The Western ‘defeat and retreat’ has a deeper mythological significance.
Brewing way below the official narrative on the problems, causes and worldviews are the myths and metaphors (see ‘causal layered analysis’). Irrespective of the great-game plays in progress, there is a strong resonance in some cohorts with the eschatological themes in Islamic traditions: the ‘10,000 warriors’ in the final battles of good against the anti-Christ on the plains of Syria etc.
Unfortunately for the official Western narrative, the facts on the ground post the intervention by the Russian ‘orthodox Christian army’ – which somewhat fits this eschatological myth – suggests the defeat of the ‘evil’ ISIS/ISL/Daesh/Al-Qaida/Jabhat al-Nusra programme is, ipso facto, proof that the Wahhabi/Washington/NATO nexus is actually the corner of mendacity and hypocrisy.
This is the main underlying problem resulting in Western media silence. There may well be numerous scenarios, strategies and alternate policies in the wings, but there is very little that can be said for the ears of the Arab in that region which will counter the clear sign from ‘Above’ regarding which side is right and winning with the mandate from heaven. The vacillating Arab sentiment will swing towards the winning side. And not just for pragmatic political reasoning – but rather, also for numerous deeper resonances with various deeply believed eschatological themes.
And as Normal Cohn pointed out (“The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages”, 1957/1970), these crazed millenarian cult movements have a long history and common dynamics which transcend specific religions. With obvious differences aside, one might be tempted to compare Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (the leader of the Islamic militant organisation known as the Islamic State) in Palmyra/ Raqqa with the theocratic king John of Leiden, who took over (for a time) the city of Münster in 1534. Then the Roman Pope dispensed a return to normal, and now the Orthodox Russian ‘Czar’ repeats the restorative formula.
This is the deeper underlying cause of the silence, imo. Basically, there is no Western policy/media response possible while history goes to the winner – Bashar Hafez al-Assad, the President of Syria, commander-in-chief of the Syrian Armed Forces, General Secretary of the ruling Ba’ath Party and Regional Secretary of the party’s branch in Syria.
That is why “Assad Must Go!” was such an insistent mantra. A defeat (or at least a non-win) with Assad removed (by force) would still somewhat harmonise (or at least not be disharmonious) with the underlying myth – i.e., the ‘good guys’ win (and they would be US!).
This myth, therefore, also goes deep into the American Zionist psyche. Any other ‘failed’ US foreign policy of aggression is still a win for the dark military-industrial-narcotic complex based economy. Failures in Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc hurt but can be taken on the chin. The tax payer does not hurt – the free petro-dollar based printing press covers it (and some Afghani opium trade!). But what really erodes the AngloZionist Neocon base like acid is this undermined self-confidence in being the indispensable ‘exceptionalist’ chosen-ones. That is what is causing this Western dumbness and silence.
However, the key point is not that a few brittle Western egos and shallow foreign policies are under stress – the key point is that the Arab mind is shaken awake: ‘G_d’ has signaled, for those that entertain the Islamic eschatological frame, which side is fundamentally right, and which is fundamentally wrong.
To use the Avatar analogy: ‘Eywa’, the guiding force and deity of Pandora, has acted – and the sacred balance goes to Assad and multi-ethnic Arab modernity, and against the medieval Wahhabi fundamentalism at work in the region. The usual suspects have no conscious answer to this evolving situation: clearly, for all to see, Assad must stay until the Syrian people vote and decide; Russia/Putin is the protector of the regional balance; and the various ‘Houses of Façade’ (DC/Brussels/ Riyadh et al) are crumbling away.
It may not be the literal ‘end of the world’ but the signs are mounting that it is brewing up to be the end of a major world cycle.
(from a reply on Russia Insider, in “Stephen F. Cohen: Palmyra — Why Is Obama Silent on ISIS’ Biggest Defeat to Date?” — to a comment “… their silence simply is proof of their dismay and discontent .. simply said, it did not go the way they had planned .. a fool would make more sense of this …”)
Most Arabs are against ISIS regardless of the sect and have joined together to fight against them. Also it took 4 decades of Rambo and “we lost because the troops were betrayed by the people back home” and 9/11 before America would seriously venture past it’s borders again-unless they were underhanded CIA Contra style wars in underdeveloped lands that still ended up kicking out the USA. Remember that Brave reporter who threw his shoe at Bush during a press conference-that runs through the Arab consciousness more than anything else and they will never forget it. Just like Russia will not forget young Miska who selflessly gave his life and now marches with the Immortals.
