Saturday, September 27, 2014

Evil Cannot Be Bombed Away

Another War, Another Evil:

Haven't We Learned That the

Devil Cannot Be Slain?

Friday, 26 September 2014 12:38By Brad Evans, Truthout | Op-Ed

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A young Syrian Kurdish boy looks through the fence at at the Turkish-Syrian border in Suruc, Turkey, Sept. 24, 2014. The advance of the the Islamic State has spread fear among the Kurds, sending tens of thousands of refugees into Turkey. (Photo: Bryan Denton / The New York Times)

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Once again the drums of war are beating a familiar and inevitable tune.

Today's British Parliamentary recall, as to be expected, was mere formality. There is no debate really when there are evil beasts to be slain. What is at stake here represents more than some humanitarian commitment to save strangers from the terrifying rampage of ISIS. Unless we act now, we are told, what we see happening on the desert plains will soon become a feature of life on our streets. We must engage because it is our security that is on the line. Or at least that is the official narrative.

All this sounds eerily familiar. In fact, it follows a very well-rehearsed strategy, where slowly but surely the public is sold the idea of the need for violence to cure the world's ills. It begins with stories and images of people suffering. This leads to rightful condemnation of the violence and the disregard for human life.

If you continually bomb a people, invade a land, appropriate its resources, torture its children, imprison and humiliate its fathers, and tear apart the fabric of the social order, there is direct responsibility for the radicalization to follow.

Gradually, what takes place overseas is situated within a broader political frame, as local violence is increasingly presented as a threat to global security, peace and prosperity. The public can then relate to the plight, for now it is their lives and existence on the line. War thus becomes inevitable, though we'd prefer to call it by some other name, as declarations of war are fraught with all kinds of messy legalities.

Any moral concerns here can be easily overcome if the fight is presented in absolute terms. The war is necessary because it is against the forces of evil in the world. David Cameron reaffirmed this position in his respects to the horrifying beheading of British Aid worker, David Haines, calling the filmed atrocity a "pure act of evil."

Such reliance upon this all-too-theological expression has in fact become a hallmark of politics in the post-9/11 periods. George Bush Jr. famously declared that he "wanted to rid the world of evil," whereas Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech read more as a Treatise for War in the 21st Century, noting on the need for violence, "Make no mistake, evil does exist in this world."

None of this is incidental. The language of evil serves a very clear political function. As the wars on terror have demonstrated, narratives of evil effectively remove historical context, deny truly democratic debate about violence to be carried out in our names, and preclude serious discussion concerning revulsion for certain forms of violence and yet tolerance for more high-tech forms of slaughter.

Dealing with the violence of ISIS requires political contextualization and serious engagement beyond the imminent frame in which their spectacles of violence appear. However abhorrent we might find their actions, it is patently absurd for any leader not to recognize the historical context to this problem. That is not in anyway to justify the violence or to seek to rationalize its occurrence. But if you continually bomb a people, invade a land, appropriate its resources, torture its children, imprison and humiliate its fathers, and tear apart the fabric of the social order, there is direct responsibility for the radicalization to follow.

Since the democratic vote continues to be denied, for it seems decisions of warfare are too important to be left to public deliberation, more searching questions need to be asked about the continuous use of violence in the name of creating better futures. Those politicians in favor of the actions will be quick to point out here this it is all about the protection of innocents. How can we stand by and watch the massacre of women and children? And yet as a recent letter to The Guardian reminds:

All the experience of the varied military action taken by the west in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya shows that such interventions kill innocents, destroy infrastructure and fragment societies, and in the process, spread bitterness and violence. While we all reject the politics and methods of Isis, we have to recognize that it is in part a product of the last disastrous intervention, which helped foster sectarianism and regional division.

It is not in any way being suggested here that we should stand back and watch the vulnerable suffering a horrifying fate. It is however to recognize complicity, responsibility and what Noam Chomsky calls the manufacturing of consent, which enables the perpetuation of violence by those on both sides who would have us believe that the world is neatly separated between the forces of good and evil. The slaughter of innocents is intolerable. That much we can agree upon. We must however be alert to the conscious politicization of suffering, where the intolerable plight of the vulnerable produces a greater tolerance for violent retribution.

