That a Nazi flag would be flying over a Palestinian village near a Mosque should actually be less shocking than the fact that so many are shocked by it.
This story has actually had about half a day, twelve hours, to get around the web, but it looks pretty stupid by every public relations and rhetorical guidance possible. As with Syria calling up the ghosts of the Soviet Era, stringing up a Nazi flag on a power line in a refugee-controlled area of the West Bank (where the heck was “the occupation” when that obscenity unfurled?) awakens the racist ghosts of Germany’s woeful Nazi Era.
Some people cannot but help fight old battles in their heads until they erupt in a reality that has only to teach them all over again why those old battles have indeed grown old and irrelevant.
Russia’s delivery of Yakhont missiles to Syria represents the fulfillment of earlier contract obligations but with updated guidance technology. [1]
In 2011, Israel Matzav noted of the Yakhont:
“Israel is the only one in the region the Yakhonts would be used against. However, because Iran is supplying (unofficially) the cash for the missiles, there is also the risk that some of the Yakhonts would end up in Iran for use against numerous targets in the Persian Gulf.” [2]
Add to that risk: Israel Matzav notes the new missile as having twice the speed of the old one (and, again, improved guidance).
How far does President Putin wish to go with supporting, essentially, Brigadier General Maher al-Assad?
I may not be paid enough (nothing, actually) to answer that question.
🙂
Above: March 16, 2013 – Anti-Assad protesters walk toward 10 Downing Street, London.
YouTube poster of the video “Thepeopleofsyria” notes, “What a shame, the world and the Media are busy with the length of the beards of the demonstrators in Syria, while they are forgetting about the length of the scud missiles of Bashar, which are coming down on the heads of women and children.”
* * *
I’ll take a little turn here — first confessing that I really don’t know how to answer the question I posed, which has two parts: 1) the fundamental psychology in personality supporting attitudes toward others; 2) dependent and co-dependent interpersonal relationships with significant others and closely associated constellations.
What is most known is Moscow’s antipathy toward “political Islam”, the continuing simmer of restive states-of-affairs in Chechnya, and Putin’s own desire to encourage what psychologists call “narcissistic supply”: i.e., he really doesn’t want to be “the bad guy” — consequently: he really isn’t.
Putin himself would not fire a weapon at mere passersby on a street corner.
Bad form, bad style, all of that.
Moreover, Putin seems to me to have his “back stage” and “front stage” self-presentation in better order, and he seems also to know limits, moderation, and restraint. After all, he works with a whole Russian People.
His associate may not have access to that grace that is the expression of a different mirrored self.
It’s hard to tell.
In 2012, writing for The New York Times, journalist Anne Barnard punched this in toward the end of her analysis of the Assad family’s position:
“The Assads were raised by their father and their uncles — aggressive men — to believe “they were demigods and Syria was their playground,” said Rana Kabbani, the daughter of a prominent diplomat who knew them growing up.” [3]
In the west, people prefer to see their demigods with guitars, not armies, and they much prefer to hear them singing then to watch them writing laws for everyone else to follow.
In any case, it is not good to have too much power, which is corrupting, much less to exceed limits with it, which is damning.
Analysts in Russia, one of Syria’s staunchest allies, say that as rebels try to encircle Damascus and cut off escape routes to the coast, the mood in the palace is one of panic, evinced by the erratic use of weapons: Scud missiles better used against an army than an insurgency, naval mines dropped from the air instead of laid at sea.
The expected arrival of the P800 Yakhont supersonic anti-ship missile in Syria is considered the first serious attempt by Syria to directly challenge the Israel Navy since the 1973 war, when the Israeli Navy sunk five Syrian vessels in the first missile-boat engagement known as the ‘Battle of Latakia’.
December 2, 2011: Russia has supplied two Bastion coastal missile systems to Syria, concluding a controversial $300 million arms deal inked with the Syrian government four years ago.
Khalaf, Roula. “Bashar al-Assad: behind the mask.” FT Magazine, June 15, 2012. Lead: “They burn his effigy in towns drenched in blood by his security forces.” Of the patchwork of stories I’ve thrown into this section, this piece, which is coming up on its one-year anniversary, may be the one most rich for insight into the political, psychological, and social workings of the Assad regime.
