‘Blowback’ in Canada?
Above: the Ottawa ISIS supporter
One of Shiraz‘s proudest achievements, over the years, has been the debunking of the ‘blowback‘ explanation / excuse for terrorist attacks.
In the light of Rhodri Evans’s shrewd analysis of how ISIS has forced the ‘anti- imperialist’ left to re-examine its stance on Islamist terrorism, I was about to comment upon how ‘blowback’ has been absent from most of the liberal-left’s response to events in Canada…
…when this wretched article appeared in today’s Independent.
The BTL comments are, in the vast majority, superb in their contempt for this shit. Sarah AB also does a very good fisking job, over at That Place.
James Bloodworth has also done an excellent job over at the Spectator, fisking the creepy ‘blowback’ promoter Glenn Greenwald and more or less writing the article I was going to come up with. So he’s saved me the trouble … here it is:
Anti-NSA crusader Glenn Greenwald published an article on Wednesday morning where he explained that the recent murder of a Canadian soldier by a radicalised Muslim convert was down to Canadian foreign policy. The important sentence in Greenwald’s piece is this one:
‘A country doesn’t get to run around for years wallowing in war glory, invading, rendering and bombing others, without the risk of having violence brought back to it.’
To put it another way, it was inevitable that the jihadists would come after Canadians, given that Canadians had meted out some fairly ripe treatment to the jihadists – first in Afghanistan and now against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (I’m being generous to Greenwald here, I grant you).
Read the rest here
Shiraz Socialist 
Rilke said,
October 24, 2014 at 7:24 pm
My house was robbed, I was assaulted, my children threatened with weapons my wife attacked. However, there is no guilt attached to the perpetrators. How could there be? There is no guilt because in a linked series of ‘determinisms’ and ‘social factors’ the ‘blowback’ left convinced me that it was actually all my own fault for having a house in the first place and also for having the petty bourgeoise arrogance to own a televsion and the ideological idiocy and middle class complacency to expect not to be robbed and attacked. In any case, the robbery never really occurred it was all a Pentagon plot, a CIA/MI6 scheme to get people to support ID cards and increased police budgets. I should grow up and stop whining and cease being a stooge. The solution is simple of course, join the liberal left or the SWP and all will be well – so much so in fact, that I would be so busy and elated reading The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist that I would simply forget I ever wanted a television at all. Wonderful and so very very simple, if only others could all just see it clearly and see it whole.
Aaron Aarons said,
October 24, 2014 at 10:06 pm
Your crude attempt at parody seems to be an effort to rule out discussion on things like class, race and national privilege and on the use of false-flag operations by ruling-class agencies. (It was to rule out discussion of the latter, and of other covert operations, that the phrase “conspiracy theory” was created and pushed in ruling-class media in the first place.)
You do, by the way, stink of the petty-bourgeois arrogance you try to dismiss, although it is possible that your status in the bourgeoisie is not, in fact, ‘petty’. In any case, while I wish no harm to any wife or children you may actually have, since they already are cursed with you as a husband or father, I think you really do deserve any of the bad things you mention that might happen to you.
By the way, if you have any ties whatsoever with the AWL, they are far worse as an organization than I imagined.
Aaron Aarons said,
October 24, 2014 at 9:20 pm
The word “blowback”, at least in this kind of context, was coined or borrowed to describe a situation where a force trained, armed and financed by United Snakes imperialism for use against the late Soviet Union turned around and used its resources to attack what was originally its lesser enemy, the U.S. and the West. Perhaps in an ultimate sense, the recent Islamist attacks against military personnel in Britain and Canada are a continuation of that blowback, but really they are retaliatory attacks in a context of asymmetric warfare. This interpretation doesn’t depend on how one feels about each side in the conflict between the imperialist West and radical Islam.