Violent ideas in fact thrive in violent conditions. Their outrage is fueled by a perceived sense of injustice and victimization. Countering this requires breaking the cycle of violence, not the retort to violence as usual.

From the perspective of victims - whether they are wilfully targeted or "collateral damages" to use that most dehumanizing of terms - there is no such thing as a "Just War." There are just wars in which the logic of violence and militarism reigns supreme. Every war produces its casualties. It remains shameful that while the many casualties of the wars on terror are humanely, politically, economically and intellectually so self-evident, the violent forces of militarization carry on regardless. Whilst the idea that we might be able to transform the world for the better has been undone by the interventions of the last decade or so, modalities of violence have merely adapted to now take place at a distance.

Through violence one is never entirely sure what monsters will be created. ISIS proves to be a terrifying example of this. What is more, if history shows us anything, it is that you cannot bomb ideas (however abhorrent we might find them) out of existence. Violent ideas in fact thrive in violent conditions. Their outrage is fueled by a perceived sense of injustice and victimization. Countering this requires breaking the cycle of violence, not the retort to violence as usual.

"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled" wasn't "convincing the world he didn't exist." The Devil's greatest trick was to convince us all that he might be slain. For as we seek to purge the evil of violence from the world, what takes its place is the necessity of good violence, by good warriors, with good planes, who drop good bombs, upon evil targets to make the world a more humane place. Humanity as such continues to be defined by the wars carried out in its name.

It is only by challenging the inevitability of violence that we might even begin to take seriously the task of creating peaceful relations among the world of people.

BRAD EVANS

Brad Evans is a senior lecturer in international relations at the School of Sociology, Politics & International Studies (SPAIS), University of Bristol, UK. He is the founder and director of the histories of violence project. In this capacity, he is currently leading a global research initiative on the theme of “Disposable Life” to interrogate the meaning of mass violence in the 21st Century. Brad’s latest books include Resilient Life: The Art of Living Dangerously (with Julian Reid, Polity Press, 2014), Liberal Terror (Polity Press, 2013) and Deleuze & Fascism (with Julian Reid, Routledge, 2013). He is currently working on a number of book projects, includingDisposable Futures: Violence in the Age of the Spectacle (with Henry Giroux, forthcoming, City Lights: 2015) and Histories of Violence: An Introduction to Post-War Critical Thought (with Terrell Carver, Zed Books, 2015).

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

ISIS is Funded by Pentagon That is Fighting ISIS

The audacity of air strikes and secret deals: just making Isis grow stronger?

The insurgency in Iraq, Syria and beyond is a fight for natural resources as much as political control. Why are we so busy giving leverage to terrorists?

Latest: US launches air strikes against Isis targets in Syria

Raúl M Grijalva and Michael Shank in Washington
theguardian.com, Tuesday 23 September 2014 06.45 EDT
Jump to comments (91)

obama signs bill — Insurgent groups, it seems, have found a reliable source for arms in the Pentagon and CIA. Photograph: Andrew Harrer / EPA

Members of Congress – and the public – who care about a sustainable peace in the Middle East, the wise use of American tax dollars and the balance of power between our branches of government must not stand by as idle accomplices to President Obama’s increased air strikes and weapons deals in Syria.

US-led air strikes make recruiting exponentially easier for the Islamic State (Isis) and other extremist movements without actually making America any safer.

And selling weapons to state and non-state actors in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East only aids and abets insurgent movements.

Insurgent groups, it seems, have found a reliable source for armaments in the Defense Department and Central Intelligence Agency. Meanwhile, they’re aiming those weapons we supply at our own allies. This has to stop.

The poor execution of our already weak – or non-existent – political approach to the region fed a willingness among Sunni moderates to support Isis. The grievances felt by those politically and economically marginalized Sunnis – who were never fully reintegrated by the US, by Iraq’s Shia-led government post-invasion or in the post-Sunni Awakening – now provide a foundation of sustainable support for the terrorist group.

But there are other options. The US could avoid repeating its past mistakes in Iraq by deemphasizing its military focus and admitting that air strikes and drone strikes won’t work to effect regional change. A strategy focused on political reconciliation, regional cooperation, arms embargoes and humanitarian aid that finally meets the basic needs of a war-ravaged nation is the only plan that could bring lasting security and political stability.

