Stratfor reports on Middle East

Syria: Airstrikes Hit Town Near Damascus, Activists Say March 4, 2016 | 16:09 GMT Airstrikes hit the rebel-controlled town of Douma, east of Damascus, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, AFP reported March 4. It unclear who carried out the airstrikes, although Douma has been a target for Syrian government forces throughout the civil war. Local activists via Facebook blamed Russia for the March 4 airstrikes, adding that the town was also being bombarded by heavy artillery. Despite a March 3 statement by U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura that progress is being made in Syria, numerous violations of the country's tenuous cease-fire have been reported. Iraq: Thousands Protest Corruption Across Country March 4, 2016 | 14:44 GMT Large demonstrations are ongoing in Baghdad and in provinces across Iraq, with tens of thousands of people demanding government reforms and protesting state corruption, Alsumaria News reported March 4. In Baghdad, large crowds are gathered in front of the Green Zone. Demonstrations are reportedly taking place in Wasit, Karbala, Babil, Maysan, Basra and Najaf provinces as well. A large number of those taking part in the protests are said to be followers of influential Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr. Protesters are demanding change, but a proposed Cabinet reshuffle in Iraq risks upsetting the country's delicately balanced government. Syria: Jabhat Al-Nusra Militants Fleeing To Iraq, Source Says March 4, 2016 | 15:43 GMT According to a Syrian military analyst, hundreds of fighters from al Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra are fleeing Syria for Anbar and Salahuddin provinces in Iraq, with thousands more expected to follow. The fighters' relocation in Iraq will pose a major problem for Iraqi army and paramilitary forces, the analyst added. Stratfor was not able to verify the source's claims. Neither Jabhat al-Nusra nor the Islamic State are included in the patchwork cease-fire currently in place in Syria.

Torture and American Values

The guy who argued that torture is perfectly legal

Last year, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence put out its report on the use of torture by the CIA in the years after the 2001 attacks. The executive summary of the report runs more than 300 pages, not including the notes, and lays out in excruciating detail the process by which the CIA -- the Government in general -- decided to torture more than 100 people over three years, and the methods used in the torture.

I am most interested in how we decided to abandon our traditional values and our stated policies and laws to behave in such systematically depraved ways. As the Senate report makes clear, many people, even within the CIA (not the most squeamish of entities) were made physically sick by what the "special interrogators" were doing. All the way up the chain of command, CIA and White House people explained the legal and moral problems with these "enhanced" methods. FBI investigators tried to convince the CIA that torture was unnecessary and even counterproductive. So why did the program go forward?

There appear to be two basic answers. First, the Office of Legal Counsel, led by John Yoo, convinced leadership that the methods did not contravene international or US law. People in the position to decide were too cowardly to resist the argument that because we were attacked, we had the right to do whatever we wanted, and Yoo gave them bureaucratic cover. Once the Washington Post got wind of certain practices and threatened to report them, these craven, immoral government hacks panicked and went back to OLC to be reassured that they would not be held accountable for their actions. Yoo promised they would be OK.

Second, two sadistic creeps masquerading as psychologists misapplied training given them by the Air Force to act out their own sick fantasies of power. John Mitchel and Bruce Jessen had been taught how to resist certain nasty interrogation techniques in the Air Force SERE program, but used that training in the opposite way, to be nasty themselves. Mitchell, misunderstanding the consequences and applications of "learned helplessness," decided that they could be used to get information from prisoners.

The two sadistic morons who conducted the CIA's torture program.

Mitchell was wrong, not just morally but factually and theoretically. That makes him an idiot as well as a sadist. That Jessen went along only means he became sidekick to a fool -- and what does that make him?

Our system, though, is supposed to prevent small-minded men like these from coming to positions of sufficient power to commit the evil they did. That's where we failed.

Clinton Said it Less Directly ...

... and Mark Thiessen did no like it.

It's true that Trump does not employ violence or terrorism in his efforts to gain the White House. That's a big deal, of course. Hitler's avid use of literal terror and his active flaunting of the fact that the Weimar government was unable to stop him were the defining characteristics of the Nazi reign.

It's also true that Trump is appealing to the same crowd that liked Hitler -- aristocrats and politically disengaged masses -- using very similar rhetoric.

So let's be clear. ISIS really is like Hitler. Trump just sounds like him.

Sound Familiar?

As long as we are on the subject, does this remind you of anyone?