I seriously doubt that the rest of the world will treat America the way she has treated the world when the shoe is inevitably on the other foot. But the world will never forget about it nor will they let America fegetaboutit either.
RR
RR
US officials say Washington is considering to greatly increase the number of its special operations forces deployed to Syria, the Reuters news agency reports.
The US, they say, looks to “accelerate recent gains” against Daesh but Hillary Clinton’s leaked emails last month revealed that the United States plotted to topple the Syrian government even before the group existed.
For their new plan, the officials declined to disclose the exact increase under consideration but one of them said it would leave the US special operations contingent many times larger than “the around 50 troops” currently in Syria.
The proposal is among the military options being prepared for President Barack Obama, who is also weighing an increase in the number of American troops in Iraq, Reuters said on Friday.
Daesh controls the cities of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria, but the Takfiri group has been on a losing streak lately as government forces in both the Arab countries have been making their biggest advances in recent years.
Curiously enough, the US is committing more boots on the ground as the Iraqi army is closing in on Mosul and Syrian forces are shifting their attention to Raqqa after liberating Palmyra, Shaddadi and other towns.
The new plan is being peddled as a sign of “growing confidence in the ability of US-backed forces inside Syria and Iraq to claw back territory” from Daesh but US officials don’t say why they didn’t send troops when Takfiri terrorists were overrunning cities one after another.
Salafist principality
Just to set the record straight, let’s mention a US intelligence report from August 2012, which stated that “the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria” was “exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.”
Fighting Daesh has now become a byword but those “supporting powers to the opposition” rooting for a “Salafist principality” in Syria were in fact Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Turkey, and their Western allies which allege to be bombing terrorists in the region under a US-led coalition.
Clinton email leaks and media blackout
Last month, Hillary Clinton’s leaked emails revealed that the US State Department, Google, and Qatar’s Al Jazeera media network collaborated in supporting Syrian “rebels” to bring down the Assad government.
WikiLeaks published and indexed thousands of Clinton’s personal emails, some revealing interesting details about the relationship between the State Department and major corporations.
Western media largely ignored the story, with Britain’s The Independent and Daily Mail being the only few mainstream sites which covered it.
According to WikiLeaks’ archive of Clinton’s emails, Google developed an interactive online tool called Google Ideas to encourage defections in Syria.
Al Jazeera, which funded and owned the tracker, published it in English and Arabic.
Clinton was informed of the plan in a July 25, 2012 email sent to her deputy Jacob J. Sullivan by the founder and director of Google Ideas, Jared Cohen.
“Please keep close hold, but my team is planning to launch a tool on Sunday that will publicly track and map the defections in Syria and which parts of the government they are coming from,” Cohen wrote in the email.
Sullivan forwarded the email onto Clinton, adding, “This is a pretty cool idea.” Clinton, in turn, sent it to an assistant with instructions for the email to be printed.
An internal analysis by Google called it “one of the most viewed visualizations on their site” and the tool later won an Online Media Award for the Doha-based Al Jazeera.
Google, social networks and colonialism
Google Ideas is a think tank which maintains close ties to the State Department, according to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in his 2014 book “When Google Met WikiLeaks.”
In his book, Assange describes the special relationship between Google, Hillary Clinton and the State Department and what that means for the future of the internet.
Before leading Google Ideas, Cohen served at the State Department from 2006 to 2010 under Secretaries of State Clinton and Condoleezza Rice who famously spoke of “creative chaos” and the “birth pangs of a new Middle East.”
According to Assange, “it was Cohen who, while he was still at the Department of State, was said to have emailed Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to delay scheduled maintenance in order to assist the aborted 2009 uprising in Iran.”