Sue R said,
October 24, 2014 at 9:52 pm
I believe the murderer’s father is a Libyan and has been out in Libya fighting with the militias there. I suspect the murder’s parents are divorced as his mother, a Canadian, put out a statement that she and her husband disown her son. I don’t think this can be described as triggered by any Canadian action, it has deeper psychological roots than that.
Aaron Aarons said,
October 25, 2014 at 5:52 am
There is no contradiction between the shooter’s actions having “deeper psychological roots” and those actions being a political reaction to real events, regardless of whether you agree with the shooter’s interpretation of those real events or not.
Rilke said,
October 25, 2014 at 7:55 am
Indeed Aaron, let it hereby be known and in fact let it be written and passed by the faithful at both regional and national conferences: those that use the ancient and entirely human language of parody ‘stink’ and are henceforth ‘cursed’. Let these parodists and ironists be condemned and forced to use only the language of ‘class, race and national privaledge’. If they do not then ‘bad things’ will fall on them from on high. You could even ‘harm’ their families if you so wished, but you are just and spare them.
You denounce the language of parody by deploying the language of religious denunciation and retribution. I find this interesting. From a figural point of view and textually at least, your ‘reply’ is also inflected with a strange undertone of medical pseudo-scientific arrogance. All who do not accept your ‘political’ (I use the word guardedly) assertions are ‘petty’ or ‘pseudo’ even ‘covert’; perhaps even agents of…. the anti-christ, the devil, the apostates, and heaven forefend, even the ‘bourgeoisie’. You write as if from the Olympian hights of the gods Aaron, you talk of the ‘world’ in general with such ease, ‘the West’ ‘radical islam’, history dwindled to the ‘Soviet Union’, the ‘US’ and ‘Imperilaism’. You can even see into the dead ‘shooters’ mind and declare that what you find there does not matter. So clear, so wonderfully simple.
This is of course. the combination of religious arrogance, political suspicion and pseudo-medical ‘diagnosis’ that gave rise to those versions of politically motivated punitive psychology that sent ‘unbelievers’ off to be ‘corrected’ and ‘re-educated’. I really do hope Aaron that you are not in any way in ‘charge’ or in any postion of influence in any orgnastion. Do you perhaps keep lists of the disobedient? In any event, all things considered I found your post midly amusing. You really do remind me of the Bishop who denounced Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels as an ‘evil’ book because it was filled with ‘untruth’. Hilarious!
Aaron Aarons said,
October 25, 2014 at 9:51 am
There’s a big difference between the use of parody to undermine the pretensions of the powerful and using parody (or, in your case, really sarcasm) to put down challenges to the powerful. Your wilful failure to recognize the difference makes any parsing of the obscure verbiage you have just written not worth the effort.
Aaron Aarons said,
October 25, 2014 at 9:34 am
I just took the time to read the Greenwald article (http://tiny.cc/Greenwald20141022) that offends you and your co-thinkers, and the basis for that offense to your sensibilities is clear: It completely exposes and neutralizes, to the unfortunately-small number of those who both need such clarification and will get to read it, the most important linguistic device, “terrorism”, used by Zionists in particular and imperialists in general to rally support for their wars against, and domination over, Arabs and Muslims.
Aaron Aarons said,
October 25, 2014 at 9:40 am
I should also add, in case anybody reading this is unaware of the fact, that the same “terrorism” curse word is used to justify wars and repression against leftist revolutionaries like the FARC in Colombia and the NPA in the Philippines, and it is even stretched to apply to non-violent movements like the Animal Liberation Front and to various environmental defense groups that use sabotage (e.g., Earth Liberation Front) or even tamer methods of direct action.
peter storm said,
October 25, 2014 at 2:10 pm
“To put it another way, it was inevitable that the jihadists would come after Canadians, given that Canadians had meted out some fairly ripe treatment to the jihadists – first in Afghanistan and now against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (I’m being generous to Greenwald here, I grant you). ” No, that is not a fair representation of the argument. The “fairly ripe treatment” in Afghanistan was not just – not even mainly – “meted out” to “the jihadists” but to people whose only crime was: living in a country where jihadists were, first, rulers, and still prominent. Besides, one of the wars that triggered blowback goes unmentioned: Iraq, which – at the moment of invasion – was as un-jihadist as one could get, for it was a secular, not an islamist, dictatorship. What the argument a la Greenwald says is: Canada (or the Netherlands, where I am from, another country participating in the current crusade) cannot wage war against civilians without expecting Canadian (or Dutch) civilians becoming target as well. It is called revenge. That does not make such revenge justified, but it makes it explicable.
