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Hizballah's Tired, Derivative New Manifesto
This weekend, I went to the local coffeeshop to read two documents which I had previously skimmed but to which I wanted to devote more attention and felt deserved a closer reading. The first is the National Intelligence Council's Global Trends 2025 report, a paper that has gotten a lot of attention in policy circles for its blunt conclusions regarding the future environment. The second is Hizballah's new political manifesto [English, Arabic], a long-awaited update to the 1985 "Open Letter".
Reading the two documents in tandem was striking. First, there were some similarities. Both documents, for example, were quite bearish on the United States of America. The NIC report predicts a multipolar world in 2025 in which the United States is still the strongest but not the dominant power. "Although the United States is likely to remain the single most powerful actor, the United States’ relative strength—even in the military realm—will decline and US leverage will become more constrained".
The introduction to Hizballah's new manifesto, meanwhile, states that "it's possible to say that we are amid historical transformations that predict the retreat of the US role as an omnipotent power, the break of the unipolar system and the historical immediate demise of the Zionist entity".
[يمكن القول: إننا في سياق تحولات تاريخية تُنذر بتراجع الولايات المتحدة الأميركية كقوة مهيمنة، وتحلُّل نظام القطب الواحد المهيمن، وبداية تشكّل مسار الأفول التاريخي المتسارع للكيان الصهيوني]
But whereas the NIC report -- together with most serious scholars of international relations -- is preparing for a post-American world, Hizballah's manifesto reveals a myopic obsession with the United States and an inability to view the politics of the Middle East through any lens other than American hegemony. At times, the manifesto reads like someone threw Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine
"The most dangerous aspect in the western hegemony -- the American one precisely -- is that they consider themselves owners of the world and therefore, this expanding strategy along with the economic-capitalist project has become a "western expanding strategy" that turned to be an international scheme of limitless greed.
Savage capitalism forces -- embodied mainly in international monopoly networks of companies that cross the nations and continents, networks of various international establishments especially the financial ones backed by superior military force have led to more contradictions and conflicts -- of which not less important -- are the conflicts of identities, cultures, civilizations, in addition to the conflicts of poverty and wealth."
إنّ أخطر ما في منطق الهيمنة الغربي عموماً، والأميركي تحديداً، هو اعتباره منذ الأساس أنه يمتلك العالم وأنّ له حق الهيمنة من منطلق التفوق في أكثر من مجال، ولذا باتت الإستراتيجية التوسعية الغربية - وبخاصة الأميركية - ومع اقترانها بالمشروع الإقتصادي الرأسمالي إستراتيجيةً عالميةَ الطابع، لا حدود لأطماعها وجشعها.
إنّ تحكّم قوى الرأسمالية المتوحشة، المتمثلة على نحوٍ رئيسٍ بشبكات الإحتكارات الدُّولية من شركات عابرة للقوميات بل وللقارات، والمؤسسات الدُّولية المتنوعة، وخصوصاً المالية منها والمدعومة بقوة فائقة عسكرياً، أدى الى المزيد من التناقضات والصراعات الجذرية، ليس أقلها اليوم: صراعات الهويات والثقافات وأنماط الحضارات، إلى جانب صراعات الغنى والفقر.
You'll note I am including the Arabic text here. I do not want you to think this dog's dinner is some trick of translation. [And I myself am excerpting from the translation provided by Hizballah.]
Now there are two possible explanations for why Hizballah dedicates an entire third of their manifesto to whining about American hegemony after the rest of the world -- including U.S. policy-makers -- got the memo that U.S. power is on the wane. The first explanation is that Hizballah is simply saying, like a good proxy, what they think the Iranians want them to say. Iran wants to frame all tensions in the region in terms of U.S. hegemony, which allows it to avoid talking about internal tensions and answering questions like why all Iran's Arab neighbors can't buy U.S. weapons systems fast enough in the face of Iranian ascendancy. (Even though that's kind of tough to do on a day when -- oh, irony -- U.S. oil companies get frozen out of Iraq's largest oil rights auction in years.) And lord knows, it serves the interests of no one in either Iran or Hizballah to start saying something real about the security environment in the Middle East, because that would mean talking about things like Saudi-Iranian tensions, Saudi-Syrian tensions, Sunni-Shia tensions and a host of other politically sensitive topics that might offend your sponsors or further upset sectarian tensions in Lebanon and elsewhere. Focusing on the American imperial project is, intellectually and politically, a lot easier. This means, of course, that an organization that's plenty brave on the battlefield is pretty cowardly when it comes to rhetorically confronting, head on, what's really going on in their country and in their region.
