Site icon Fabius Maximus website

About the violent mobs in the Middle East. And in America

Larry Kummer, Editor

Summary: Every large event, every fork in the road, signals the need to stop and think about our course of action. America today is defined by our refusal to do so, as we see in our reaction to the riots. Our mob psychology mirrors theirs, but we tend to reply with greater firepower. That doesn’t mean we’re wiser, or will be more successful.

This is a followup to Death celebrates 9-11. Can we stop and think before we walk further along the road of terror?

AP Photo by Arun Shanker K.

Contents

  1. The big picture of current events
  2. A clear explanation of causes: it’s blowback
  3. A key to the crisis: that man in the mirror
  4. For more information

(1)  The big picture of current events

Every major event allows our leaders to lay another few bricks on the foundation of the New America.  The blinkers they’ve fitted to us prevent clearly vision of the world, so we’re guided by the words they whisper into our ears.  Enemies everywhere!  Inexplicably evil hatred of us!  We’re innocent sheep, who must reply with overwhelming ferocity and savagery.  Anyone — like our Black Islamic Atheist Socialist Anarchist Foreign President — who advocates reason or caution secretly seeks to weaken American, ending our benign world rule.

Look at what fills our media today.  Conspiracy mongering, advocacy of violence, ignorance about the causes of these conflicts. Above all the blindness to the obvious fact that their hatred has roots in our behavior since 9-11.  We invade Afghanistan, despite the 9-11 Commission saying it had a trivial role in 9-11.  We invade Iraq on the basis of lies about WMDs. We bring terror (by the literal definition) to an ever-widening number of Islamic nations (see here, and here, and here), supporting local tyrants (eg, Bahrain, Yemen).

In moments of national stress these mob-like behaviors get adopted by even moderate, sensible men and women.  That’s the nature of social cohesion:  it brings us together, bringing national strength but not wisdom. It works to accelerate trends, no matter if wise or stupid.

.

In these cycles there are only two groups: the mob and the bystanders.  The third, those who attempt to understand causes and craft workable solutions — are trampled in the rush.  We saw this in the immediate reaction to 9-11.  We saw this in the rush to war with Iraq.  We see it today.  Our inability to learn from this history — as we repeat the same foolish behaviors, again — goes to the heart of our dysfunctionality as citizens.

And so we’re led down the path of madness.

Why?  Who benefits? How to change this? I have no idea.  Please post your answers in the comments.

(2)  A clear explanation of causes: it’s blowback

I dislike long excerpts, but under the circumstances it’s warranted today.  Here’s the clearest analysis of what’s happening now:  “US media angrily marvels at the lack of Muslim gratitude“, Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian, 14 Sep 201 — “NBC News, along with a leading US newspaper, insist that Egyptians should be grateful to the US for having ‘freed’ them”

On Wednesday, USA Todaypublished an article with the headline “After attacks in Egypt and Libya, USA Today asks: Why?” The paper appeared to tell its readers that it was the US that freed the Egyptian people from tyranny:

“Attacks in Libya that left four US diplomats dead – including Ambassador Christopher Stevens – and a mob invasion of the US Embassy in Cairo, in which the US flag was torn to shreds, have left many to wonder: How can people the USA helped free from murderous dictators treat it in such a way?”

Did you know that the “USA helped free” Egyptians from their murderous dictator? On Thursday night, NBC News published a nine-minute report on Brian Williams’ “Rock Center” program featuring its foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, reporting on the demonstrations in Cairo, which sounded exactly the same theme. Standing in front of protesting Egyptians in Tahrir Square, Engel informed viewers that this was all so very baffling because it was taking place “in Cairo, where the US turned its back on its old friend Hosni Mubarak“, and then added:

“It is somewhat ironic with American diplomats inside the embassy who helped to give these demonstrators, these protesters, a voice, and allowed them to actually carry out these anti-American clashes that we’re seeing right now.”