Rilke said,
October 25, 2014 at 3:44 pm
I am sure you are correct Peter and Aaron. It will surely come as an immense relief to the families of those Kenyans murdered on 21 September 2013 by al-Shabaab while doing some ‘capitalist’ shopping that they were not in fact the victims of ‘terror’ or murder at all, but simply the objects of a ‘revenge’ that is perfectly ‘explicable’ – well to some minds at least. In any case, they were unbelievers and not ‘Arabs or ‘Muslims’ and just Kenyans as such, and so they really should have fully expected to be targeted as the Kenyan goverment had the ‘Imperialist’ arrogance to interevene in Somalia. This explains it all, so clear so simple. Yes, even the Earth Liberation Front has the right to cut people’s throats and kidnap children if the ‘Imperialists’ label them ‘terrorists’. Those poor wretches who were blown to atoms in a Manchester shopping centre by the Provisionsal IRA were just so much legitimate colateral damage right? We just need to see the politics of it correctly. I see it all now, I pay taxes to a goverment that still has colonial arrogance and engages in miltary adventurism and so unless I learn to show solidarity with the forces of extreme religous reaction that is only one of the manifestations of a failed capitalist modernity, I deserve to have my throat cut too! A curious thought though, you two are just as much part of the military-Imperailist ‘West’ as I am, but unlike me, you two profess solidarity with these reactionary forces. Given that these forces you support told those Kenyans that they must ‘convert’ or ‘die’ should you not truly have the courage of your convictions and either convert or cut your own throats?
A small point of historcal accuracy for you Peter. You use the word ‘crusade’. It usually refers to the assault on Jersuslem and the Levant in 1099 by largely Christian Frankish forces. This Crusade is often offered as the basis for subsequent radical Muslim reaction and counter aggression. I hear it shouted at a lot at meetings mouthed by people who seem to know the word but not what it refers to. It is often cited today by the likes of you two as one of the outstanding crimes of the ‘West’. It is often used by left reationary apologists as an index of ‘Western arrogance’ and ‘racism’ and also to explain the Umayyad Caliphate’s own crusade through Spain, Italy and into France that wrecked and layed waste much of Bordeau and Burgundy until their defeat at the Battle of Tours. But you see, there is a small problem with this type of analaysis. The Umayyad conquests, forced conversions and expansion had been going on since 680, and the battle of Tours was in 711. The First Crusade was certainly no better but also no worse than other religiously and territorially motivated expansions. The Umayyad expansion that in fact, came first, committed massacres of Jews and Christians to much the same degree as the Frankish knights’ blood-soaked deeds in the Middle East. I cite this to show the overt simplicity and inadequacy of the binary action/reaction analysis you two seem so fond of.
Ponder thereon!
Sue R said,
October 25, 2014 at 6:29 pm
The murderer was also a homeless, crack addict. Just shows what sort of people this ’cause’ attracts. Not the flower of the proletariate that’s for sure.