There's something else here, though. Reading the manifesto alongside the 2025 report, I came to the conclusion that Hizballah is, while steadily maturing as a military actor, still hopelessly immature as a political actor. There is absolutely zero introspection in this manifesto, and whereas the NIC report was war-gamed in countless planning exercises and workshops -- including one held in China, for goodness sake! -- and arrived at conclusions most U.S. policy-makers would find inconvenient at best, Hizballah's manifesto reflects an organization that basically sat down among themselves to write a bunch of stuff that confirms all previously held assumptions and takes no brave or ground-breaking stand on any major issue confronting the Middle East.
If you look at Hizballah's flag, you'll note it says "The Islamic Resistance in Lebanon" at the bottom. Once upon a time, though, it read "The Islamic Revolution in Lebanon". I think they changed this because it made everyone so nervous. Well, everyone can sleep easy, because there is nothing revolutionary about this militia-cum-political party anymore. Hizballah is just as much a part of the calcified political landscape of the Middle East as Hosni Mubarak. This cliché-spewing manifesto -- "American terrorism is the origin of all terrorism in the world", says the organization that popularized suicide bombings -- only serves to confirm that. Maybe this manifesto was intended to appeal to Western leftists -- until, presumably, those leftists remember Hizballah is a religious fundamentalist organization. But the effect is to make Hizballah seem stuck in 2003, unable to confront the hard internal challenges facing the Middle East as a region and still reliant on a U.S. bogeyman to justify all its actions and rhetoric.
Sure. Why not take this
Sure. Why not take this perspective, if your Hezbollah that is. Focusing on American power vis-a-vis the region seems to be a lot like focusing on resisting Israel vis-a-vis the old Shia-Palestinian tensions: a political move that steps around the obvious an goes straight to the issue that can be agreed upon. In this light, it seems like the rational thing to do--if, of course, you are in Hezbollahs shoes.
Perhaps this will make them easier for the Obama Administration engage?
Aside from riffing on your
Aside from riffing on your Klein & Chomsky in a blender analogy (garbage in, garbage out), can I ask if this reflects an organization that has yet to be confronted with a situation that inescapably challenges its strategic outlook?
The challenging conclusions in the NIC report are born of questions the US has asked in an effort to explain outcomes that don't fit with its prior assumptions. That Hezbollah hasn't engaged in the same soul-searching and truly critical reevaluation suggests they haven't run headlong into something deeply unexpected yet, doesn't it?
Of course, maybe they have and still refuse to recognize it. In which case, let's all take comfort from their failure to adapt and learn (at least on the political front).
I take your point about
I take your point about Hezbollah looking a bit more like the other petrified actors in the Middle East, spewing out the same stuff they've been saying for however long. But I want to challenge your argument that that means they have not changed their view of the world or the region, or that it reflects a lack of serious self-questioning. Seeing as I'm not privy to the upper echelon's of Hezbollah's leadership, this is going to come mostly from my own reasoning, but I don't think that invalidates it entirely. My sense of Hezbollah, from their performance in 2006 against Israel, to their various social and political successes over the last decade or two, is that they are one of the few competent, professional organizations (governmental or non-governmental) in the Arab world. And an organization doesn't get that way without questioning itself and trying to react to changing circumstances.