That it was the US who freed Egyptians and “allowed them” the right to protest would undoubtedly come as a great surprise to many Egyptians. That is the case even beyond the decades of arming, funding and general support from the US for their hated dictator (to his credit, Engel including a snippet of an interview with Tariq Ramadan pointing out that the US long supported the region’s dictators).

Beyond the long-term US support for Mubarak, Egyptians would likely find it difficult to reconcile Engel’s claim that the US freed them with the “made in USA” logos on the tear gas cannisters used against them by Mubarak’s security forces; or with Hillary Clinton‘s touching 2009 declaration that “I really consider President and Mrs Mubarak to be friends of my family”; or with Obama’s support for Mubarak up until the very last minute when his downfall became inevitable; or with the fact that the Obama administration plan was to engineer the ascension of the loathed, US-loyal torturer Omar Suleiman as Mubarak’s replacement in the name of “stability”.

Given the history of the US in Egypt, both long-term and very recent, it takes an extraordinary degree of self-delusion and propaganda to depict Egyptian anger toward the US as “ironic” on the ground that it was the US who freed them and “allowed” them the right to protest. But that is precisely the theme being propagated by most US media outlets.

Even in Libya, where it’s certainly true that many Libyans are happy about the Nato intervention, this bafflement is misplaced. It’s always the case that some portion of the populace of an invaded nation will be happy about even the most unjustified invasions: that the Kurds are thrilled by the Iraq war is a fact still cited by Iraq war advocates as proof of the war’s justness and wisdom.

But it’s also the case that such invasions produce extreme anger, as well: among the families of those killed by the invading forces, or who suffer from the resulting lawlessness and instability. Combine that with the fact that it was repeatedly noted that US involvement in Libya meant that anti-US extremists, including al-Qaida, were being armed and empowered by the US, it is far from mystifying, as Secretary Clinton insisted, that some people in Libya are deeply hostile to the US and want to do it harm.

In the same report, Engel also spent several moments explaining that the primary reason these Muslims have such animosity toward the US is because their heads have been filled for years with crazy conspiracy theories about how the US and Israel are responsible for their woes. These conspiracies, he said, were fed to them by their dictators to distract attention from their own corruption. Let’s leave aside the irony of the American media decrying crazy “conspiracy theories” in other countries, when it is the US that attacked another country based on nonexistent weapons and fabricated secret alliances with al-Qaida. One should acknowledge that there is some truth to Engel’s claim that the region’s tyrants fueled citizen rage toward the US and Israel as a means of distracting from their own failings and corruption.

But to act as though Muslim anger toward the US and Israel is primarily the by-product of crazy conspiracy theories is itself a crazy conspiracy theory. It’s in the world of reality, not conspiracy, where the US and Israel have continuously brought extreme amounts of violence to the Muslim world, routinely killing their innocent men, women and children. Listening to Engel, one would never know about tiny little matters like the bombing of Gaza and Lebanon, the almost five-decade long oppression of Palestinians, the widely hated, child-killing drone campaign, or the attack on Iraq.

And it’s in the world of reality, not conspiracy, where the US really has continuously interfered in their countries’ governance by propping up and supporting their dictators. Intense Muslim animosity toward the US, including in Egypt, long pre-dates this film, and the reasons aren’t hard to discern. That’s precisely why the US supported tyranny in these countries for so long: to ensure that the citizens’ views, so contrary to US policy, would be suppressed and rendered irrelevant.

It doesn’t take a propagandized populace to be angry at the US for such actions. It takes a propagandized populace to be shocked at that anger and to view it with bafflement and resentment on the ground that they should, instead, be grateful because we “freed” them.

But to see why exactly such a propagandized populace exists in the US and has been led to believe such myth and conspiracies, simply read that USA Today article or watch the NBC News report on these protests as they convince Americans that gratitude, rather than resentment, should be the sentiment people in that region feel toward the US. …

(3)  A key element to the crisis: that man in the mirror

Learning is the basic element of life, the first step to reform for America, as described in this excerpt from The first step to reforming America, 7 December 2009.

In finance, in war, in politics — in so many vital areas we have a pattern of repeated behavior — despite repeated failure.  The diagnosis is obvious to those who treat behavioral disorders.

Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results.

The source of this brutal insight is not an ancient Chinese proverb, Benjamin Franklin, or Albert Einstein.  Those fake sources serve to conceal the nature of this problem. It comes from the people of Alcoholics Anonymous, its origin lost in the past. I have traced it back to Step 2:  A Promise of Hope by James Jensen, a pamphlet published by the Hazelden Foundation (1980).  Available here at Google Books.

Jensen expands upon this his chapter of The twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous (1993).  The resemblance to our America should appear obvious to us all.  From Google Books:

The dictionary defines insanity as “inability to manage one’s own affairs and perform one’s social duties … without recognition of one’s own illness.” The first part of the definition certainly applies to those of us who have just admitted that our lives had become unmanageable. Assuming this is our first walk through the Steps, we have not as yet proceeded to the searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves suggested in Step Four; thus, we probably do not recognize the full dimension of our illness. It is very likely that we’re not looking beyond our drinking or drug abuse at this point and are still denying or minimizing the seriousness of the problem. We still be blaming circumstances or other people for our drinking or using rather than accepting the responsibility for our own behavior.

… The late Dr. Harry Tiebout, who worked with alcoholics and was a strong supporter of AA for 30 years, defined us as “defiant individualists.”  The Big Book {of AA} identifies us as selfish and self-centered, driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity. So our illness is much more serious than we recognize it to be and, if not arrested, can be deadly. But it does not have to mean that we are candidates for psychiatric care.

Another aspect of our insanity is our distorted self-image. Somehow, each of us has come to think of our problem as being so unique that what will work for others will not work for us. …

This is an exact description of America today. Driven by fear and delusion.  Self-centered. Believing that what works for others will not work for us (ie, our health care system cost twice as much as our peers, but produces the same outcomes — yet we refuse to learn from their examples).

The first step to reform requires looking at the Man in the Mirror:

I’m Gonna Make A Change
For Once In My Life
It’s Gonna Feel Real Good
Gonna Make A Difference
Gonna Make It Right …

I’m Starting With The Man In The Mirror
I’m Asking Him To Change His Ways
And No Message Could Have Been Any Clearer
If You Wanna Make The World A Better Place
Take A Look At Yourself, And Then Make A Change

(4)  For more information (updated)

(a)  Other articles about these protests:

  1. “Why Americans don’t understand the Middle East“, Stephen M. Walt (Prof of international relations at Harvard), Foreign Policy, 14 September 2012
  2. “Hidden Causes of the Muslim Protests“, Robert Wright, The Atlantic, 16 September 2012 — “What are the sources of simmering hostility toward America that helped fuel these demonstrations?”
  3. “What the Arab Movie Riots Mean for U.S. Foreign Policy” by Andrew J. Bacevich, Newsweek, 17 September 2012 — “The death of a U.S. ambassador raises questions about America’s foreign-policy assumptions.”
  4. “The only surprise is there aren’t more violent protests in the Middle East“, Seumas Milne, op-ed in The Guardian, 18 September 2012 — “The Muslim eruption reflects a deep popular anger and blowback from US intervention in both Libya and Afghanistan”
  5. “Terror and Teargas on the Streets of Bahrain”, Jen Marlowe, TomDispatch, 18 September 2012 — “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (in the U.S. at Least)”
  6. A conservative perspective: “Bipartisan Middle East policy insanity“, Christopher Preble and Malou Innocent, CNN, 18 September 2012.
  7. “Coming to Grips with Impotence“, Michael Cohen, Foreign Policy, 19 September 2012 — “Can we really expect the president to be able to fix the Middle East?”
  8. “Is America Feared Enough in the Middle East?“, Matthew Duss, American Prospect, 19 September 2012 — “Supporting Islamist democracies might actually be the best way to win friends in the region.”

(b)  Other relevant articles by Glenn Greenwald, one of America’s few remaining journalists, writes for the The Guardian (truth no longer finds a home in America):

(c)  These things are discussed in these posts:

.

Exit mobile version