Aaron Aarons said,
October 31, 2014 at 8:02 pm
The fact that you think being homeless is a negative personal characteristic, rather than a consequence of capitalist oppression, says a lot about you that isn’t at all admirable. But for a different take on the kind of people who are, partly thanks to the absence of a real anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist left, attracted to the IS, see this article from the New York Times:
New Freedoms in Tunisia Drive Support for ISIS
http://tiny.cc/NYTimesTunisiaISIS
Rilke said,
October 25, 2014 at 7:36 pm
Actually Sue, it occurs to me that given Aaron’s description of ‘blowback’ as the return of pre-organised and financed anti anti-state forces that have then turned against their original backers and so have now somehow become ‘anti-imperialist’, there are or were are groups who fitted that description fairly accurately. These would be the UVF and UFF that were covertly supported by British military intelligence at the height of the Northern Ireland troubles. This covert open gate to anti-republican paramilitaries policy contributed eventually to the infamous Shankhill Butchcer outrages and the failure to speedily prosecute and track down these maniacs. What is interesting, is that although the Shankhill Butchers’ crimes were similar in many respects to the type of atrocity we see committed by Jihadists, I never once heard the left apologising for the Shankhill Butchers or giving out the ‘blowback’ justification for their activities. They came from the slums of Belfast so at least they would have had the ‘dirt poor’ renegade tag to fall back on, but no, the left and the SWP did not say ‘we are all UFF now’. Curious that given the nature of the analysis!
Aaron Aarons said,
October 26, 2014 at 6:06 am
You begin here, Rilke, with a good half-sentence precís of the concept of blowback, but quickly go off the deep end:
1) Very few people who consider themselves leftist and anti-imperialist would consider the Islamist groups that worked with the U.S. against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan to have become anti-imperialist themselves, even though they came, in some cases, into conflict with the dominant Western imperialist bloc and carried out some actions that can be considered objectively anti-imperialist, such as the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen, and attacks on U.S. and NATO military forces everywhere.
2) While the Shankill Butchers committed atrocities similar to those committed by IS, they were acting much more like the sectarian Shia militias and the Iraqi Kurdish forces who commit similar atrocities (but against Sunnis) with less fanfare, while remaining allied to their imperialist sponsors. And going beyond, in their violence, what their patrons pretend to support does not mean the imperialists’ clients have turned on them. Moreover, the Loyalist paramilitaries were not only working with British imperialism, but defending their own supremacy over the oppressed “catholic” community. So why would you expect anybody on the left to have supported them?
Rilke said,
October 26, 2014 at 9:17 am
You see Aaron, this is where we are so radically different. I do not, and cannot differentiate among crimes simply on the basis of ‘who’ commits them or ‘where’ they may have ‘originated’. I found my analysis of atrocity and inhumam actions on the actual content, effect and political direction of the actions themsleves. To engage in the genetic fallacy that things are consituted only by their origins (things are not their origins because they have always moved beyond their origins that is why origins or determinantions are called such) is to abandon the ethical question altogether and ultimately to have no basis for opposiong oppression at all. Why oppose inequality or oppression if there is no ethical question? If nothing is ever truly ‘wrong’ as such but only determined by its political origins then we can simply pick and choose what we wish to term the ‘ethical’ and manufacture our ethical outrage to suit our current politcal interests; but this is not ‘the ethical’ at all because it is not a universal category. Gramsci takes this from Marx and Nietzsche via Kant. This is what Gramsci called the ‘ethical’ question ‘for’ the left.
You fall into this genetic fallacy. You talk of the crimes of the US and NATO but why are these wrong? If cutting people’s throats is justified or ‘understandable’ then why is bombing a town any worse? The concept of ‘just’ or ‘unjust’ cannot exist for you as categories but only as ‘political’ positions. This is why you refuse to comment on my point about the PIRA crimes or those of the El Shabaab, because for you, these actions were not crimes at all but only ‘reactions’. But if the concept of the unjust or just does not exist then you cannot be in favour of a ‘just’ society.