Cohen reportedly co-wrote a policy piece, praising the potential of Silicon Valley technologies as an instrument of US foreign policy.
“Democratic states that have built coalitions of their militaries have the capacity to do the same with their connection technologies,” the piece read.
Shortly afterwards, the Middle East erupted in unrest in what was branded as “Twitter revolutions” by Western news media to rationalize uprisings against US-backed dictatorships.
US plans to topple Assad
According to Assange, the US government is working on the fall of President Bashar al-Assad since 2006.
The “depopulation of Syria” is part of the concept for the overthrow of Assad, and Europe’s strategy of open borders plays to the US interests in the hands, he has said in an interview with the Greek news portal The Press Project.
“Because of the war, especially the middle class leaves — doctors, civil servants, lawyers, engineers, precisely those professional groups that you need to keep a country at all functional,” he said.
Oil collapse and Saudi connection
The war in Syria serves, among other things, to keep the oil price down. Saudi Arabia has been behind the oil collapse by flooding the market.
According to Pulitzer-prize winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, following the US invasion of Iraq, Saudi Arabia persuaded Washington to crack down on Iran and its allies in the region, most notably Syria.
“The Saudis have considerable financial means, and have deep relations with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis,” Hersh wrote in his article for The New Yorker in 2007.
US, Salafists teamed up
In August 2012, the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) shed some light on who exactly was behind the Syria unrest: Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda in Iraq.
“Internally, events are taking a clear sectarian direction. The Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood and AQI (al-Qaeda in Iraq) are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria… AQI supported the Syrian opposition from the beginning, both ideologically and through the media” the DIA report read.
In 2015, former DIA head Michael Flynn confirmed in an interview with Al Jazeera that it was a “willful decision” of the Obama administration to team up with Salafists and al-Qaeda in Syria back in 2012.
“I don’t know that they turned a blind eye, I think it was a decision. I think it was a willful decision,” Flynn said.
Somehow everyone always forgets the “elephant in the room.”
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/04/01/for-israels-sake-the-israel-lobby-must-be-held-to-account-paul-craig-roberts/
Somehow everyone always forgets the “elephant in the room.”
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/04/01/for-israels-sake-the-israel-lobby-must-be-held-to-account-paul-craig-roberts/
The Western ‘defeat and retreat’ has a deeper mythological significance.
Brewing way below the official narrative on the problems, causes and worldviews are the myths and metaphors (see ‘causal layered analysis’). Irrespective of the great-game plays in progress, there is a strong resonance in some cohorts with the eschatological themes in Islamic traditions: the ‘10,000 warriors’ in the final battles of good against the anti-Christ on the plains of Syria etc.
Unfortunately for the official Western narrative, the facts on the ground post the intervention by the Russian ‘orthodox Christian army’ – which somewhat fits this eschatological myth – suggests the defeat of the ‘evil’ ISIS/ISL/Daesh/Al-Qaida/Jabhat al-Nusra programme is, ipso facto, proof that the Wahhabi/Washington/NATO nexus is actually the corner of mendacity and hypocrisy.
This is the main underlying problem resulting in Western media silence. There may well be numerous scenarios, strategies and alternate policies in the wings, but there is very little that can be said for the ears of the Arab in that region which will counter the clear sign from ‘Above’ regarding which side is right and winning with the mandate from heaven. The vacillating Arab sentiment will swing towards the winning side. And not just for pragmatic political reasoning – but rather, also for numerous deeper resonances with various deeply believed eschatological themes.
And as Normal Cohn pointed out (“The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages”, 1957/1970), these crazed millenarian cult movements have a long history and common dynamics which transcend specific religions. With obvious differences aside, one might be tempted to compare Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (the leader of the Islamic militant organisation known as the Islamic State) in Palmyra/ Raqqa with the theocratic king John of Leiden, who took over (for a time) the city of Münster in 1534. Then the Roman Pope dispensed a return to normal, and now the Orthodox Russian ‘Czar’ repeats the restorative formula.
This is the deeper underlying cause of the silence, imo. Basically, there is no Western policy/media response possible while history goes to the winner – Bashar Hafez al-Assad, the President of Syria, commander-in-chief of the Syrian Armed Forces, General Secretary of the ruling Ba’ath Party and Regional Secretary of the party’s branch in Syria.