More importantly, there are cultural differences here when it comes to revealing self-criticisms. I say this as someone who lives in Cairo and sees that all the time, from the government on down to the internet repair guy. I would imagine Lebanon is pretty much the same, though you would have a better idea of that. Authorities simply do not make their own internal questioning and self-reflection public. I have no doubt that Gamal Mubarak is trying to come up with answers to a lot of the problems facing Egypt in expectation of potentially taking over next year. But he is and will do so privately. That obviously is not the case in the US. We are extremely public with almost everything we do. Can you imagine any other world leader undertaking a decision process as public as the one President Obama did in regards to Afghanistan? It still shocks me how public we are sometimes. So the fact that our public reports reveal that self-criticism while Hezbollah's do not is no surprise at all. More importantly, it isn't necessarily evidence that they have not engaged in the same self-reflection. I would imagine they have. It is just that in a region as tenuous as the Middle East, it is so easy to stick with what has worked, or at least not lead to your total destruction, rather than publicly take risks and answer the hard questions. I would agree with you that that is a sign of political immaturity - not facing up to reality in public - but I would disagree that it necessarily means there is no introspection.
I didn't know that Hizballah
I didn't know that Hizballah provided a translation; I had only read the document in Arabic. Could you please give a link?
Presuming that "American terrorism is the origin of all terrorism in the world" comes from the Hizballah-provided translation, this contrasts somewhat with Hizballah's Arabic statement:
لا شك أنّ الإرهاب الأميركي هو أصل كل إرهاب في العالم، وقد حولت إدارة "بوش" الولايات المتحدة إلى خطر يتهدد العالم بأسره على كل الصعد والمستويات.
"There is no doubt that American terrorism is the origin of all terrorism in the world, and indeed the Bush administration transformed the United States into a danger threatening the whole world at every level." Notice the focus on a defunct American administration. In his essay “Washington’s Proxy War,” Stephen Zunes notes that during the U.S. congressional session directly preceding the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war, “there were more than two dozen resolutions condemning Hizballah.” In contrast, there were no congressional resolutions mentioning Hizballah during its most violent period, in the 1980s; in fact, no congressional resolution mentioned Hizballah by name until 1998. Therefore, there might be some significance that Hizballah didn't single out the current administration in that sentence. I'm only mentioning that because Exum found this particular sentence so crucial to his argument that he (like many other bloggers not sharing his impressive Arabic expertise) cited it instead of the many, many others in the new manifesto.
Furthermore, why focus solely on Hizballah when you could mention the director of the U.S. State Department's Near East Affairs Bureau Office for Egypt and the Levant, Nicole Shampaine, who preemptively ruled out any cooperation with the new Hizballah ministers in Lebanon's cabinet? Hizballah's appointments of Fneish and Hasan are the just rewards of the party’s electoral victories and do not seem controversial, and there may be no need for any American regime to interact with either of them. So why even bother a knee-jerk rejection? Isn't that in itself a little tired and derivative?
First western journalsits in
First western journalsits in South Waziristan- Channel 4 news. Shows the 2 Mehsuds now destroyed houses; a clue of how the talibs escaped- a lot of newly sheared hair on the ground, plus 'simulated combat' and no proof of any enemy casualties:
Andrew, had you been born to
Andrew, had you been born to an earlier generation, I'm sure you would have found similar faults in the African National Congress extended Defiance Campaign against apartheid South Africa.
You just don't get it. You'll never get it.
Blame it on your own sense of ethnocentrism and pro-Zionist prejudice.
AM: Some thoughts: 1)
AM:
Some thoughts:
1) Resource asymmetry: the US has the resources to author NIC 2025 (intellectual, financial, etc).
2) Hezbollah is a *movement*: it has to have a guiding ideology. The US may have an ideology, but by nature of being a nation-state rather than a movement, the US has a more pluralistic view of the world.
3) The US is a unipole whereas Hezbollah is a violent non-state actor (recognize you might not agree). Hence its focus is the world writ large, wheras Hezbollah's worldview is necessarily smaller.
ADTS
Aw. You're disappointed.
Aw. You're disappointed.
You thought that, after all those paintball games, these murderous, Jew-hating thugs might start quoting you, rather than Noam Chomsky. Ol' Noam is just so tired these days - even in Dupont Circle. Even if you're a murderous, Jew-hating thug, isn't a little sophisticated, pragmatic maturity just the thing to up your game?
Alas. We'd all like a really tough, effective military force on our sides. God, after all, is on the side of the big battalions. And who wouldn't rather side with God? Or rather, Allah, since God no longer has any military forces worth mentioning. Or at least, that can defeat a few thousand ignorant Afghan bandits. Or that are permitted to so much squash their own headlice without prior authorization from some controlling legal authority.