He has no record of public service, but wants to gain the most powerful position in the country. He gains in popularity by tapping into the anger and resentment of an ethnic population that feels recently dispossessed of its cultural birthrights. He calls for the exclusion and prosecution of ethnic minorities within his country. His rhetoric emphasizes a patriotism of collective past greatness, and the need to return to that greatness. He has no particular policy proposals that make any sense, just grandiose and impractical declarations. He says that the system needs an outsider to tear it down and star again. The politicians around him are so embarrassed by his stridency and the notoriety it brings that they will not stand up to him and call him out for his practices.

      

Now, I know I will raise the ire of a whole lot of people by making this comparison, but it's time to shake off the political correctness Trump and his followers so detest and call things as  they are.

So far, only because Trump has gained no power, he has done no serious damage. He probably would not and could not commit the atrocities executed by Hitler.

But Trump is following the playbook of the worst and most dangerous kind of demagogue. Taking him lightly is foolish. He needs to be put in his place by the Republican Party so we do not slip closer to the harm he could bring.

Have any doubts? I recommend to you Hannah Arendt, from Origins of Totalitarianism:

It has frequently been pointed out that totalitarian movements use and abuse democratic freedoms in order to abolish them. This is not just devilish cleverness on the part of the leaders or childish stupidity on the part of the masses. Democratic freedoms may be based on the equality of all citizens before the law; yet they acquire their meaning and function organically only where the citizens belong to and are respected by groups or form a social and political hierarchy…
            Indifference to public affairs and, neutrality on political issues, are themselves not sufficient cause for the rise of totalitarian movements. The competitive and acquisitive society of the bourgeoisie had produced apathy and even hostility toward public life not only, and not even primarily, in the social strata that were exploited and excluded from active participation in the rule of the country, but first of all in its own class…Both the early apathy and the later demand for monopolistic dictatorial direction of the nation of the nation’s foreign affairs had their roots in a way and philosophy of life so insistently and exclusively centered on the individual’s success or failure in ruthless competition that a citizen’s duties and responsibilities could be felt to be a needless drain on his limited time and energy…

Schilling Owes No Apology

ESPN baseball commentator Curt Schilling was suspended yesterday for a tweet in which he compared ISIS to Adolf Hitler. That's a silly, oversensitive thing to do.

ESPN's publicity antennae went off because Muslim and Jewish groups found the tweet objectionable, and ESPN wants nothing to do with anything that might alienate two large, advertising-consuming groups like those. But what can it mean that the tweet was "completely unacceptable"?

ISIS has developed an officially sponsored, systematic approach to raping little girls. It has attempted to wipe from the face of the earth all evidence of life before its brand of cruel, ignorant, nasty Islam. It is led by psychopath.

Comparisons across time and culture are always fraught, and it serves no purpose to engage in talk about "who is the biggest victim." Schilling's tweet therefore did no serious good. Then again, it was a tweet, for goodness sake.

People who cannot handle the comparison need to get over themselves. Jews do not have a monopoly on suffering, and not every remark about the Holocaust needs to be clearer through B'nai Brith. Schilling did not condemn Islam, he condemned a bunch of murderous thugs who claim Islam as justification. Those who do not like it can say so, but ESPN once again took the path of craven sycophancy.

Shame

Why Education in History is So Important

What students learn matters.

For some people, they ought to learn certain ideas: that the United States is "exceptional," that its leaders are generally motivated by a desire to liberate the world, that its economic system of free enterprise promotes innovation and freedom, and the like. These people, many of whom protested a revision of the College Board Advanced Placement Exam in US History, understand that students' experiences in school help frame their view of the world, and they want kids to share their particular view.

To an extent, that's not only right, it's unavoidable. I want my students to believe that dictatorship causes suffering (most of the time), that freedom of expression is as productive as it is morally preferable (most of the time), that the rule of law is essential to political effectiveness.

The reaction to the AP curriculum therefore was not totally unreasonable, but it was badly skewed. There is nothing wrong, for example, with promoting the idea that Americans in the south were proud of slavery. They were. They defended the institution with the very last of their blood and treasure, and there was very limited dissent from this view of things. These facts are unfortunate and maybe even embarrassing, but they are true, and people need to understand them if they are to know US history. (They also probably need to know those facts to understand the defense of the Confederate flag and the Black Lives Matter movement.)

That the College Board could revise the test in the face of political pressure reveals the bureaucratic nature of that organization, but it also highlights the urgency of teaching kids to think for themselves, and to ask questions about the facts.

I would rather that they learn to ask: was the United States really exceptional? How? Was it exceptional in the way many leaders said it was? Is that good? Has the United States, by and large, promoted freedom in the world? How? Why? Is our economic system truly based on the market? Do we want it to be? Why?

Questions are much better than answers.