This is the reason the SWP and other leftists can get really ‘angry’ and ‘outraged’ about a right wing Tory MP showing semi-nude photos of himself on the internet but say in the same breath, that the systematic abuse, rape and trafficking of poor and disorientated young women in Rochdale carried out by gangs of mostly Asian men, is not a ‘crime’ but only the product of ‘neo-liberal capitalism’. You begin by claiming to want a just, fair and perhaps even gentle and beautful society but end by claiming solidarity with the most shocking crimes imaginable. In For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemmingway, Jordan and his group who are fighting the fascists capture a fascist military prisoner. The cannot keep him and they cannot let him go, they have no camp or prison to send him to, the only option is to execute him. One of the fellow travellers of the group, a semi-psychopath and petty thief wants to blind the prisoner first, make his death long and painful and put him on display by tying him to a post for the kids to torture as a ‘warning’. ‘Justified’? ‘understanble’? ‘explicable’? The group decide to have none of this, they are fighting to end this kind of ‘crime’ and cruelty not to perpetrate it. As quick and as painless as possible is the only way and by drawing lots to determine who gets the dirty job (a very ancient way of dealing with ethical dillemas and moral guilt). You see, Aaoron? I cannot accept and less understand the reasons given by the current SWP and STWC and blowback Left as to why they wish to show solidarity with the ‘psychopathic thief’ rather than the ‘ethical decision’ of the group. (This, I suppose, is why you can lump FARC, ISIS and the Earth Liberation Front all together, assuming this was not an attempt at irony).
It is this same hypocrtical or confused stance that not only distorts the ‘ethical question’ but also the historical one. Although many on the ‘blowback’ left claim to be ‘historical determinists’ they simple pick and choose what moments of ‘history’ fit their current political line. But this is not historical determinism at all. Apprently, the ‘crusades’ are where it all ‘started’, the earlier Caliphates never existed and Muslim peoples have never had various oppressive and aggressive empires. Fine, but do no then appeal to history as such to justify your political stance, as this is simply false or in other words, ‘lies’.
By the way Aaron, this is also why your point about parody against the ‘oppressor’ is wrong. If the politcal caste can set the limits and determine the content and objects of parody then, as with the ethical question, it is simply no longer ‘parody’ at all – merely, a newer version of the literary censor, shaped not by parody but by parody’s self-appointed political masters.
Aaron Aarons said,
October 26, 2014 at 2:53 pm
Rilke, if you want to legitimately argue against my positions, or Greenwald’s, or those of anybody else, quote what you are arguing against, rather than imputing your words to them. As it is, any overlap between my views and those you ascribe to me is purely coincidental, or due to a temporary lapse in your demonstrated ability to make stuff up. In particular, on the basis of what evidence can you say that I “lump FARC, ISIS and the Earth Liberation Front all together”? Since you are anonymous and do not, apparently, represent any organization that needs to be “taken down” politically, I’m not sure why I bother responding to you, unless it’s a manifestation of OCD on my part.
Since this page started as an attack on Glenn Greenwald, I’ll point out that Greenwald pointed out over and over again that saying that an anti-Western action was a response in some way to the West’s militarism and interference in other countries did not justify any particular such action.* The purpose of his article, as I understand and support it, was to undermine the ability of the imperialist powers to use those actions, however one evaluates them, and their manufactured “anti-terrorist” hysteria as an excuse for further terror against Muslim peoples, for further attacks on civil liberties inside the imperialist countries and their clients, and for a general strengthening of the imperialists’ ability to act in the world in defense of their imperialist interests.
* I will add my own caveat that even when an action can be totally justified, such as a hypothetical killing of Stephen Harper himself, it might possibly be correct, given the imperialist propaganda machine’s ability to frame the response to such an act, for an anti-imperialist leftist to try to prevent it from happening. (Note that I said “might possibly be correct” and not “would be correct”.)
Rilke said,
October 26, 2014 at 4:45 pm
All is clear and ‘correct’. You think murder is ‘justified’ and only truly ‘wrong’ if and when enacted the said murder itself can or may be put to ‘propaganda use’ by ‘imperialist powers’. The act of murder is not wrong in and of itself but should only be opposed or ‘prevented’ if the murder asssists the ‘imperialist propaganda’ machine’. Very clear.