That is why “Assad Must Go!” was such an insistent mantra. A defeat (or at least a non-win) with Assad removed (by force) would still somewhat harmonise (or at least not be disharmonious) with the underlying myth – i.e., the ‘good guys’ win (and they would be US!).
This myth, therefore, also goes deep into the American Zionist psyche. Any other ‘failed’ US foreign policy of aggression is still a win for the dark military-industrial-narcotic complex based economy. Failures in Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc hurt but can be taken on the chin. The tax payer does not hurt – the free petro-dollar based printing press covers it (and some Afghani opium trade!). But what really erodes the AngloZionist Neocon base like acid is this undermined self-confidence in being the indispensable ‘exceptionalist’ chosen-ones. That is what is causing this Western dumbness and silence.
However, the key point is not that a few brittle Western egos and shallow foreign policies are under stress – the key point is that the Arab mind is shaken awake: ‘G_d’ has signaled, for those that entertain the Islamic eschatological frame, which side is fundamentally right, and which is fundamentally wrong.
To use the Avatar analogy: ‘Eywa’, the guiding force and deity of Pandora, has acted – and the sacred balance goes to Assad and multi-ethnic Arab modernity, and against the medieval Wahhabi fundamentalism at work in the region. The usual suspects have no conscious answer to this evolving situation: clearly, for all to see, Assad must stay until the Syrian people vote and decide; Russia/Putin is the protector of the regional balance; and the various ‘Houses of Façade’ (DC/Brussels/ Riyadh et al) are crumbling away.
It may not be the literal ‘end of the world’ but the signs are mounting that it is brewing up to be the end of a major world cycle.
(from a reply on Russia Insider, in “Stephen F. Cohen: Palmyra — Why Is Obama Silent on ISIS’ Biggest Defeat to Date?” — to a comment “… their silence simply is proof of their dismay and discontent .. simply said, it did not go the way they had planned .. a fool would make more sense of this …”)
Most Arabs are against ISIS regardless of the sect and have joined together to fight against them. Also it took 4 decades of Rambo and “we lost because the troops were betrayed by the people back home” and 9/11 before America would seriously venture past it’s borders again-unless they were underhanded CIA Contra style wars in underdeveloped lands that still ended up kicking out the USA. Remember that Brave reporter who threw his shoe at Bush during a press conference-that runs through the Arab consciousness more than anything else and they will never forget it. Just like Russia will not forget young Miska who selflessly gave his life and now marches with the Immortals.
I seriously doubt that the rest of the world will treat America the way she has treated the world when the shoe is inevitably on the other foot. But the world will never forget about it nor will they let America fegetaboutit either.
RR
RR
PressTV: A must-read: When US, Daesh teamed up
US officials say Washington is considering to greatly increase the number of its special operations forces deployed to Syria, the Reuters news agency reports.
The US, they say, looks to “accelerate recent gains” against Daesh but Hillary Clinton’s leaked emails last month revealed that the United States plotted to topple the Syrian government even before the group existed.
For their new plan, the officials declined to disclose the exact increase under consideration but one of them said it would leave the US special operations contingent many times larger than “the around 50 troops” currently in Syria.
The proposal is among the military options being prepared for President Barack Obama, who is also weighing an increase in the number of American troops in Iraq, Reuters said on Friday.
Daesh controls the cities of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria, but the Takfiri group has been on a losing streak lately as government forces in both the Arab countries have been making their biggest advances in recent years.
Curiously enough, the US is committing more boots on the ground as the Iraqi army is closing in on Mosul and Syrian forces are shifting their attention to Raqqa after liberating Palmyra, Shaddadi and other towns.
The new plan is being peddled as a sign of “growing confidence in the ability of US-backed forces inside Syria and Iraq to claw back territory” from Daesh but US officials don’t say why they didn’t send troops when Takfiri terrorists were overrunning cities one after another.
Salafist principality
Just to set the record straight, let’s mention a US intelligence report from August 2012, which stated that “the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria” was “exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.”
