Radio War Nerd EP#5 — Russia Intervenes In Syria, West Melts Down
Comments (17)
Pyrrhus was killed in urban combat when a woman threw a roof tile which hit him in the head
The punchline to the Archemedes story is "don't disturb my circles". The story with "get out of my light" is to do with Alexander of Macedon and the philosopher Diogenes. Diogenes was THE cynic, as in kinos, as in dog. Diogenes would walk around the agora with a lit lantern during the day, and if you asked him what he was doing he woukd say "I'm looking for an honest man", which I assume meant that he had found one whenever asked. There is a story of Plato in his later years defining 'Man' as "featherless biped". Diogenes bust into the Academy with a plucked chicken, like "check out this man I found!". The say that Plato changed the definition to "featherless biped WITH BROAD NAILS". Anyway, Alexander was taught by Aristotle, so he probably wasn't as uninformed as he was boastful, so the story goes that he was in the area and wanted to show his magnanimity to the old cynic. You gotta understand, Diogenes was basically a homeless guy, living in a fucking clay pot and jerkin his dick in the town market. Alexander goes to meet him and finds him in lying in the sun. You can imagine whatever a daddy's boy might say to a homeless guy back when owning a riding horse was basically having an f16 as a private jet. "I am Alexander, and impressed by your teachings, I have come to fulfill for you anything you might desire". And Diogenes goes "yeah, if you could move bit to the left, you're blocking my sun". Supposedly, Alexander said to his friends that "if I weren't me, I'd want to be him", but I like to imagine that everything he did after the Anatolian coast was an attempt to recover from that vicious own.
If only the western left would take a tip from the YPG/J and focus on earning support from "the people" by getting their shit together and getting shit done for them, instead of expecting to subsist on abstract devotion to the "cause" ...
I am a huge fan of you the War Nerd, but you have some very big blind spots The War Nerd, you falsely assume that 100% of the people who join the YPG are all lefties, the YPG is a fighting force that is operating in a geographical area, and it has “its shit together” so lots of people will join them, especially those living in that area, people who are not political, people who are to the right, everyone, because “they have their shit together” They know how to fight, they get things done, that is why people choose to join them Also you seem to have this huge blind spot that the Kurds would not prevent non Kurds to moving into some areas and throwing non Kurds out Obviously some Kurds in some places want to keep all non Kurds out, this is obvious Equally obvious is that some Kurds in some areas dont mind if the person is or is not a Kurd Just as some Americans dont want to live next to a Mexican, and some Americans dont mind living next to a Mexican And some Americans IF they had the opportunity and means would make sure that an area was Mexican free especially if there was a war and had been a long continuous history of violent hostility between some Americans and some Mexicans
fyi Gary, while some comments are coming across more as propaganda for the Weiss than the dislike they pretend, a good disseminator of going-ons in Syria, the Ukraine et al at the moment seems is the YouTube SouthFront channel at: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/crimeanfront/videos." rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/user/crimeanfront/videos.</a> Due Diligence always of course. [pardon if this is a double-post]
Thanks. I'll check it out.
Regarding the strange beauty of war from the most recent podcast, the Russian film "Come and See" (now streaming on Amazon!) is one of the most beautiful and disturbing war films I've even seen. Russian story-telling and film-making at their finest.
<a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/18/she-kills-people-from-7-850-miles-away.html?source=TDB&via=FB_Page" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/18/she-kills-people-from-7-850-miles-away.html?source=TDB&via=FB_Page</a> would love to get your take on this. strange bit of propaganda.
I was just looking at that. Can't object to not liking "whiny boys".
OK, I think you and Mark have lost the thread on Syria, and I think it's because you're blinded by how much you dislike this Weiss guy. You're becoming reflexively contrarian -- anything he says, you believe that to be proof that the opposite is true. You might loathe the guy, but broken clocks and once a day and all that crap. Or, screw that, forget about him, and look at the way you're discussing the war in Syria: you explain Russia's air campaign as a logical step to protect their client, and argue that the Western media response to that is wildly disproportionate because all their actions look like logical, conventional tactics to achieve their aims -- so far so good, except you're ignoring the undeniable fact that said client has killed the overwhelming majority of civilians in this conflict. You keep arguing that there are no substantial differences among the Sunni militias, then use that to explain that the English language's response to Russia's pro-Assad intervention is just nuts. What is that, the ignoratio elenchi fallacy? I'm not great at rhetoric, I can't distinguish between the finer points. Just because there are a bunch of hawks who are screaming for the US to rattle its sabers against Putin, doesn't mean you have to go to these lengths to explain away the fact that Russia is acting to support the worst actor in a shockingly insane conflict.