I was a heavy industrial worker for eleven years and I have known some very tough and rough and ready men, but I never met one who took murder so lightly and spoke of the killing of others with such indifference. You almost make me laugh, during one particularly long and bitter strike we had one of your stripe keep turning up on our picket lines telling us to ‘attack the police station’ and ‘kill the coppers’. One night we got drunk and attacked the cop shop, not to kill, but to steal a cop van. But guess what? The kill-talker could not be found, then or after. You would not last more than two days if it was ‘to the guts’ as we used to say. Goodbye and good riddance, I do not converse with apologists for murder.
Aaron Aarons said,
October 26, 2014 at 6:36 pm
So, do you think all killing is murder? Does that include the killing of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, few of them involved in armed combat, as murder? If so, do you say “goodbye and good riddance” to the owner(s) of this blog, who, I’m pretty sure, do not condemn those killings — killings that are, in my opinion, unlike the hypothetical killing of ruling-class criminal Stephen Harper, actual murder, and mass murder at that?
Rilke said,
October 26, 2014 at 8:00 pm
I was part of a trade union delagtion to the Gaza Strip that helped to deliver a fire engine and ambulance to the people suffering there. These vehicles were bought with money donated and collected by unionised industrial workers who could hardly afford it. Get lost, you idiot!
Aaron Aarons said,
October 27, 2014 at 5:34 am
There is no way for me to know what you, whoever you actually are, have done in the physical world. But we were discussing political ideas, which don’t depend on one’s real-world identity. So do you, and the AWL, condemn the Zionist state for its massive killings of Gaza’s inhabitants, including children? Or do you (a) explain and (b) excuse those murders the way the initiator of this page, (a) correctly and (b) wrongly, accuses Greenwald and other anti-imperialists of doing with regard to the far less significant killings of a couple of soldiers in Canada?
BTW, bringing an ambulance and a fire engine to Gaza is, in itself, admirable. But doing so without condemning the attackers who caused thousands of people to need ambulances (and other thousands to die) and hundreds of buildings to burn, if in fact there was no such condemnation, makes those gifts appear to be a token replacement for real solidarity, such as that provided by Oakland, California dock workers who have repeatedly refused to allow the servicing of Israeli ships.
Jim Denham said,
October 27, 2014 at 8:12 am
Here’s a link for you, Aarons. It will answer at least one of your questions:
http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2014/07/16/two-nations-two-states
Sue R said,
October 26, 2014 at 9:05 pm
Was the killing of a three-week old baby in Jerusalem the other day then justified?
Aaron Aarons said,
October 27, 2014 at 5:40 am
Was the baby the rabidly repressive and militarist Prime Minister of an imperialist country? If it was, the answer is yes. Otherwise, you should give your answers to the questions I have been asking before expecting me to answer yours.
Sue R said,
October 27, 2014 at 10:26 am
Did the Yazidis deserve their fate? But, coming back to the baby, I take it you think it was reprehensible to murder a new-born infant. Is that a moral absolute or does it only apply when the mewling, puking specimen in question is not an elected representative or a state with which you disagree? How do infant monarchs fare in this? Incidentally, if the Palestinans spent more money on the infrastructure of their societies ie not building tunnels, they wouldn’t need charity. You seem to have a simplistic view of the world, ie unless you support me and the Palestinians one hundred per cent, you must glory in the murder of Palestinians. It’s not very suble, seems like a doctrine of the Elect.
Aaron Aarons said,
October 27, 2014 at 4:20 pm
The Palestinians need tunnels for many reasons, both economic and military (defensive and offensive). They ARE infrastructure. And if the Israelis didn’t spend billions of dollars on their military, they wouldn’t need the billions of dollars of charity that the Zionist lobby in the U.S. “convinces” the U.S. Congress to vote them every year.
Everything else you write in this latest comment of yours is either based on your speculation about what my positions are or just totally loony. But why should you care how much of a fool you make of the handle “Sue R”, since you can come up with a different one when “Sue R” becomes totally discredited, like now?
