We are in pitiless times

[polly7]

By Vijay Prashad
Source: open democracy
November 22, 2015

Macho language about “pitiless war” defines the contours of leadership these days. Little else is on offer. It is red meat to our emotions.

Where did these ISIS attackers come from? The temptation is to blame religion or race, to take the eye off more substantial areas of investigation. Amnesia is the order of the day. Each terror attack on the west resets the clock. No-one must pay attention to the western and Saudi-backed World Muslim League, whose job was to destroy the forces of secular nationalism and communism in the Arab world in the 1960s and 1970s. All those who were on the good side of history fell to the sword, destroyed as anti-Islamic in order to protect the Gulf Arab emirates and the Saudi kingdom as well as western interests in oil and power.

We must not mention the western and Saudi assault on Afghanistan in the 1970s, before the Soviet intervention, to cut down that nation’s communist republic. No one should talk about the creation of the “mujahideen”, whose core contained a brutal kernel that exploded into al-Qaeda. Why make so much of the wars on Iraq and then on Libya and Syria, which wrecked states and turned them – like Afghanistan – into playgrounds for the “jihadis”, children of the Cold War?

Disbelief will greet those who remind us of western violence, from the aerial bombardment of Libya in 1911 to the bombing of Libya in 2011 – untold numbers dead; “it was not war,” wrote a journalist in 1911, “it was butchery.” Few will go to their shelves and pull out Leila Sebbar’s La Seine était rouge, a searing novel about the French government’s murder of hundreds of pro-Algerian protesters in Paris in October 1961.

You will not ask who influenced these young men, sanctified by their governments to go fight in a war elsewhere and then inspired by Saudi-funded clerics who told them not only to fight in Syria but to go home and create mayhem? You will think all this is made up, that I want to justify the massacres.

There is no justification here. There is only the recitation of a pitiless history that is buried under official clichés.

Western policy-makers are like little boys playing with their little toys. They don’t see the human suffering and the terrible outcomes of their terrible polices.

We are in pitiless times. There is terrible violence. There is awful sadness.

Full article: https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/we-are-in-pitiless-times/

[ellenrr]

1. excellent article. "pitiless" is right.

another good article calling for more substantive investigation:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/11/17/the-shadow-of-algeria-the-lost-context-of-the-paris-attacks/

[polly7]

2. Thanks for that ellenrr, that is a good look back at history ...... Fisk is always a great read. nt.

[malthaussen]

3. Actually, I disagree with that last pair of sentences.

Perhaps Mr Prashad was being diplomatic, but I think Western policy makers (and not just "Western," if it comes to that) "see" very well the "terrible outcomes." In fact, they're banking on them. What they don't is care, because what happens to a few million people is of no concern when it comes to playing with their toys and making money off suffering. And for that matter, not really caring is not even limited to the policy makers, or the slave labor that makes our boutique sneakers and smart phones would not be tolerated for an instant. I believe it was the late Marc Bloch who observed that "Most history is made on the backs of most people." He might as well have observed that the joys and toys of Western life are made in the blood of most people.

-- Mal

[polly7]

4. I agree with you on that, malthaussen, I've always believed it. nt.

[appalachiablue]

5. Pitiless war by little boys playing with toys is it alright. Destroying people's lives,

communities and environment with game playing by immature little lords of the flies.

[KoKo]

6. Thanks "Polly 7." Vijay always makes so much sense...

Wish there were more of him.