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And next, Syria?

Fuchs66 said:
JaN are equal, in their brutality, to IS, the only difference is that IS have a slicker media department.
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One of the articles posted on here recently - the one about Bagdhadi's Road to power, I think, states that AQ under Zahawiri mandated JaN to win hearts and minds and to rein in their more medieval instincts as regards the application of jurisprudence so as to keep the populace, and other rebel groups, onside.

What they'd do once they won power, however, seems utterly bleedin' obvious and I doubt you could tell them apart from Daesh in any fundamental sense.
 
bendeus said:
One of the articles posted on here recently - the one about Bagdhadi's Road to power, I think, states that AQ under Zahawiri mandated JaN to win hearts and minds and to rein in their more medieval instincts as regards the application of jurisprudence so as to keep the populace, and other rebel groups, onside.

What they'd do once they won power, however, seems utterly bleedin' obvious and I doubt you could tell them apart from Daesh in any fundamental sense.
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Well the reports I'm hearing here indicate that they are already ignoring that mandate for anyone not wholeheartedly supporting their world views.
 
Fuchs66 said:
Well the reports I'm hearing here indicate that they are already ignoring that mandate for anyone not wholeheartedly supporting their world views.
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I certainly don't claim to be an expert. I do recall, however, that when our American chums flew their first sorties against daesh and thought to whack JaN at the same time that there was some degree of popular discontent reported amongst Syrian rebel factions and possibly some civilians at the latter choice.
 
You have to be 78 kinds of batshit to think that engaging with AQ to beat Daesh is a fucking great idea. Sorry to infantilise things but it's all a bit 'I know an old lady who swallowed a spider', isn't it? I mean, why not support and arm the one military grouping in the region that is actually kicking their arse rather than an increasingly comedic bunch of 'soldiers' of indeterminate allegiance. The YPG are effective but personae non grata because the fucking Sauds and fucking Al Thani and fucking Erdogan don't like them, so what about AQ, lol? That would be a fucking great idea. And from fucking Petraeus of all people. I'm pissed, sorry, and I despair
 
The good old taliban who are such a 'better' alternative to daesh, as well as being linked to al q, are poisoning school girls still :facepalm:

Good old 'modrerate' al q, we need them really. 9/11, well that was a long time ago and not really that bad :facepalm: i mean daesh and al nusra collaborated in yarmouk earlier this year and they're collaborating in yemen. They were also quite happy to be part of the same group until two years ago :facepalm:
 
I remember exactly where i was on 9/11, i was at school, everything changed that day. In that couple of minutes al q created a climate of fear and suspicion that has never gone away, and with 7/7 succeded in doing it even further. The 7/7 bombers had communicated with them via email and i dont think we should pursue a completely failed strategy which had totally counterproductive effects in afghanistan barely 30 years ago when the us/uk security services tried it the first time around. Don't they understand that bourgoise democracies, can't 'tame' can't 'accommodate' movements like this and expect them to do as they want just coz they think it will be useful in fighting people that the west currently regard as an enemy

Copper: 'i notice you have got lots of speeches by osama bin laden on your computer and lots of videos about 9/11, are you a Terrorist'
jihadi: 'Yeah but i support al Qaeda not ISIS'
copper: 'oh ok! Thats fine! off you go then'

:facepalm: :(
 
bendeus said:
One of the articles posted on here recently - the one about Bagdhadi's Road to power, I think, states that AQ under Zahawiri mandated JaN to win hearts and minds and to rein in their more medieval instincts as regards the application of jurisprudence so as to keep the populace, and other rebel groups, onside.

What they'd do once they won power, however, seems utterly bleedin' obvious and I doubt you could tell them apart from Daesh in any fundamental sense.
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JAN was founded by IS . Al Baghdadi created them himself . He despatched Al Golani from Iraq to found them , not Zahawiri . Al Golani was IS, one of his underlings . Al baghdadi provided much of their funding , not Zahawiri . A large proportion of his own fighters are originally JAN who took his side during the later split .And they comprised around ten percent of the so called FSA from the very outset . While doing most of the fighting . At the same time IS was up to is bollocks with the so called FSA as well, fighting alongside them and being publicly applauded by moderate generals denying they were extremists . During that entire period the yanks wre funnelling in the contents of Libyas arsenal to the FSA...which comprised JAN within its ranks and as its effective spearhead, at least until the scorpion turned on them and took out their consulate . Which was organising the whole fucking thing .