The US, in coordination with regional Sunni and Shia states, should instead prioritize political reconciliation among all segments of Iraqi society – including former Ba’athists – who denounce associations with Isis or other terrorists groups, thereby shifting critical support away from Isis and towards a process of disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of Iraqi Sunni communities. That would be especially important in rural, less-populated regions, where Isis made vast land gains by relying on temporary alliances in tribal and ethnic regions.

The economic Diplomacy approach has also been completely neglected by the international community – despite Isis’s interest in taking over oil-rich and water-rich sectors in northern Iraq. From oil and gas wells to river dams, Isis’s interest in the resource-rich regions is a consequence of America’s post-invasion disinterest in resource sharing or economic security – and of Baghdad’s inability to ensure that Iraq’s natural resources were distributed fairly to its entire population.

The UN Security Council leadership is meeting in New York this week, and coordinating with them on economic solutions – such as closing oil supply lines and cutting off underground markets that provide Isis with up to $3m in profits daily – would be a strategic start to dismantling the organization’s financial support, along with financial sanctions on illicit oil buyers (Turkey). However, until the international community demands that the Iraqi government distribute its natural resources equally to the benefit of its citizens, the motivation for Isis-type insurgencies to control and cut off government access to said resources will continue.

Like Syria’s civil war, which started with public frustration over mismanaged water supplies during one of the region’s worst droughts, the Isis-led insurgency in Iraq and beyond is a fight for natural resources as much as political control – and they give the International Community more leverage against Isis than air strikes ever could.

US engagement in the Middle East requires a new set of principles than those under which we operated in the first Decade of this Century: no more business as usual, no more Going-it-Alone. Regional Cooperation between Iraq and Gulf States is crucial for bringing lasting stability – without it, the opportunity for violent spillover from one nation to the next expands dramatically.

As the West responds to the crisis in Iraq – which we helped create through years of sanctions and military intervention – the US needs to prioritize regional Cooperation and Human Development initiatives that deliver both Economic prosperity and shared security for all Iraqis. By engaging Regional leaders (including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Kuwait and tribal leaders within Iraq), the US can support efforts to alleviate the turmoil in Iraq, rather than just try to quash it through military force.

This is how America can help. Anything else is merely a repeat of the past.

Monday, September 22, 2014

Obama Upgrades US Nuclear Arms

U.S. Ramping Up Major Renewal in Nuclear Arms

By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGERSEPT. 21, 2014

President Obama and Dmitri A. Medvedev, then the Russian president, in 2009 at the Kremlin in Moscow, where they signed an agreement to cut strategic nuclear arms.CreditJim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A sprawling new plant here in a former soybean field makes the mechanical guts of America’s Atomic Warheads. Bigger than the Pentagon, full of futuristic gear and thousands of workers, the plant, dedicated last month, modernizes the aging weapons that the United States can fire from missiles, bombers and submarines.

It is part of a nationwide wave of atomic revitalization that includes plans for a new generation of weapon carriers. A recent federal study put the collective price tag, over the next three decades, at up to a trillion dollars.

This expansion comes under a president who campaigned for “a nuclear-free world” and made disarmament a main goal of American defense policy. The original idea was that modest rebuilding of the nation’s crumbling nuclear complex would speed arms refurbishment, raising confidence in the arsenal’s reliability and paving the way for new treaties that would significantly cut the number of warheads.

Instead, because of political deals and geopolitical crises, the Obama adminis-tration is engaging in extensive atomic rebuilding while getting only modest arms reductions in return.

Modernizing a Nuclear Arsenal

The government is upgrading major nuclear weapon plants and laboratories, which employ more than 40,000 people.

Supporters of Arms Control, as well as some of President Obama’s closest advisers, say their hopes for the President’s vision have turned to baffled disappointment as the modernization of nuclear capabilities has become an end unto itself.

“A lot of it is hard to explain,” said Sam Nunn, the former Senator whose writings on nuclear disarmament deeply influenced Mr. Obama. “The President’s vision was a significant change in direction. But the process has preserved the status quo.”