Through the Cold War / Soviet Era, the boundaries and mischief provided by Soviet –> Syrian –> Iranian bonds and similar arrangements produced both enmity with the west and a bulwark against it even though the basis for, say, Soviet and Iranian existence would be wildly different (but not so different with the Soviet : Baathist relationship elsewhere). The ghosts of the Soviet Era have play in Syria’s disaster today: in essence, post-Soviet, post-KGB Russia seems to have maintained its business and military relationships with Syria without influencing or updating the political and social arrangements of the earlier state of affairs, except to better enable the capital interests of a ruling class. Enter Colonel President King and Stakeholder Putin today: how would you have him now address the Assad family (keep in mind he has his own “kleptocratic” track record within key Russian industries), Maher Al-Assad (who has launched jets against the innocents of whole communities and rather only haphazardly found the armed elements arrayed against the family), and fend off the de facto acquisition of another Chechnya?
I happen to think, perhaps alone in this, that Obama has been trying to goad Putin into intervening in Russia’s client state, but neither Obama or the U.S. have “true interest” in Syria: the focus of activity in Syria is (Shiite) Iran, and into that space KSA, with ample investment in U.S. capitalism (with Big Defense contracts, it’s we who are working for them), has handily played its rivalry with Iran for regional influence.
From both humanist and political perspectives, no one knows how to “sort” the collection of civil and religious interests engaged in conflict within Syria, and no one from outside, including bordering state armies like Suleiman’s wishes to step into the furnace (not the best analogy coming from a Jew, but it seems to work). Instead, we would rather have UNHCR beg for $1 billion through the end of the year to address the civilian tragedy attending Syria’s civil war and unresolved hatreds and threats attending western identity and interests.
Syria is Putin’s problem, and while he can and has, I think, embarrassed Obama with it, he hasn’t rolled out a good strategy yet for his modern, post-Soviet state.
One more thing: Putin may have himself for a problem as regards his own narcissistic universe and the at least partial detachment of that from human suffering within his reach. Syria is a hard problem for him, and it’s important the unfolding story of the state’s themes do not serve to dishonor or embarrass him in history.
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Some interests are known: Obama’s mom-and-apple-pie bid for a new Syrian secular democracy; the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s interest in establishing greater autocratic Sunni-based influence in the region; Israeli reduction in Iranian-backed capability and hostility in general.
What we do not know are post-Soviet Russian interests in Syria today beyond continuing the archaic economic system chaining funding from Iran –> Syria –> Russia.
That system is up and running.
The old motivations are down and the current set are plainly absurd.
Russia, wary of its experience with Chechnya, has zero interest in otherwise supporting or strengthening Ayatollah Khamenei. In essence, President Putin and the Russians have come to a crossroads in Syria, and they can’t go back, unless perhaps to the age of the czars minus the validation of religion for doing so (but mountains of cold hard cash may suffice for validation these days), and going forward, they’re a bit uncomfortable with us Yanks and perhaps lots of others on the Continent.
The longer Putin peers down the new routes available to him without stepping forward, the more he may contribute to the New World Disorder so signaled by the failure of the Assad family’s Syria to secure their citizens lives (casualties so far: 82,000; combined IDP and refugee figures: 3.4 million homeless).
For Putin, Syria is all too reminiscent of Chechnya. Both conflicts pitted the state against disparate and leaderless opposition forces, which over time came to include extremist Sunni Islamist groups. In Putin’s view — one that he stresses repeatedly in meetings with his U.S. and European counterparts — Syria is the latest battleground in a global, multi-decade struggle between secular states and Sunni Islamism, which first began in Afghanistan with the Taliban, then moved to Chechnya, and has torn a number of Arab countries apart.
I don’t think Putin has in any way mistaken Syria for Chechnya, but the question of how to address an Islamic front or wave differs quite between what I would glean as Obama’s vision and Russia’s hard experience.