Fighting Daesh has now become a byword but those “supporting powers to the opposition” rooting for a “Salafist principality” in Syria were in fact Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Turkey, and their Western allies which allege to be bombing terrorists in the region under a US-led coalition.
Clinton email leaks and media blackout
Last month, Hillary Clinton’s leaked emails revealed that the US State Department, Google, and Qatar’s Al Jazeera media network collaborated in supporting Syrian “rebels” to bring down the Assad government.
WikiLeaks published and indexed thousands of Clinton’s personal emails, some revealing interesting details about the relationship between the State Department and major corporations.
Western media largely ignored the story, with Britain’s The Independent and Daily Mail being the only few mainstream sites which covered it.
According to WikiLeaks’ archive of Clinton’s emails, Google developed an interactive online tool called Google Ideas to encourage defections in Syria.
Al Jazeera, which funded and owned the tracker, published it in English and Arabic.
Clinton was informed of the plan in a July 25, 2012 email sent to her deputy Jacob J. Sullivan by the founder and director of Google Ideas, Jared Cohen.
“Please keep close hold, but my team is planning to launch a tool on Sunday that will publicly track and map the defections in Syria and which parts of the government they are coming from,” Cohen wrote in the email.
Sullivan forwarded the email onto Clinton, adding, “This is a pretty cool idea.” Clinton, in turn, sent it to an assistant with instructions for the email to be printed.
An internal analysis by Google called it “one of the most viewed visualizations on their site” and the tool later won an Online Media Award for the Doha-based Al Jazeera.
Google, social networks and colonialism
Google Ideas is a think tank which maintains close ties to the State Department, according to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in his 2014 book “When Google Met WikiLeaks.”
In his book, Assange describes the special relationship between Google, Hillary Clinton and the State Department and what that means for the future of the internet.
Before leading Google Ideas, Cohen served at the State Department from 2006 to 2010 under Secretaries of State Clinton and Condoleezza Rice who famously spoke of “creative chaos” and the “birth pangs of a new Middle East.”
According to Assange, “it was Cohen who, while he was still at the Department of State, was said to have emailed Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to delay scheduled maintenance in order to assist the aborted 2009 uprising in Iran.”
Cohen reportedly co-wrote a policy piece, praising the potential of Silicon Valley technologies as an instrument of US foreign policy.
“Democratic states that have built coalitions of their militaries have the capacity to do the same with their connection technologies,” the piece read.
Shortly afterwards, the Middle East erupted in unrest in what was branded as “Twitter revolutions” by Western news media to rationalize uprisings against US-backed dictatorships.
US plans to topple Assad
According to Assange, the US government is working on the fall of President Bashar al-Assad since 2006.
The “depopulation of Syria” is part of the concept for the overthrow of Assad, and Europe’s strategy of open borders plays to the US interests in the hands, he has said in an interview with the Greek news portal The Press Project.
“Because of the war, especially the middle class leaves — doctors, civil servants, lawyers, engineers, precisely those professional groups that you need to keep a country at all functional,” he said.
Oil collapse and Saudi connection
The war in Syria serves, among other things, to keep the oil price down. Saudi Arabia has been behind the oil collapse by flooding the market.
According to Pulitzer-prize winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, following the US invasion of Iraq, Saudi Arabia persuaded Washington to crack down on Iran and its allies in the region, most notably Syria.
“The Saudis have considerable financial means, and have deep relations with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis,” Hersh wrote in his article for The New Yorker in 2007.
US, Salafists teamed up
In August 2012, the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) shed some light on who exactly was behind the Syria unrest: Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda in Iraq.
“Internally, events are taking a clear sectarian direction. The Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood and AQI (al-Qaeda in Iraq) are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria… AQI supported the Syrian opposition from the beginning, both ideologically and through the media” the DIA report read.
In 2015, former DIA head Michael Flynn confirmed in an interview with Al Jazeera that it was a “willful decision” of the Obama administration to team up with Salafists and al-Qaeda in Syria back in 2012.
“I don’t know that they turned a blind eye, I think it was a decision. I think it was a willful decision,” Flynn said.