As the war nerd explained, the Assad regime might be brutal and commit war crimes, but they still are what stands between the Alawite and Christian minorities and the Sunnis, who chant "Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the grave!" as their motto. One of the main strategies of the British and French colonial powers was to make oppressed native minorities their accomplices by giving them power over the majority and making sure there are natives who have a vested interest in the colonial status quo. That is what the French did with the Alawites. They were a oppressed, displaced minority, driven from the Syrian main land to the hills and a small coastal strip of land by Sunni immigrants until the French came and made them their chosen people. Of course the Snunni majority started hating the Alawites even more during that time and when the French left, the Alawites had no choice but to use a brutal, autocratic system to keep the Sunni masses in check. They are in a very similar situation to the Israelis, but they don't have a superior high tech military like Israel, which is able to pick its battles and to keep up the appearance of mercy and carefulness in their choice of targets. They can't build walls around the dangerous masses and don't have the IDF Airforce and a Mossad, enabling them to do precision strike killings of prominent individuals. All they have is old, Russian tanks, barrel bombs and torture dungeons. It is ugly, but what are they supposed to do? Just let the poor, heroic Sunni rebels follow through with their promised genocide?
Which Syria control maps do yo consider as good? I btw hear lots of reports on Hezbollah presence outside of the border area. Most of it is from Assad-leaning propaganda outlets, so I don't trust all of it. But it seems likely that they have sent advisors into other areas, notably Aleppo. Remember that a Hezbollah advisor was reportedly killed by a local militia commander (Sunni loyalist), who probably didn't like being told what to do. But it's true what you said. Outside of th Qalamoun buffer, Hezbollah havn't been sending any large frontline units. Looks like the Iranians are planning on using their "Persian Empire"-style mercenaries/volunteers to provide the RuAF with some proper infantry support, though. Iraqi "Kataib Hezbollah" (made famous through videos of IED-ambushes, back in the days of the US occupation) apparently arrived in Aleppo, joining other Iranian-trained (and most likely -led) militias already in Syria. My favourite one is the Liwa Fatemiyoun, whose recruits are mostly Hazara refugees from Afghanistan!
Thanks very much Hanso. You clearly know your stuff really well. What sources do you recommend? I used to use Agathocle de Syracuse control maps but they haven't been updating much lately. The best recent one I've seen was from the NYT. I mention it in my new article which should come up today.
I think the psychoanalysis style is attractive to many of Sharlet's readers. It is comforting to simply imagine that deeply ingrained cultural/religious/nationalist sentiment is simply some type of mental disorder. A thing that will soon pass. Or it could just be that Harper's/Literary review type liberals find it fascinating to gaze into the thought process of the other.
I don't know if you are aware of this or not, but there's a YouTube channel called CaspianReport that just did a pretty good video on why Russia is getting involved in Syria. His basic case is that the whole thing was a ploy on Putin's part to exchange intervention in Syria for Ukraine. According to him, the bargain presented to Obama at the UN was that if he quit intervening in Ukraine, Russia wouldn't intervene in Syria. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idHQIMrtB2M" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idHQIMrtB2M</a> It seems like a pretty credible case to me.
The Colorado Springs/Ankara analogy had an additional layer of truth to it. Colorado Springs was, for a little while, a sort of crunchy-earthy hippie New Age type of town, or at least prominent parts of the downtown were. Crystal shops, the whole biz. Then, as the whole evangelical thing got bigger and bigger in the eighties, it came to be seen as a mission field. Who answered the call? None other than Pastor Ted Haggard! The mid-2000s best source of humor. This Jeff Sharlet piece on Haggard (<a href="http://jeffsharlet.com/content/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/soldiers_of_christ.pdf)" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://jeffsharlet.com/content/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/soldiers_of_christ.pdf)</a> alludes to Haggard's flock harassing and pulling pranks on gay bars, New Age establishments, etc., winning the town for Christ (and the red team). But in classic fancy-pants literary/Harper's/Sharlet fashion, he prefers to continue his psychohistory of Haggard rather than talk about this low-speed sectarian conflict. Haggard is a tempting psychological target, alas. Presumably they picked Colorado Springs at least in part because of the Air Force Academy. For a while, the evangelicals were talking about the Air Force as "their branch." There've been news stories about non-Christian or non-evangelical students getting harassed by their peers and superiors into attending prayer meetings, etc. I know people who went to nearby schools (and played USAFA in sports) who say a lot worse happened but didn't make the news... Ever see pictures of the Air Force Academy chapel? Google it sometime- it looks like Saruman designed it. Ankara wasn't ever a crunchy town, to the best of my knowledge -- do the Turks do crunchy? -- but it was a Kemalist town, if I understand the history right. It was his headquarters. It might have been nationalistic and religious, but not quite ISIS-AKP type. That it's deep red now... presumably somebody did that.
I've always found that Air Force Academy chapel a fairly cool design and my sympathies lie a million miles from evangelical christian movements.