A difficulty that certainly does not apply to Hezbollah. Maybe, the next time you play paintball with Nasrallah, you can tell him he'll never defeat Israel, because he'll never win the hearts and minds of the Jewish people. It's sound counterinsurgency doctrine - don't you know?
Great review!
Great review!
I just want to throw a
I just want to throw a positive comment on to this stream. Stating that Hezbollah hasn't adapted their guiding ideology may seem simple, but it is an important point to consider for the future. They don't have an adaptive ideology, and that's a good thing for the West.
Looking forward to the longer form posts whenever they go up.
Michael C
The Saudis and Emratis are
The Saudis and Emratis are buying US weapons to defend themselves against Iran? That's the funniest thing I have heard all week! If that's true, I've got some beach front property in Dubai you might be interested in ...
More seriously:
Q Mr. President, did you talk about Hezbollah weapons? Because it's my understanding that the Lebanese government now considers it an internal issue and doesn't want the Security Council to deal with it.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: We discussed this. And as President Sleiman said, we discussed the enforcement of 1701. We've made progress on this front, but it's incomplete. President Sleiman emphasized his concerns with respect to Israel. I want to be clear that I emphasized to him our concerns about the extensive arms that are smuggled into Lebanon that potentially serve as a threat to Israel. And it is in the interests I think of all parties concerned to make sure that enforcement is exerted with respect to such smuggling, as well as to any other issues.
So one of the things that I want to make clear is that President Sleiman and I aren't going to agree on every issue with respect to how Israel, Lebanon, the Palestinians, Syria, are interacting. What we do share is a commitment to resolve these issues through dialogue and negotiations, as opposed to through violence.
And that is consistent with the democratic traditions of Lebanon. That's consistent with what we believe is in the interests of both Lebanon as well as the other countries in the region. And we are going to continue to be promoting those processes that bring parties together, even though there are going to be some strong disagreements with respect to what the terms, for example, of a final peace between Israel and the Palestinians may be. And I'm confident that we can arrive at those -- such an agreement as long as all the parties are entering into it in good faith.
Okay. All right, thank you, everyone.
It seems logical to me, if
It seems logical to me, if you take as granted that the basic position of Hezbollah is to avoid direct contact with the US/Zionist enemy while trying to gradually get the EU to cooperate. Im not sure to what extent a ideological manifesto in any way reflects operational and even political praxis, though I agree with you that the text you provide is very 2003. I would suggest that Hezb is basically feeling secure in the disapointment of the collapse of the Obama position on Israel on the Arab street. It may not have come across as such in the US, but the whole process wich lead up to Nethanyahu demanding and getting a unscheduled White House audience proved once and for all to my muslim friends at least that Israel owns the ME policy of the US. That whole walkback on settlements was catastrophic IO, Nethanyahu came out of it looking like he just asswhupped the President of the United States into submission. So I think it safe to say that those who view the US through the Israeli-conflict lens have concluded that the new administration is in effect the same as the old, just with a better salesman.
It's a good thing you
It's a good thing you "retired." This commentary is stale.
First: What might the
First: What might the foreign policy of a declining hegemon -- one faced with (1) rising new capitalist great powers, (2) the transfer of its wealth to these new players, (3) the threat of the loss of access to resources and (4) the threat of political turbulence in the resource-rich Middle East -- what might the foreign policy of such a declining hegemon look like?
Might such a declining hegemon's foreign policy look, indeed, like something of a cross between Naomi Klein's "The Shock Dotrine" and Noam Chomsky's "Hegemony or Survival?"
Second: If one were Hizballah, should one not be more concerned with this overarching, dominant and controlling paradigm (whether it ultimately leads to cooperation or competition between the old and new capitalist great powers); rather than being concerned with such highly subordinate, derivative and strategically myopic issues as "internal tensions?"
One might concede that both of these reports are well done: One being from the perspective of a declining hegemon -- who is now having to deal with its sponsorship of globalization and the result (the rise of new capitalist great powers and its corresponding loss of power) -- and one being from the perspective of those who would see this on-going phenomenon (whether capitalist great power cooperation or competition unfolds) as likely to continue to adversely effect their identities, cultures and civilizations.