So what petraeus is coming out with is nothing new . It's merely a continuation of let's use Islamists to take down Assad . The same fucking ones they were using from the very outset . The only dividing line between the FSA , which the yanks fund and arm, is the paper thin renunciations of JAN by the moderate faces to the western media Who are then routinely seen standing with them in field only days later . All Petraeus is looking to do is ensure there can be no legal difficulties later when the dust eventually settles .
 
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DotCommunist said:
how long was he at Langley and still can't see arming the 'moderates' is madness
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Of course he can see it , he's not stupid by any means . The assumption he gives a fuck needs to be dispensed with here . They're the most effective fighting force in the field . Ergo that's who you support . All he's doing is agreeing with what the FSA spokespersons have been saying all along....." we are all Al Nusra " was what they ere shouting when the state department designated them terrorists
 
frogwoman said:
I remember exactly where i was on 9/11, i was at school, everything changed that day. In that couple of minutes al q created a climate of fear and suspicion that has never gone away, and with 7/7 succeded in doing it even further.
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No, no, a thousand times no. Millions of people resisted being sucked into that atmosphere, considering that to give in to such emotions would be a victory both for terrorism and those who would use the response to terrorism to further the goals of the state etc. Despite the horror of 7/7, many took comfort from the mostly reasonable and stoic response of the public.

Even with a pre-existing level of 'background racism' and hideous drooling 24/7 rolling news to draw upon, the terrorists and their mirror opposites did not succeed in pushing things to breaking point.
 
elbows said:
No, no, a thousand times no. Millions of people resisted being sucked into that atmosphere, considering that to give in to such emotions would be a victory both for terrorism and those who would use the response to terrorism to further the goals of the state etc. Despite the horror of 7/7, many took comfort from the mostly reasonable and stoic response of the public.

Even with a pre-existing level of 'background racism' and hideous drooling 24/7 rolling news to draw upon, the terrorists and their mirror opposites did not succeed in pushing things to breaking point.
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Most people yes but i think it succeeded in changing a part of the public and state discourse into something much more islamophobic and harsher which without al qaeda's actions they almost certainly wouldn't have been able to do, likewise with the repressive measures and suspicion against muslims (like that lad givibg out free palestine badges at his school)?
 
elbows said:
There were consequences, sure. But I'm afraid I'm always going to be rude about narratives that include phrases like 'everything changed that day' - fuck that shit, really.
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Yeah OK, but from my perspective as a child at school i think it was certainly a bit of a defining moment for me politically and the way things started being talked about.
 
Pickman's model said:
i do like the picture of ellsberg posing for a tourist shot by phone boxes in britain. the report no great surprise tho.
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No, but whenever I have a scan of this thread I'm surprised that nothing about any of this seems to be a part of the conversation, except the opinion mentioned once that "because I'm not a conspiraloon I don't think ISIS (the Daesh State) is a creation of US policy".

Just the other week former DIA chief Michael Flynn said in an interview on Al Jazeera that there was the intention for a jihadist "Sunni Principality" to form in the region:

Former US military intelligence chief: We knew something like ISIS was coming — and screwed it up

I had a look at this thread and the other one back then to see what the reaction would be. Fuck-all if I recall. It's like the stunning silence on the shelling of civilians in the Ukraine or the general disconnect in the UK 'media' between the refugee crisis in Hungary right now and British supported foreign policy in Syria and Iraq or Libya. Or even more broadly speaking- the decades (centuries?) old economic order that squeezes so much wealth from the global south but seems puzzled that people try to follow it (economic refugees I'm now calling them, fleeing the ravages of neo-colonial neo-liberalism).
 
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camouflage said:
No, but whenever I have a scan of this thread I'm surprised that nothing about any of this seems to be a part of the conversation, except the opinion mentioned once that "because I'm not a conspiraloon I don't think ISIS (the Daesh State) is a creation of US policy".