Obama has approached “Islamist” (I’ve been told the word does not exist in Arabic) aggression with what I call the “least war possible” by showing the “hand of peace” at the start of his first administration, by wiggling away and in every which way, from Fort Hood to Boston, from addressing Quranic instructions taken seriously by such as Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and others (Sura 9:29 generally suffices for one vivid example of explicit instruction and intention), and by including some key figures in his Administration, essentially absorbing and by demographics overwhelming an adverse presence.
Simply put, for Obama, so I believe, the world is larger than Islam — or an Islam as Osama Bin Laden would have it — and will wear away at the machinery set in motion by it. However, taking this tortuously slow and steady route involves slim but telling differentiation and narrowing “true targets” — as those for the drone programs — to their minimum number.
Putin, perhaps, believes that so cautious and limited an approach will not work, not that he wants to step “in it” himself.
So between the two, Obama and Putin, NATO and Russia, and their spheres of influence, and this much with blessings from Iran, which is working with the Assad regime and with Hezbollah against Israel, and from Saudi Arabia, which believes it will pick up greater and Sunni-based regional influence, Syria has become a killing field from which the peaceful strive to flee and the warriors disarmed by their own glorious assessments of themselves haven’t the courage to transform themselves away from themselves and for the betterment of mankind and the pleasure, probably, of God as well.
With Maher al-Assad’s behavior and character associated with his military role noted worldwide and Bashar Assad’s, Obama’s, and Putin’s inability to address it, Syria has sunk into a devouring darkness.
Putin can neither finesse this play nor simply cleave the Gordian knot presented by Syria.
Obama, if I have got a little bit of his script about right — least war possible; court, engage, and prove the western way larger and more transforming than Islam; and goad Putin toward intervention — cannot stick with it much longer, essentially abetting the Saudi expansion of influence in a war zone in which both Shiite and Sunni extremists enjoy, so far, a fair amount of free range.
If the design has been to draw such forces into Syria’s abattoir and have them lead themselves to their own deaths through grinding mutual annihilation — a rather gruesome form of cooperation, that — then all’s well: let’s just work on getting those displaced by war fed, housed, and ready to resume lives in the Syria that will be when the whole grizzly episode burns itself down to cinders.
Let’s call what the politicians do the “Bloody Dog and Pony Show” because Iran’s attempts to shuttle weapons to Hezbollah and Syrian intentions to swipe at Israel have been a part of the country’s Arab Spring Screaming since the git-go.
Politically impotent potentates like Bashar al-Assad and Ayatollah Khamenei have with their self-indulging narcissistic zeal painted themselves into corners from which they cannot grow their state’s peaceful and productive capacities but rather, and primarily, wage war against all. Their kind devour themselves but not without first inviting the destruction of everything around them.
As noted here, Syria’s chief problem has to do with the complete absence of anything good “in play” in the battle space. Who today among the civilized, contained, and reasoning should care to support, essentially, Maher al-Assad’s established and continuing sadism?
Who of contemporary western bent should care to see the mixed bag of Islamist rebels, Al Qaeda among them, prevail?
Syria has become the dense sucking black star of the Islamic Small Wars.
None should be surprised about loose chemical warheads or rebels (allegedly) mixing up their own small batches of burning chlorine-based clouds.
Wikipedia’s report of deaths-to-date ascribed to the civil war: between 69,390 and 82,130. “On 13 February 2013, the United Nations put out an estimate of 70,000 that had died in the war.”
Whatever figure you choose, it’s pretty bad.
And there’s no need to tidy up the Syrian slaughterhouse and its deep well of death with a figure – 70,000 – as fat and round as it is unfathomable: “A boy of 12 sees his best friend shot through the heart. Another of 15 is held in a cell with 150 other people, and taken out every day to be put in a giant wheel and burnt with cigarettes” (Reuters, March 13, 2013).
Presuming that most are not reading this “in-country”, imagine having that obscenity taking place in your backyard.
Countermeasures?
Fill the moats, drop the portcullis, and set free those birds with the baked clay!
All of that the Jews have done and continue to do in the defense of the children of Israel.
And truth to tell when faced with so devouring a black and burning hole in the fabric of our humanity globally as Syria has become, it is to the defense of humanity — all God’s children — for which the “Zionist entity” strikes at the weapons centers and shipments that would bring to the whole world nothing less than the same insensate burning.