Religion and money add
Religion and money add politics, no one wins. Hezbollah does not like Zion, but they like Zion money. Otherwise Hezbollah could not afford this http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17874369/ . Zion does not like Hezbollah, but Zion likes the money that oil produces. So Zion gets into Hezbollah's business and they get into Zion's. It is all good for making more money to promote the cause.
That is postive feedback, stop the cash flow.
Salman e Farsi writes:
Salman e Farsi writes:
Andrew, had you been born to an earlier generation, I'm sure you would have found similar faults in the African National Congress extended Defiance Campaign against apartheid South Africa.
If you could provide analogous examples from the African Nations Congress' publications of the time, especially of instances in which they were sidetracked into obsessive theorizing about how apartheid was actually the colonial manifestation of Western European traditions of hegemony, that would be cool.
He also writes:
You just don't get it. You'll never get it.
I agree, Hizballah should dress more goth, and play loud music in their rooms, and think about how sorry everyone would be if they killed themselves.
Meanwhile, Mencius Moldbug writes:
Maybe, the next time you play paintball with Nasrallah, you can tell him he'll never defeat Israel, because he'll never win the hearts and minds of the Jewish people.
PROTIP: The Lebanese people are not Jewish.
"There is no doubt that
"There is no doubt that American terrorism is the origin of all terrorism in the world, and indeed the Bush administration transformed the United States into a danger threatening the whole world at every level."
Some of the people on the left that I know (and I am talking about Central Europe, not Arabia) would get an orgasm of joy just reading these words, because the belief in Evil America trumps everything.
Do not count on the possibility that the fact that Hezbollah is a fanatical religious organization will sink into their minds. The thinking along the lines of "enemy of my enemy is my friend" is way too strong in some people.
Here's an article on
Here's an article on Hizballah member and Lebanese Agriculture Minister Hussein Hajj Hasan's agricultural strategy. Looking forward to everyone's nuanced examinations of it.
http://tinyurl.com/yaftwcf
waste of time for you to
waste of time for you to post and waste of time for us to read.
AM is, as ever, a
AM is, as ever, a pro-Zionist bigot who nevertheless plays paintball with Nasrallah but all the same has never actually met a member of Hizballah. And he writes stuff that bores the hell out of people who continue reading it anyway. Because of how boring it is.
Vistor@5:50pm What would be
Vistor@5:50pm
What would be more interesting. What has been missed? You keep throwing rocks at the devil, but never explain yourself.
Damn but the standard of
Damn but the standard of debate has gone downhill here - AM's fault for not actually ever getting into any kind of debate on his postings and no SNLII to lure me in !
Anyway, AM, who if all insults were put together would be a Pro-Zionist-Hizballah-Loving schizophrenic, is just guilty of losing his way on the party - He is making the mistake of looking at them as some sort of political party in Western Europe rather than an organisation that is in a daily life and death struggle with a far more well resourced enemy.
When you look at something through the wrong prism, it always looks wrong.
And reading this post makes it sound as if US power and influence in the ME is soon to be on a par with Andorra. Today, tomorrow and for the foreseeable future it is still the biggest supporter of Arab dictators and therefore the biggest supporter of Arab oppression and further still, the biggest threat to the long term survival of nationalist movements ( I would say nationalist movements that oppose peace with Israel but that would be redundant)
The investments being made
The investments being made in the global economy today are the new driving force in international affairs. This trend sees (1) global markets and their initiatives becoming ever-more in charge of the world and (2) nation-states being placed in a subordinate position, as their role now becomes one of supporting and backing up the moves of the global market players.
When this happens, you get "a world transformed" (as is identified in these two reports) and new specific concerns:
a. Concern by the hegemon re: increased vulnerability due to the loss / transfer of power (and, thereby, the corresponding increased potential for "large wars") and
b. Concern of the Third World re: increased interference and exploitation (and, thereby, the corresponding increased potential for "small wars).
You really exaggerate on
You really exaggerate on this one ya AM. Hizbullah is as calcified as Hosni Mubarak!?!
