Islamic terrorism” has more in common with the “war against communism” when it comes to complexity and nuance. Specifically that the conflict against “communism” was not caused by the existence of communism.
On January 26 2016 19:34 hfglgg wrote: well i wouldnt call the ottomans totally cultural foreign and they were the dominant force in the region until the start of the 20th century. what makes the case of the arabian and north african countries different to other regions (i.e. east europe or some asian regions) is that the independence was followed by an economical and cultural downswing that could never be stopped by the ruling body. since the end of ww2 they are getting consistently poorer compared to the rest of the world and with that ultra conservative partys are on a rise which more or less killed all chances they have to get out of their misery by themselves.
Well there's that and the tribalistic and familistic nature of middle eastern societies throughout history. Even the Romans never really managed to fully control the region and deal with the Scythian tribes on their eastern borders, and had to deal with a large uprising in Palmyra at one point in time.
On January 27 2016 03:47 Nyxisto wrote: Parris was probably the closest thing to 'a 'traditional attack' in terms of organisation, but I think generally terrorism has moved from being orchestrated abroad to decentralized small attacks with people radicalizing themselves, and I think that needs a different answer.
Also as I said, pretty much any socialist / separatist group that was created in the 60's and 70's drew huge support from the Anti-American counterculture that came out of that time. Just because they're not literally screaming "death to America" or something doesn't mean that their existence isn't connected to these conflicts. And they sure did kill a lot of people.
I'm not even sure what you're talking about anymore. Sure there was an anti american feelings, but there is a huge difference between pushing occidentals out of your country, and going in the EU or in american to attack them on their soil. If you look at the various anti colonial movement in old colonies, after kicking the colonial power out, some had huge difficulties in creating a viable democratic state, and in the arabic world, it is almost a rule : the few democratic power were, in fact, didactorial powers oftentime linked to the military and usually failed to reform the country as they wanted (algeria, egypt are good exemple of that). It is this state of affair that is also greatly linked to the situation we have today, and not only the behavior of the occident. To say it in another way, it is the history of those country, their own incapacity to create a stable government, democratic, free of occidental influence, their incapacity to pass through the clanic or tribal conflicts (like the opposition between sunni and shia), that is at the core of the current situation.
I'm not sure what's the point of your link too. There's no explanation on the perpetrator, it is utterly pointless. Most of the terrorists attacks before 90 were made in the UK, which is a specific situation, almost none came from old colonial countries or socialists movements, and most that did come from old colonial countries came from arabic countries in state of civil war (like most terrorists attacks in paris).
I mean it's funny that you question where the connection of one ethno-nationalist conflict in a volatile region with a religious split is and then don't see the connection to the Troubles which was pretty much the exact same thing on the European continent barely twenty or thirty years ago. There is nothing magical about the Occident or modern day terrorism, we've had the same stuff before as the body count shows, it just happens to be the case that the distance this time is a little bigger but in the modern world this doesn't mean much anymore anyway. I don't know why people not simply look at this as a geopolitical and national struggle instead of always coming up with the 'Occident' and weird orientalist explanations.
On January 27 2016 04:21 Plansix wrote: It’s a section of the world that hasn’t gone through the process of creating nationalism. Its not really surprising that they haven’t “gotten over tribalism,” since most of their nations were not created through the “natural process”. Many of the boarders were dictated, which does not create a sense of national identity.
Did I say anything to contredict that ? And even that is not entirely true, nothern africa is heavily nationalist, and yet it is still kinda unstable (see Algeria, Tunisia or Lybia).
And when it comes to Vietnam, do we get to count all acts of violence done in the name of communism? And people who protested against the war itself? What about US nationals that committed violent acts in opposition of the war? How spies and double agents? If we got back to WW2, do we get to count British nationals who attempted to sabotage the war effort because they were convinced the Nazis would win?
How many act of violence done in the US in the name of the communism and by people who defined themselves as vietnamese ? How many terrorists attacks by indians in the UK ? Don't mix everything up, conflict in a society is the norm, we are talking about terrorism as a response to colonialism or neo colonialism.
There is a reason people don’t make these comparisons, because finding on point examples is almost impossible. The “war against Islamic terrorism” has more in common with the “war against communism” when it comes to complexity and nuance. Specifically that the conflict against “communism” was not caused by the existence of communism.