Just the other week former DIA chief Michael Flynn said in an interview on Al Jazeera that there was the intention for a jihadist "Sunni Principality" to form in the region:

Former US military intelligence chief: We knew something like ISIS was coming — and screwed it up

I had a look at this thread and the other one back then to see what the reaction would be. Fuck-all if I recall.
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yeh, as you say this does rather flow from previous events in iraq. while the americans were able to buy the support of some tribes in the north of iraq so they'd fight aqi round the time of the surge, it was always on the cards that - purely in iraq - things could change. add in events in syria and the possibility made a certainty. while this wasn't apparent to me at the time, that's because by day i am a mild mannered librarian while by night i watch tv. the americans, by contrast, could tell this was going to happen and didn't do anything about it: making this at best a result of omission if not commission.
 
Pickman's model said:
yeh, as you say this does rather flow from previous events in iraq. while the americans were able to buy the support of some tribes in the north of iraq so they'd fight aqi round the time of the surge, it was always on the cards that - purely in iraq - things could change. add in events in syria and the possibility made a certainty. while this wasn't apparent to me at the time, that's because by day i am a mild mannered librarian while by night i watch tv. the americans, by contrast, could tell this was going to happen and didn't do anything about it: making this at best a result of omission if not commission.
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Plus ISIS in Iraq was often presented to us as simply a consequence of the Maliki Iraqi governments crap sectarian ways. Indeed for a while it looked as though the US etc were temporarily resisting doing something about ISIS in order to pressurise the Iraqi government into becoming 'more inclusive' before Iraq would be granted outside assistance to fight ISIS. It seemed possible that the tide would turn against ISIS once this hurdle was out of the way.
 
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frogwoman said:
Yeah OK, but from my perspective as a child at school i think it was certainly a bit of a defining moment for me politically and the way things started being talked about.
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Understandable, and I have no desire to attempt to invalidate your own personal narrative and political evolution - its yours, I can't invalidate it.

But I will continue to caution against describing events in such sweeping terms that eventually the various players end up with the 'clash of civilisation' that they so desired.
 
elbows said:
Understandable, and I have no desire to attempt to invalidate your own personal narrative and political evolution - its yours, I can't invalidate it.

But I will continue to caution against describing events in such sweeping terms that eventually the various players end up with the 'clash of civilisation' that they so desired.
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I have gone out of my way not to do that though. I've been active against the far right, against war etc, for a very long time. I dont believe that clash of civilisations shite at all. What I'm saying is that al qaeda's actions that day helped to create a climate today which is unimaginably authoritarian compared to the 90s etc, it helped legitimise war anti muslim views to a point never before seen and overall helped to - im not saying that was the only reason but it helped to accelerate the process towards the political climate we have now

I dont believe in the clash of civilisations at all, it's utter bollocks
 
frogwoman said:
I have gone out of my way not to do that though. I've been active against the far right, against war etc, for a very long time.
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I'm not talking about that and am in no way intending to cast any aspersions on those fronts.

What I'm saying is that al qaeda's actions that day helped to create a climate today which is unimaginably authoritarian compared to the 90s etc, it helped legitimise war anti muslim views to a point never before seen and overall helped to - im not saying that was the only reason but it helped to accelerate the process towards the political climate we have now
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No, I can't describe the climate today as unimaginably authoritarian, or even particularly different to many decades of the 20th century. Thats not to deny the many things that were obvious reactions to 9/11 etc, and there were aspects that stuck out like a sore thumb compared to sentiments expressed in the 1990's. But in many ways not so much, Guantanamo Bay does not stick out so much when contrasted with US actions in South America a few decades prior.

The limits to the extent to which it legitimised was was on full display with Iraq - that stuff got squandered quickly.

Anti-muslim views were far from new either - especially in the US. Glimpses of this can be found in some films and tv programs from decades prior - cliched 'middle eastern terrorists' who would be both mocked and hated, and who would be very loosely based on earlier 'famous acts of terrorism'. Even without 24/7 news the likes of the Beirut barracks bombing was something to be used and etched in the minds of the public. And the long Iran-Iraq war and the caricatures of Iran's leaders post-revolution. The outcry over fatwa's against Salman Rushdie.

409787-spitting-image-the-computer-game-amstrad-cpc-screenshot-reagan.png
 
Anyway sorry to badger on about that, but I strongly associate phrases like 'everything changed that day' with the sorts of 'this is a new horror' thinking, and related propaganda, that Chomsky was so good at demolishing by bringing up all manner of equivalent events.
 
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