Perhaps the simple reason that Hizbullah is fixated on American hegemony in the Middle East is that it's actually a pretty important and salient feature of the said region, and it'd rather talk about that and gloss over its differences with other Lebanese groups (that seems to have been a big feature of the speech and new platform.) But you can't really blame them for being bitter when you had the White House and Congress encouraging Israel to continue its bombing campaign on Lebanon back in 2006. Like it or not, the question of whether or not American hegemony in the Middle East will end in the next 10 years, or at least reconfigure itself, is a major question being asked by all the region's local actors, pro- or anti-US. It's not surprising Hizbullah (in its admiteddly unsophisticated way) is talking about it, or more likely trying to take credit for it.
Bergman, R (2008)'The secret
Bergman, R (2008)'The secret war with Iran' talks about South America- Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, "a town named hell"- in particular, as a Hezbollah base/ retreat from where the 1992 Israeli embassy bombing in Buenos Aires were partly organised. No doubt they have sleeper cells/ willing supporters scattered around the 4 corners of the earth.
Purhaps Yemen is a view into
Purhaps Yemen is a view into the Islamic discussion....life with out the American devil.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2009/1215/Why-southern-Yemen-...
Hezbollah is a movement, movements need money. Uncle Sam is a good poster child. Get down to it, the discussion is about opprotunity. Who has the land and money.
You need a face to throw rocks at. Don't have a face, throw your rock at a rock.
Really, blame shifting
Really, blame shifting sounds like a National past time!.......Get a rock and toss it at some one.
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2009/11/29/gps.pakistan.blame.cnn
AM, Can you please answer
AM,
Can you please answer the question so we can judge the value of your analysis on Hibzollah. Have you ever had an intelectual conversation with a member of Hibzollah on the subject you are writing about in this post? or for that matter, have you ever had any conversation with a member of Hizbollah?
Vistor Dec16 6:48pm. I would
Vistor Dec16 6:48pm.
I would like to know if any one in Hizbollah has physically sat down with the Prophet Muhammad and had an intelectual conversation before they send kids out to kill in Allah's name.
Just judging Hibzollah's analysis.
^^^^ oh snap
^^^^
oh snap
You Zionist you!!! Merry
You Zionist you!!!
Merry Xmas, have some of dat single malt/brew Tenn stuff....
And look out for the LEGO's. That's the threat of the future....
Any
Any relation?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,580479,00.html?test=latestnews
I just saw that Neda
I just saw that Neda Agha-Soltan got Time's person of the year........
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1946375_19463...
That could be a long list in 18 months......I might need that beer.
Great piece, AM. I want to
Great piece, AM. I want to make a point, though... to me, it seems manifestos written by organizations like Hizbullah are only meant to serve two functions: market their worth to their potential support base and posture themselves vis-a-vis the rest of the world. Introspection or no, the document produced has been carefully calculated to serve their interests as well as possible. Also, you imply the document indicates Hizbullah's lack of ability or willingness to adapt to changing political realities. I say it's just a document--it means nothing; the organization's actions are what count. We can invoke some lessons from the orientalists here, who themselves have relied on an overly textual approach to sociopolitical analysis to reach the conclusion that the middle east has been, and always will be, "intransigent"... The landscape is changing rapidly in front of their very eyes, but they don't look up from the books to see it. I see how you might see the political plane in the region as "calcified," but just because, say, Mubarak is still on the throne doesn't mean things are frozen in Egypt. Ask the 90-odd Brothers currently serving as MPs...
Manifestos for all groups,
Manifestos for all groups, not just those "written by organizations like Hizbullah," and countries are meant to sell themselves to potential supporters and their existing bases of support.
Fair quibble. I suppose
Fair quibble. I suppose manifestos could also help --all-- manifesto-writing organizations structure and organize their rationale for existing, a sort of intentional identity formation to refocus the group and straighten its own path... reduce zig-zagging in policies... who knows. In this case Exum would have some grounds for his suggestion of institutional ossification this case. Wish I had some knowledge on this subject to actually make an informed comment; definitely interesting stuff.
That's for you
That's for you Mencius....for hearts and minds snark of the Year.
Has anyone noticed the
Has anyone noticed the similarities to this and Chavez' recent Copenhagen words......
It may be kinder than nation
It may be kinder than nation building....
Japanese man marries on line wife..meaning she's a sim...not real....
http://www.cnbc.com/id/34478437/
Hey, anonymous
Hey, anonymous "Visitor."
