America's 'Death Instinct' Spreads Misery Across the World

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/world/americas-death-instinct-spreads-misery-across-world

Those who use violence to shape the world, as we have done in the Middle East, unleash a whirlwind. Our initial alliances—achieved at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dead, some $3 trillion in expenditures and the ravaging of infrastructure across the region—have been turned upside down by the cataclysm of violence. Thirteen years of war, and the rise of enemies we did not expect, have transformed Hezbollah fighters inside Syria, along with Iran, into our tacit allies. We are intervening in the Syrian civil war to assist a regime we sought to overthrow. We promised to save Iraq and now help to dismember it. We have delivered Afghanistan to drug cartels and warlords who preside over a ruin of a nation where 60 percent of the children are malnourished and the Taliban is poised to take power once NATO troops depart. The entire misguided enterprise has been a fiasco of gross mismanagement and wanton bloodletting. But that does not mean it will be stopped.

More violence is not going to rectify the damage. Indeed, it will make it worse. But violence is all we know. Violence is the habitual response by the state to every dilemma. War, like much of modern bureaucracy, has become an impersonal and unquestioned mechanism to perpetuate American power. It has its own internal momentum. There may be a few courageous souls who rise up within the apparatus to protest war’s ultimate absurdity, but they are rapidly discarded and replaced. The state rages like an insane King Lear, who in his madness and desire to revenge himself on his two daughters and their husbands decides that:

It were a delicate stratagem to shoe
A troop of horse with felt. I’ll put ’t in proof.
And when I have stol’n upon these sons-in-law,
Then, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!

And kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill is the mantra chanted with every new setback in the Middle East. How many times have we rejoiced at the murder of those we demonized—Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and dozens of others. But as soon as one hunt for the fountainhead of evil ends, another begins. Those we kill are swiftly replaced. Fresh terrorist groups take the place of the old. The Khorasan Group, the U.S. government assures us, is a more sinister and deadlier version of the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), which was once touted as a more sinister version of al-Qaida. We cannot extinguish our enemies. They spring out of the ground like the legion of hostile warriors that rose up when Cadmussowed his dragon’s teeth. Our violence spawns violence and never-ending configurations of enraged militants. We will keep spawning them until we stop occupying the Middle East.

[merrily]

2. Bin Laden knew it.

I saw a video of him (assuming it was real) talking to some people, Afhgans, I think, after 911.

The translation was "All we have to do is 'chatter' and they spend billions." He was chuckling derisively as he spoke.

[Adrahil]

3. Well, what do you suggest?

Don't get me wrong. ISIS and similar groups have been created by crappy foreign policy and imperial legacy of not just the U.S., but also in large measure by the European imperial powers, and even the Ottoman Empire.

But here we are. ISIS exists. What do you do about it?

I know many here disagree with me, but sometimes violence is the only option.

[snappyturtle]

6. My feelings exactly. It's hard hearted but......nt

[Adrahil]

7. So, create a huge mess, and then just walk away?

I can't do that personally. There are people there who to live a peaceful life. And ISIS wants to kill them. We created that mess and we have some moral obligation to them. I can't in good conscience advocate just letting them "kill each other."

[randome]

11. Let them kill each other? You mean let ISIS kill whoever they want, right?

When it's not a two-way street, I don't object to America being involved.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
So then I'm right about being wrong.[/center][/font][hr]

[newfie11]

4. We need to stay out of other governments business

Look at all the rulers we've propped up or put in office. These were not the people's choice but the US government and big business.
All the death and destruction we've done from VietNam to S. america and we have the nerve to criticize Russia about Ukraine. That of course is our propaganda starting because of the BRICS.

Look at the state of this country now due to our MIC and feeding wars! Now we are hearing 10 years of distruction. All the innocent lives lost, pain and suffering.
Kiss repairing infrastructure in America goodby and with all the money in SS I'm sure that will be on the chopping block next.

[Adrahil]

8. See my post above. I think we have some responsibility. NT

[99Forever]

9. But its bipartisan!

[randome]

10. "...the habitual response by the state to every dilemma."

Riiight. Because Obama's diplomatic efforts in the world have clearly produced nothing. Another angry, unhappy pundit who sees things through a prism that only reflects black and white.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
So then I'm right about being wrong.[/center][/font][hr]

[True Blue Door]

13. This isn't very well articulated.

You mix up so many unrelated or even counter-pointed facts that there's almost no thesis that can be extracted from the tangle.

Some US policies were criminal, some were short-sighted, some were morally impeccable and yet suffered from the inevitable unintended consequences of making any decision ever.

But doing nothing has consequences of its own, and people who hate this country would be just as ready to blame us for those as for the results of active engagement. We're either imperial aggressors or aloof aristocrats sipping martinis while the world burns around us.

Fair criticism should be listened to and heeded. The excuses and doublespeak of anti-American ideologues who pollute so much foreign policy discussion should be ignored with contempt.

I think you give too much credence to the latter.