What Assad’s air force has done to constituents will never be forgiven by those whose cooperation and loyalty the state must have; on the other side, General Idris remains in business and, it appears, is being favored in the distribution of European arms, probably in concert with official Saudi cooperation, but there are rogue forces, as much circumstances suggest, in the financing of the civil war, and they will have to be blocked and neutralized for a modern society to coalesce between autocratic personalities and then expand and squeeze them out. Syria — and Syrians — have a long way to go.
Putin has chosen the disingenuous position of sustaining a Putin-Assad-Khamenei arc at terrific expense to the humanity in the theater, and, so far, it appears he’s not going to budge from the program. I now call the three named the “three amigos of dictatorship”.
In politics as in life, anything seems possible; however, tendency says the dictator will go, and so will the Islamist fronts, both so aligned against the grain of humanity and nature. Nonetheless, the inherently authoritarian on both sides of the battle — different talk; same walk — remain dominant in the theater and Syrians either neutral to both or supporting neither die and suffer at the hands of both.
At this point, it bears repeating: Syrians — a Syrian People, a community with the legacy of many histories on the land — have no army representing their interests.
Assad’s army, which has been dropping barrel bombs on apartment buildings, is not the army of the people; the other army, which, among other atrocities, appears to have shoved bakers into their own ovens is not the army of the people either; and, to a certain extant, the power bearing against Syria-Iran-Hezbollah-Shiite Islam may not be Syria’s preferred army either, but in the person of General Idris, it would appear, it would be at least Syrian and non-authoritarian in its attitude toward Syrian citizens.
The Syrian People haven’t control of any army representing their needs, which today are immense with suffering.
The three amigos of dictatorship — Putin-Assad-Khamenei — have positioned and milked Syria’s productive capacities and strategic location for some time. One may have hoped for Russia in the post-Soviet, post-KGB era to have taken the lead in producing a post-Soviet buffer and client in Syria, which by legacy may be conceded to Russia’s zone of control and influence (if we’re going to have that kind of world with superpowers locked into strategic checkmate for everyone’s security).
No dice.
Post-Soviet has transformed into a 19th Century style oligarchy suspended firmly in favor and patronage around the “vertical of power”. So far. Putin knows what’s needed and is capable of change. Nonetheless, the horror he has back in Syria cannot or will not differentiate between combatants and noncombatant constituents, and state media RT and others have spun barrel-bombing Bashar al-Assad into the hero of Syrian secularism.
While there’s some truth to that, the damage in death and injury, dispersion and lost cities tell that the want of a healthy secularism pales before the ambition to again deeply subjugate the Syrian People to the Assad will.
A Look At the Other Side
Al-Nusra and ISIL and a large assortment of fighters, from upside-down European teenagers to old village militia, has looked to the Qur’an for guidance toward the development of Syrian theocracy or caliphate, either way another autocratic system bent on the glorification — today: self-aggrandizement — of leaders and the subjugation of all others. They have discovered instead, so far, the endless divisions and egotism inherent in narcissistic “mobocracy” and “thugocracy”.
Instead of launching war of principle to unseat a brutal dictatorship, the Islamists find themselves fighting over personalities, which, if any may step back from it, they might find a war over the character of leadership personality itself.
The “west” and most of the world able to make itself helpful has now a proven capability for moving humanitarian aid to regions troubled by natural disaster and war, and a part of that involves the volunteering of military assets; however, the world hasn’t got the principle of deploying a military coalition as an invading force in a civil war. NATO “Coalitions of the Willing” have involved at least the chimera of direct threat (Iraq) underscored, again, by the workings — including state support for terrorism — of an obscene dictatorship, or actual attack from foreign lands (Afghanistan).
Those volunteers most passionate about fighting in Syria have repeatedly proven themselves confused about God, humanity, and themselves — or none would have had the chance, much less the motivation, for throwing bakers into their own ovens. Now they and we are in a terrible position: pushing out against Assad-Khamenei (with Putin in a supporting role), there is no expanding middle force. The kernel for that should have been General Idris, but good, much less, civil, even nice, doesn’t seem to work in the Syrian theater.
Between dictatorship-for-money and tyranny attached to an egotistical presumption about one’s self and God, the French, among others, have signaled refusal to support either fascist track.