With Russia on the warpath, China pressing its own territorial claims and Pakistan expanding its arsenal, the overall chances for Mr. Obama’s legacy of disarmament look increasingly dim, analysts say. Congress has expressed less interest in atomic reductions than looking tough in Washington’s escalating confrontation with Moscow.

“The most fundamental game changer is Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,” said Gary Samore, Mr. Obama’s top nuclear adviser in his first term and now a scholar at Harvard. “That has made any measure to reduce the stockpile unilaterally politically impossible.”

That suits hawks just fine. They see the investments as putting the United States in a stronger position if a new Arms Race breaks out. In fact, the renovated plants that Mr. Obama has approved for a smaller force of more precise, reliable weapons could, under a different president, let the arsenal expand rapidly.

Arms controllers say the White House has made some progress toward Mr. Obama’s broader agenda. Mr. Nunn credits the President with improving nuclear security around the globe, persuading other leaders to sweep up loose nuclear materials that terrorists could seize.

In the end, however, budget realities may do more than nuclear philosophies to curb the atomic upgrades. “There isn’t enough money,” said Jeffrey Lewis, of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, an expert on the modernization effort. “You’re going to get a train wreck.”

While the Kansas City plant is considered a success — it opened ahead of schedule and under budget — other planned renovations are mired in delays and cost overruns. Even so, Congress can fight hard for projects that represent big-ticket items in important districts.

Skeptics say that the arsenal is already dependable and that the costly overhauls are aimed less at Arms Control than at seeking votes and attracting top talent, people who might otherwise gravitate to other fields.

But the Obama administration insists that the improvements to the nuclear arsenal are vital to making it smaller, more flexible and better able to fulfill Mr. Obama’s original vision.

Daniel B. Poneman, the departing Deputy Secretary of Energy, whose department runs the complex, said, “The whole design of the modernization enables us to make reductions.”

A Farewell to Arms

The new National Security Campus in Kansas City, Mo.CreditThe Kansas City Star

In the fall of 2008, as Barack Obama campaigned for the Presidency, a coalition of peace groups sued to halt work on a replacement bomb plant in Kansas City. They cited the prospect of a new administration that might, as one litigant put it, kill the project in “a few months.”

The Kansas City plant, an initiative of the Bush years, seemed like a good target, since Mr. Obama had declared his support for nuclear disarmament.

The $700 million weapons plant survived. But in April 2009, the new president and his Russian counterpart, Dmitri A. Medvedev, vowed to rapidly complete an arms treaty called New Start, and committed their nations “to achieving a nuclear-free world.”

Five days later, Mr. Obama spoke in Prague to a cheering throng, saying the United States had a moral responsibility to seek the “security of a world without nuclear weapons.”

“I’m not naïve,” he added. “This goal will not be reached quickly — perhaps not in my lifetime. It will take patience and persistence.”

That October, the Nobel committee, citing his disarmament efforts, announced it would award Mr. Obama the Peace Prize.

The accord with Moscow was hammered out quickly. The countries agreed to cut strategic arms by roughly 30 percent — from 2,200 to 1,550 deployed weapons apiece — over seven years. It was a modest step. The Russian arsenal was already declining, and today has dropped below the agreed number, military experts say.

Even so, to win Senate approval of the treaty, Mr. Obama struck a deal with Republicans in 2010 that would set the country’s nuclear agenda for decades to come.

Republicans objected to the treaty unless the President agreed to an aggressive rehabilitation of American nuclear forces and manufacturing sites. Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, led the opposition. He likened the bomb complex to a rundown garage — a description some in the administration considered accurate.

Under fire, the administration promised to add $14 billion over a decade for atomic renovations. Then Senator Kyl refused to conclude a deal.

Facing the possible defeat of his first major treaty, Mr. Obama and the floor manager for the effort, Senator John Kerry, now the secretary of state, set up a war room and made deals to widen Republican support. In late December, the five-week campaign paid off, although the 71-to-26 vote represented the smallest margin ever for the ratification of a nuclear pact between Washington and Moscow.

Read the entire article at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/22/us/us-ramping-up-major-renewal-in-nuclear-arms.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=LedeSum&module=first-colu&_r=0

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