That's a load of crap, and you should be ashamed of saying such a thing. Communism and terrorism have nothing to do with one another. No communist power specifically targetted innocent citizens abroad, aside from a few isolated individuals.
On January 27 2016 03:47 Nyxisto wrote: Parris was probably the closest thing to 'a 'traditional attack' in terms of organisation, but I think generally terrorism has moved from being orchestrated abroad to decentralized small attacks with people radicalizing themselves, and I think that needs a different answer.
Also as I said, pretty much any socialist / separatist group that was created in the 60's and 70's drew huge support from the Anti-American counterculture that came out of that time. Just because they're not literally screaming "death to America" or something doesn't mean that their existence isn't connected to these conflicts. And they sure did kill a lot of people.
I'm not even sure what you're talking about anymore. Sure there was an anti american feelings, but there is a huge difference between pushing occidentals out of your country, and going in the EU or in american to attack them on their soil. If you look at the various anti colonial movement in old colonies, after kicking the colonial power out, some had huge difficulties in creating a viable democratic state, and in the arabic world, it is almost a rule : the few democratic power were, in fact, didactorial powers oftentime linked to the military and usually failed to reform the country as they wanted (algeria, egypt are good exemple of that). It is this state of affair that is also greatly linked to the situation we have today, and not only the behavior of the occident. To say it in another way, it is the history of those country, their own incapacity to create a stable government, democratic, free of occidental influence, their incapacity to pass through the clanic or tribal conflicts (like the opposition between sunni and shia), that is at the core of the current situation.
I'm not sure what's the point of your link too. There's no explanation on the perpetrator, it is utterly pointless. Most of the terrorists attacks before 90 were made in the UK, which is a specific situation, almost none came from old colonial countries or socialists movements, and most that did come from old colonial countries came from arabic countries in state of civil war (like most terrorists attacks in paris).
I mean it's funny that you question where the connection of one ethno-nationalist conflict in a volatile region with a religious split is and then don't see the connection to the Troubles which was pretty much the exact same thing on the European continent barely twenty or thirty years ago. There is nothing magical about the Occident or modern day terrorism, we've had the same stuff before as the body count shows, it just happens to be the case that the distance this time is a little bigger but in the modern world this doesn't mean much anymore anyway.
And when did our own conflicts resulted in terrorists attack in foreign countries ? I never argued that there is anything magical about the occident, I don't know where you got that. But at some point, the people, when given the autonomy and the right to build the necessary institutions to exerce full power over their terrority, become responsible of what they do with it.
I don't know why people not simply look at this as a geopolitical and national struggle instead of always coming up with the 'Occident' and weird orientalist explanations.
I don't even understand you anymore, because my point was exactly that we cannot explain everything about the terrorist attack by saying the big bad occident created it, but that we need to take into consideration the failure of said countries to create a stable political situation. I don't see the magic in this comments, nor the orientalism, it's just an historical fact.
The people committing the acts of violence self identify as terrorist, so that argument doesn’t really hold water. Muslim terrorists are labeled terrorist after the act is committed. But in the US we don’t’ label other similar acts as terrorist. Those are lone gunmen, mentally unstable loners, gang violence or school shootings.
So yes, all the people we call terrorist are terrorists by the definition we have set. And if we apply those standards retroactively, of course it is easy to prove why other acts of violence committed in response to pas conflicts do not meet the standard we set.
Of course there are problems in the middle east, but maybe the discussions could be a bit more refined and addressed on a case by case basis. It seems more productive than these sweeping generalizations about entire regions and cultures.
Irrelevant to my point, I'm willing to say that communist or socialist movements were terrorists, now give me exemple of communists that specifically targetted citizens in foreign countries. I also never said anything about a mythified "culture" unified in the arabic world, I just stated a fact, which is their inability to create a stable government, and implied they were responsible for it.
There is the May 19 Communist Coalition and Weather Underground, both who committed acts of violence in the US and were both left leaning, self described communist.
And if you are requesting if acts of violence have ever been committed by foreign nationals that are non-military during a time of conflict, there are numerous examples of that throughout history. We just didn’t call them terrorist then. It was traitors, enemy agents or spies. The words changed, but they still tried to blow things up or shoot people back then.
EPT