Israelis have been providing emergency medical care, including longer-term care, to Syrians injured or in need of medical attention (Syrian mothers have borne children in Israel). They have also pitched in with humanitarian relief even with the erasure of Hebrew or origin labels attached to care shipments.
It’s not like it hasn’t been thought about, but even the band-aid of an “humanitarian corridor”, a DMZ, a safe zone on Syrian soil adjacent to affected boundaries, requires defense.
Experience with the camps developed for the refugees of 1948 suggests too that such become permanent habitations and develop their own political character, a character sustained and damned by charity across generations and ensured by Arab prejudice and will, the refugees remaining disenfranchised and, so well demonstrated by what has happened to the Yarmouk Camp in Syria, treated as military assets held for war rather than like human beings.
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It may be taken with a weary nod that Muslim teens and converts outside of Syria have been drawn to the fighting, for such fighting presents to them as noble and packaged with many other directions and emotions about things in the world, while the adults in charge (for the time being) seem not very far from the illusions and passions of youth themselves. They are up there on the ramparts, “loaded for bear” (as hunters say), and full of themselves but now, the evil on the other side exceeding what they have made of themselves, they have to stay, and what the world would fight for, if it could get it together, is what they themselves may have to fight for, and that starts with change within.
So one would wish not to see one tyrant replaced by another, but in Syria’s brutal and frequently absurd medieval fighting, the tyrannical within the opposition needs must recognize itself and bend toward the grain of humanity.
“The ultimate cause of our instability is not religious but political, because whoever comes to power makes his entourage commit abuses to stay in power,” he said, “They treat the country as their private money-making business. We need a real democracy with politicians who have a vision to look after the needs of everyone.”
Riptide – Foreign Policy – Peter Bouckaert – 1/31/2014.
I didn’t want to get this blog on to Congo before it’s time, but, conflict is conflict, this is a blog about that, and I really don’t see any difference in worthiness between a Burmese tribe ethnically cleansing another (and hanging children along the way) and some other conflict zone horror involving killing by “machetes, torture, lynching, shooting, explosions, and burning,” which list you will find in the lead to the above cited story by Peter Bouckaert.
Then too, as with Syria and its brutal and mindless dictatorship opposed by an equally brutal and mindless al-Qaeda laden devolutionary force, one may notice the relative helplessness of noncombatant constituents on the land: they’re trapped between monsters, and the monsters are of similar kind: “malignant narcissists”.
Little dictators.
Modify that some: “little dictators with “Advanced Small Weapons” and lots of primitive ones as well and nothing of conscience, only greed offsetting fear and filling up enormous egos and their ambitions.
This strain in mankind — not the peacock per se, but the vicious peacock — proves a disaster wherever it appears.
On YouTube, “TeachESL” noted (two days ago), “the man at 0:53 says: “We do not want Palestine or something. We want them to get us out here. We ask for Israeli citizenship, we do not want the right of return, we have sold Palestine. We do not even know anything about Palestine! We do not want Mahmoud Abbas. There are 1 billion and 300 million Muslims and they can do nothing! If there were even a single Israeli child in the Yarmuk camp, the problem would have been solved a long time ago.”
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So what may the Jews do, whether of Israel or the Diaspora?
I know: these are the sworn enemies of Israel, determined to overlook the defeat of Arab armies in a war of annihilation (of the Jews, period) in 1948; brainwashed to believe the Land of Israel magically, innately Arab when the ground itself tells of the continuance presence of Jewry on the land for more than 3,000 years and beyond; and trained by anti-Semitic image, lies (like “The Protocols”), by bombastic and narcissistic and manipulative power to hate Jews and erase Judaism, which is more a world to discover than extinguish, and a good and great world at that. And yet there they are, the residents of Yarmouk Camp, trapped between a tyrant and his equally tyrannical opponents.
Neither Bashar al-Assad nor al-Nusra could give a flying crap about what they — no one else, not Israelis, not Russians, not Americans, God forbid — are doing to the humanity they have overrun and subjugated for the amusement of their own immense and unbridled egos.
Jews have stood against that kind of tyranny since the Exodus from Egypt, and whether in fact or in our heads makes no difference.
