McRaven’s delusional, dangerous national security strategy

[polly7]

By Robert Jensen

November 29, 2015

Before worrying about whether the extremists in this case, the Islamic State or ISIS, might one day be at our gate, we should reflect on how they got where they already are, in Iraq and Syria. McRaven spent no time in this talk pondering the role of barbaric levels of violence, past and present, used by U.S. military forces and our allies in the region. To assess honestly that history doesn’t justify anyone’s terrorism but simply takes seriously the task of creating the conditions for stability and peace. Anyone wanting to stop brutal attacks on innocents should want to understand the context for the violence.

Although U.S. pundits and politicians like to ignore history that is inconvenient, a sensible policy in the Middle East would recognize how often our policy of undermining democratic regimes and propping up dictatorships has indeed created terrorists. We should recall that our main “enemy” in the region, Iran, suffered under the barbarism of the Shah for more than two decades, a direct result of U.S. support for his tyranny. Meanwhile our key “ally” Saudi Arabia is at the center, both intellectually and financially, of the Islamic fundamentalist political ideology that we claim to be fighting. And our wanton destruction of Iraq in 2003 created the traumatic conditions in which ISIS has flourished.

In these cases, a desire to control the flow of oil and oil profits, not humanitarian principles, dictated U.S. policy. That’s what we mean by imperialism. Throughout the post-WWII period in which the United States has dominated global politics, the United States has consistently ignored the legitimate democratic aspirations of the people of the developing world, including the Middle East, in favor of support for regimes that cooperated with U.S. planners’ goals.

ISIS doesn’t represent those legitimate aspirations, of course, but we aren’t likely to formulate a coherent strategy without an awareness of how the people of the Middle East view the United States. The success of U.S. pop culture around the world—the spread of blue jeans and hip hop music—should not be confused with support for U.S. policies. Even after the abject failures of the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq—again, on both principled and pragmatic criteria—U.S. politicians and pundits seem unable to grasp that these failures were tied to the United States’ delusional dreams of dominance. The right strategy is to reverse that course and renounce the unilateralism that folks such as McRaven euphemistically refer to as “leadership.”

Full article: https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/mcravens-delusional-dangerous-national-security-strategy/

[PeoViejo]

1. ""leadership""

The ability to follow orders without question and goal oriented execution without regard for collateral damage.

Questioning the legality of your mission is not a part of your job description.

[MisterP]

2. there's almost an instant tendency to believe that whoever we're supporting are just mini-Americans

in the 40s they hired Carleton Coon to translate FDR's Four Freedoms speech and thought that'd bring the Berber horsemen down on the Vichy forces; Reagan meant it when he called the mujahedeen and Contras (ISIS without the legitimacy) "the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers" because Jack Abramoff had carefully presented an image of red-blooded fighters for apple pie and open doors for Alcoa; African Maoists who said they were God mouthed Paine and the Bible

Israel, too, had ridden Entebbe and Eagle Claw to portray itself as a more successful version of America--as downright Christian, even (never mind those kibbutzes and strange Likud ideologues); Operation Gladio's occult-fascist trolls insisted they were shielding *true* democracy from totalitarians undermining it through fair elections

nowadays we've just flopped from one proxy "American" to the next, always wiping the slate clean and saying this time we got it right: we dropped the mujads and after 9-11 insisted over and over that Islam needed a "Reformation" (which codes for "modern," "tolerant," "peaceful," "Enlightened democracy," and so on): the Mideast had to stop listening to theology and their ulema and just let it hang, maybe smoke a bowl and lay a girl, because after all OBL is just doing what all the imams are saying: too bad everyone forgot that 1. we'd pulled all of this with Ali Shariati and 2. the non-elementary school version of the Protestant Reformation meant persecution of gays, a sharp decline in women's status, and heavy destruction of religious sites and images; in Afghanistan we got glitzy TV extravaganzas where Afghan women had their veils removed (to which RAWA smacks their collective heads) and we cheered when the Iraqis got their satellite dishes--now they can watch Nick at Nite like the rest of the world!

8 years later, we're thinking that Twitter was about to modernize, democratize, secularize everyone, from Kabul to Marrakesh--to *Americanize* it, because what we think these foreigners want looks an awful lot like our ideal vision of the US (whichever it may be); then we're utterly floored that they have their own culture and history, and flounder on to the next group to have a crush on: those nice Sunnis from our nice Gulf allies hate the ulema (so modern--so Protestant!) and the dictators we don't like any more--win-win!

a Libya later we move towards shaping Syrian rebels--so moderate! they hate genocide and tyranny! how DARE anyone even HINT that Syrian Sunni rebels could have EVER had ANYTHING to do with Ghouta! every single blowback we’ve had has happened because we badly misread the Mideastern situation; every proxy army has known that it needs US money and favor so it molds itself to hit all the “American” tick-boxes of the administration in power at the moment and the Americans pushing it: all the rebels tailor themselves to present a nice face to their sponsor, who believes that the group that seems most similar to Dem or GOP values is the one we should pick and support

so what's next? already the Mickey Z. types (and Eustonites, hilariously enough) see Rojava as being made in their image: an "ungovernment" that will no doubt get the same US hysterical reaction when it's rather less democratic, anarchistic, and feminist--less American, less Western--than we'd thought; Clinton likewise backs the MeQ as feminist/secularist/blah-de-blah-de-blah

this misreading is baked into our culture: after Bacatlan everyone easily assumed that these were rigid theocrats, lustful yet afraid of women like every Dan Brown villain, lashing out at any sort of infidel merriment, shaking in rage that people were drinking and singing in their own country; and yet the shooters lived off of beer and cannabis and had plenty of sex

perhaps a brutal example, but one that hits close to home

[bemildred]

3. My.

Brave fellow.