Q: Setting aside Iranian and other outside influence, do you view Shiite-Sunni rivalry and cultural-political organization of Iraqi society as modifiable or irreparably fixed?
A: It wasn’t much of a problem in the past – there was a time when Sunni and Shia Islamists cooperated against the influence of Sunni and Shia Arab nationalists. The problem of authoritarianism inevitably exposed that Sunnis controlled the top, and the rise of Islamism region wide pushed the Shiite protesters of the 1970’s to clash with the Sunni security apparatus. (The first major clash was in 1936 during which a Shiite revolt was brutally put down). The rise of Shiite Islamism in neighbouring Iran created a collusion between Arab nationalism and Sunni Islamism that persists today. Even Lebanese and Syrian Shiites and Alawis are publicly vilified as Persians in all kinds of derogatory language.
It is absolutely modifiable. But given the damage that’s been done, and the resilience of the forces driving it, it may well last for decades more.
Source note: I asked the question on a closed Facebook group, and the respondent, Abdelwahab Al Jaza’iri in Dubai, provided what I’ve accepted as a very good and distilled answer providing background for recent events in Iraq, and it is with his permission that I post the same here.
The American “Freedom of Speech” concept was designed specifically to protect discomfiting speech. Here, American Nazis have every right to march through a predominantly Jewish suburb (reference: Skokie, Illinois) — and Jews would be among the first to defend them! (reference: Nat Hentoff). However, the American program and sensibility has been geared to post-Enlightenment equality with a good dose of Greco-Roman esprit and a fair contribution from Hillel by way of Jesus, and those who say bigoted, divisive, and ugly things about others become themselves marginalized.
Our bigots, whatever their type and targets, are free to speak: our citizens are as free to castigate or ignore them.
This with Islam is what the Founding Fathers wished to avoid here, and notably, analogically, Catholic vs. Protestant rivalries were settled very early in Maryland history specifically; it could be said of the Jews chased up from Brazil and representing the Dutch East Indies Company that they readily addressed proposed discrimination and took care of Stuyvesant’s less noble political instincts in New York, and that to everyone’s benefit.
With politics, someone has to go “on point” for every little thing of benefit to the greater comfort, freedom, and security of the general humanity.
The world is behind you, M., but it needs to be behind you where you are!
Me too, perhaps, but I have fewer immediate local concerns.
the ‘qadri,’ the guard who recently killed Salmaan Taseer, the governor of Punjab, for being outspoken against Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.
The video, released in October 2011, includes handwritten signs that offer further controversial references, as well as predicting the kind of physical or political retribution the band may expect to suffer as a result of the video’s dissemination.
In graduate school, social science empiricism, which to my mind involved “proving the obvious by the most laborious processes possible,” seemed to me unspeakably boring, but I’ve come to appreciate “run the numbers anyway — they might come up a little differently than expected”.
And, in general, taking second looks.
I often repeat from the NASA Observation Group of the 1990s (thank you, Office of Naval Research, for the short gig), “If you look at a picture and think you have seen it, look again.”
Pakistan is suffering.
Web search “Pakistan Assassination” and find this near the top today:
“ISLAMABAD, April 16 (APP): Prime Minister Justice ® Mir Hazar Khan Khoso on Tuesday expressed shock and grief on the death of brother, nephew and son of PML-N President of Balochistan chapter Sanaullah Zehri whose convoy was attacked en-route to Khuzdar.”
Or web search “Pakistan bombing” and find this at the top of the reference:
“At least 17 people have been killed and many injured in Pakistan after a suicide bomb attack in Peshawar.
The Awami National Party (ANP), which governed the restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, had called the political rally ahead of next month’s elections.
The Pakistani Taliban, which has repeatedly targeted the ANP, said it had carried out the attack.”
Pakistanis know who is destroying their freedom — or keeping it from them.
They know who is killing them.
Trust musicians to do better than Abraham before God and actually question the Great Authority, the programmed wisdom, the defeating and soul deadening lesson.
Hint: watch for the signs.
And remember: 865,310 YouTube impressions.
Multiply that figure by the relationships influenced.
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