Jewish ethical universalism, whether joined by hand-wringing Christians or forward-looking Islamic Humanists, cannot today — and as too many among the powerful may do — look away from Yarmouk Camp.
The twisted rhetoric of The Palestine Chronicle (the fulcrum for that in language behavior splits loyalty away from integrity) notes the following:
There is no doubt that the Yarmoukian Palestinians are in Syria because of a historic injustice imposed upon them by a settler-colonial enemy that does not spare any effort to exacerbate their suffering and prolong their exile. However, this indisputable historic occurrence should not blind us from the fact that independent of what Israel has planned to increase Palestinian suffering, the party responsible for the current crisis (and here I must reiterate my emphasis on the word ‘current’) is the brutal and inhuman Syrian regime and its leader Bashar El-Assad.
It’s late in the day but welcomed, if with a grain of salt, nonetheless.
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In the Yarmouk camp, more than 55 people have died from hunger and the majority of children are suffering from malnutrition, according to Abdullah al-Khatib, a Palestinian activist living there. Most people are consuming soup made from water and spices, Khatib said, and some are reportedly eating grass for survival.
Reminder: Russian President Vladimir Putin means to keep Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in business (possibly unless or until he runs out of money or his sponsor in Tehran, that kindly smiling white bearded sower of sorrows, does — and that’s not going to happen in the foreseeable future).
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I have long believed that that I’d engage Gideon Levy’s discourse in its disingenuous Israel-bashing facet, and so I might do so here with suggestion that the IDF — who else? — magically and miraculously transport the Yarmouk Camp to someplace peaceful like Judea and Samaria.
Bar’el was restrained as he referred to Yarmouk as resembling a World War II ghetto, and even this description fell on deaf ears. Only 20,000 people remain in the camp, where 150,000 lived before the civil war. Only the weak and helpless remain – to live in destruction under siege. The rest have suffered their second expulsion . . . . After the terror of Yarmouk, Israel should show a measure of humanity. It should try to save the 20,000 besieged residents – natives of this land, remember – and declare that its gates are open to them to reunite with their families.
Nonetheless, disagree though we may — and as may the Yarmouk Camp resident quoted — we are all standing by watching a war crime in the making.
* * *
What is remarkable is that the save Yarmouk initiative has infiltrated all fields and has been adopted and picked up by political groups that have not seen eye to eye.
Although the Al-Monitor article confines itself to telling of the in-solidarity feelings inspired between Fatah and Hamas and pro-Palestinian groups, that I’ve played up this story tells that our barriers may not be as strong as we believe.
I may suggest i the way of theory that language behavior universally divides into “programming”, which has to do with listening, formulating, and learning, and is an underlying cognitive process in our humanity, and “scripting” that involves instructions discerned from each language’s “language culture”, which starts with the culture between mother and child and family and moves outward to expanded social circles. In that view:
–What mothers impart to children as they are listening may well determine predispositions throughout life. I don’t think we can pin that (yet) but we know infants may not have a specific look for listening — life is life, not a classroom — but we know they’re listening, “taking statistics”, and with programming learning language as they hear it and figure it out.
–What Mr. Oktar refers to as “mass psychology” may involve the internalized cultural programming (not yet scripting) predisposing the adult to adoption of a proffered script that seems favorable to survival _even if it is not so_. That’s where many Germans found themselves in 1933 and where Hungarians today within the Jobbik Party find a similar voice. This gets closer to home with less hate assumptions, mine about aristocracy and genius, and about which I have to like, Mr. Oktar’s about bloodline, conventional and traditional clerics about intellectual lineage, and so on.
We all have our pride.
If what is private and prized — I think every person has some cause for that element in self-concept and self-esteem — becomes communal, deeply contemptuous of others, and, right on that path, destructive for others less concerned with the concerns of the zealot, then that very early area in language uptake — programming first, then scripting — needs work, and the work is woman’s work, the work of the one unconsciously and unselfconsciously teaching her infant how to think and speak.
I dread the computer’s getting ahead of the human story in language behavior, but for the sake of diminishing conflict that has its life first in the “mouth – ear – mind – heart” system, we would do well to pay attention to this area in which infants, soon to be children, later teenagers, and adults first assemble their social world, its manner of communicating, and the base-level attitudes and beliefs that may accompany them on their journey to the end of their own days.