Sue R said,
October 27, 2014 at 9:49 pm
Sorry, what are the reasons they NEED the tunnels? How are they making the society prosperous, as opposed to individuals who are doing very nicely out of the war situation?
Pinkie said,
October 29, 2014 at 9:32 pm
Of course the Palestinians don’t need the tunnels, Sewer. It’s just a scam, of course. Palestinians will do just fine without them, whinging bastards that they are. Good grief.
Sue R said,
October 29, 2014 at 8:28 pm
I see the Egyptians are talking about erecting a wall against the Sinai and filling in the smuggling tunnels. So, it’s not just the Israelis who have problems with them. I’m still waiting to hear an economic justification for the tunnels though, the military I can understand.
Aaron Aarons said,
October 31, 2014 at 7:34 am
The fact that the fascist, or at least semi-fascist, dictatorship in Egypt also wants to destroy the tunnels is another good reason to defend them. The main function of the tunnels, moreover, has been to smuggle in supplies that the Israelis and Egyptians prevented from getting in any other way.
Incidentally, it appears that the Islamist fighters in the SInai have only been attacking the Egyptian state, and not civilians, so there’s no reason for leftists to oppose them.
Jim Denham said,
October 31, 2014 at 8:05 am
“Islamist fighters in the SInai have only been attacking the Egyptian state, and not civilians, so there’s no reason for leftists to oppose them” … other than the fact that they’re Islamists, you mean, Aaron?
Aaron Aarons said,
October 31, 2014 at 4:04 pm
I meant that there’s no reason to oppose their armed actions, presuming they are, in fact, reasonably carefully aimed at the pro-Israel, pro-U.S., fascistic Egyptian state and its close supporters, including Israel, the U.S., and the Gulf monarchies.
Unlike you AWL supporters, I consider the U.S. and its collaborators, including the JS with its nuclear weapons and “Samson Option”, to be the main, long-term enemy of humanity, while those Islamists who are not part of that imperialist collaboration are, at worst, a very nasty local or regional problem.
Jim Denham said,
October 31, 2014 at 5:52 pm
A serious question, Aaron: do you think socialists should wish for the defeat and destruction of ISIS at the hands of the Kurds and their allies?
Aaron Aarons said,
October 31, 2014 at 8:39 pm
I don’t know if wishing means anything, but I certainly support the leftist Kurds of Kobane and Western Kurdistan against the IS. But, while the destruction of that group would be a good thing, there is a real danger that its defeat, particularly by the Iraqi government and Shia militias like the Badr Brigade, would lead to massacres of Sunnis in the areas taken by those forces. Similar massacres of Arab Sunnis might also occur in areas retaken by the Peshmerga of the pro-capitalist, pro-U.S., pro-Israel Kurdish-nationalist KDP and PUK.
Probably the best thing would be for IS to be driven out of the areas it conquered against the wishes of their populations, while its defeat in the Sunni areas where it was welcomed as a lesser evil, or the elimination of its most sectarian and fanatical component that now gets all the publicity, would be accomplished by the saner Sunni Arabs rather than by outside invasion that would only firm up Sunni support for IS.
Jim Denham said,
November 1, 2014 at 10:45 am
Is that a “yes”, then?
I’m also interested in the implication that there is a *less* “sectarian and fanatical component” of ISIS that presently receives little or no publicity
Sue R said,
October 30, 2014 at 8:16 pm
Yes Pinkie, as a rat I am well versed in the use of tunnels. But, you display the typical response of your ilk, obliterate someone with insults, wish them dead, question their motives but at all costs, don’t answer of consider the question.
Pinkie said,
October 31, 2014 at 8:21 pm
I don’t think you have read what I wrote, I have not wished you dead nor obliterated you with insults. It is obvious why the tunnels are used, it is to get materials through that cannot get through by land.
I do not know what your motives are, I am sure, though, that the tunnels are built for many reasons, whether or not you or I agree with them.