If one perceives one’s self in a weak or threatened position when one is by default the strong party (“leaders” are not often referred to as “fathers” for nothing, especially in autocratic environments) then the deflection of attention and concern from one’s own position to that of a less-liked or neutral party becomes part of sustaining power plus service, and the service is . . . narcissistic supply!
If you took the notion of “scapegoating” as an apparent behavior — what’s bad in us we give to this goat that we then expel from our presence and leave to God and nature outside of the camp — the mechanism in political and social (and family) reasoning may be as suggested. If it seems so, then we may have something to work with as as much has been designed in the invention of language and maintained in suspension within circles affected, and that from family relationships and outward to clans, tribes, federations, and states.
Basically, if there’s a serious “Big Daddy” who must be served or a “SWMBO” (“She Who Must Be Obeyed”) in a a political space, family to state, the absence of an “off button” in each might signal the presence of a personality that will exploit dependents in the cause of its own aggrandizement.
The first problem faced in solving any problem is the problem of defining the problem — 🙂 — and doing so in a way that “locks” with reality, i.e., that, thank God, appears to work with good reasons for its working.
As much as we may need magic in life, and I believe we do, some conditions beg for having or obtaining a firm grasp on the emotional mechanics in their creation and longevity. Not all wars need conform to so psychological an approach to conflict motivation, but those that do might lend themselves to this line in analysis in which, in essence, the narcissist creates the dependent (via infantilizing, patronizing, and punitive manipulation) who then reinforces the heroic (or suffering martyr) self-concept suspended in language within the same.
If God seems at times to have a wicked sense of humor, perhaps it comes out most in the working of so miserable and vicious a piece of social engineering.
The Cinderella fairy tale (the story about two big sisters and their good-for-nothing youngest sister / two evil sisters and their bullied sister who get the better of them) has the form as do states owned and run into the ground by dictators who with the help of thugs devour the majority part of their constituencies.
No. It’s a mess. Back in 2007, by prior agreement with the Arab League, Lebanese Defense Forces were denied entry into the Nahr al-Bared camp to suppress the presence of an independent but al-Qaeda-minded force that had infiltrated the camp. Instead, it bombarded the camp with tank fire, corralled the entire residential population through the main gates, and the bused them to other camps. The LDF then razed Nahr al-Bared. Toward the very end, a handful of family members surrendered, and escaped, and the remnant fighters holed up in tunnels were, finally, bombed from the air.
My impression is the wealthy enjoy extraordinary wealth in the middle east and the equivalent of fellaheen live primarily at the mercy of the powerful. The common thread of “malignant narcissism” that binds both despot and mad revolutionaries into one recognizable category applies well to the tragedy unfolding in the Yarmouk camp. If anyone has ever been sickened by the historic photographs of starving Nazi concentration camp residents, the same outrage should apply in light of starvation in the Palestinian camp, even thought in their confined minds they may blame the Jews for what’s being done to them by Assad’s army and the infiltration and partial control of the opposed al-Qaeda affiliates. To the warring parties, the humanity trapped in the camp is but a useful poker chip. These kids may one day understand that it hasn’t been the Jews of the west that has been killing them but rather the divided powers most identified with them but equally callous toward them and careless of them.
The prompt for the comment had to do with the Yarmouk Palestinian Refugee Camp and its being made to starve between armies.
One may imagine the leverage involved in those negotiations.
In the surface rhetoric, the rebels may claim having been merciful, but the public would do well to keep in mind that get to this point, they had had to have been unmerciful, and that neither better nor worse than Assad’s forces attempting to subdue the infiltration within the camp by starvation in the first place.
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To another correspondent asking about the fate of Hamas in Gaza given the mixed ambitions and messages carried forward by its membership, some, I hear, who have joined the rebels against Assad, I suggested the perception of the axis needs to shift in the middle east, maintaining that the fighting-minded on several sides are more similar to one another in their ambitions and expectations — in their essential psychology — than those who have had the misfortune of being caught between armies or of having been trapped in time by regional powers who, indeed, manipulate and treat them primarily as servants unto themselves.
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