Have you ever had an academic discussion with a member of the Mossad?
Have you ever been in a
Have you ever been in a Turkish Prison?
Have you ever sat down with Bruno, Hizbollah and Mossad and tried to bring these queens together?
Ever been clubbed like a Baby Seal in Copenhagen?
Until you've been there, and Woodstock as well (all of them plus the off season Maple Syrup Festival Woodstock) don't judge...it's racist.
Once you read a book, then
Once you read a book, then set it aside, then pick the book back up again, you read two different books.
Went through AM's analysis again and found a new comment.
From AM's post:
إنّ أخطر ما في منطق الهيمنة الغربي عموماً، والأميركي تحديداً، هو اعتباره منذ الأساس أنه يمتلك العالم وأنّ له حق الهيمنة من منطلق التفوق في أكثر من مجال، ولذا باتت الإستراتيجية التوسعية الغربية - وبخاصة الأميركية - ومع اقترانها بالمشروع الإقتصادي الرأسمالي إستراتيجيةً عالميةَ الطابع، لا حدود لأطماعها وجشعها.
إنّ تحكّم قوى الرأسمالية المتوحشة، المتمثلة على نحوٍ رئيسٍ بشبكات الإحتكارات الدُّولية من شركات عابرة للقوميات بل وللقارات، والمؤسسات الدُّولية المتنوعة، وخصوصاً المالية منها والمدعومة بقوة فائقة عسكرياً، أدى الى المزيد من التناقضات والصراعات الجذرية، ليس أقلها اليوم: صراعات الهويات والثقافات وأنماط الحضارات، إلى جانب صراعات الغنى والفقر
There is a bit of irony. Hizbollah and the west are looking at each other as monolithic entities. Our attacks on each other are monolithic as a result to grab the largest support base possible. Interesting that Hizbollah is looking at the expansion of capitalism as a basis of American expansion. The only capitalist expansion that I see is the globalization of corporations. Corporations can no longer be seen as purely American anymore. Changes with off-shoring in the late 90's, IBM now gets more than half its revenue from foreign sales. As a result, the face of America that Islam is seeing in their countries are the advertising and business signs of off-shored globalized divisions. I am not even sure of how much profit from these off-shored division make to American soil, as they would be subject to US taxation. A subject that the IRS recently took to heart going after UBS and staffing up a group to look at off-shore bank accounts. Foreign countries that benefit from the off-shored business, and lobbiest from the corporate business partners in America ask for protection from threats to provide a stable business enviroment. The US military is called upon to support the mission. The protection that they seek from the US military may not be subsidized by them because they are not necessarily paying US taxes!
On the flip side. Terrorism with the face of Hizbollah and Al Qaeda is globalizing. They are in South America, Africa, and other places. Teaming up with who ever hates the west to promote the cause. If these terrorist groups are religious, you could not tell it. What they are doing is raising money, being capitalists. They support the drug trade and any other hate or vise to make revenue, to promote the cause, and business has been good. It is interesting that the Islamic youth in the UK have abused drugs as a road to radicalization. Nidal Malik Hasan was concerned of having AIDS as a result of having sex with prostitutes. The members of the 9/11 group visited strip clubs leading up to the event. The they embodied the concept that they hated. Purhaps hating their own changing values. The image of America they attack is not necessarily American owned any more. You would think a true believer would keep is soul pure for the trip to see his forty virgins. Except for the American revoltionary war and a few Pacific Island, I can not think of any war that the US military has been involved in where they held ground for a long period of time and set up an American constitutional government.
What started out as Zionism has become a war on Globalization. Britian came to the US government to give them a loan after WW2, US said we will give you money if you give up the empire. Even then the US was trying to release lands back to the people of foreign land. If the US had given Britian the loan, no strings attached, then maybe there would be no Hizbollah and the face of evil that Muslims seeks would be that of the UK.
Guys it is about Globalizaiton and business interests. Ambition has no boundaries, follow the money not the religion.
Comment to those that would consider my analysis to be clouded. I have spoken to people from Israel (Uziel Gal would be one of them, he past away couple years back), Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, and probably a few other ME countries. Found them all to be polite life loving people. That is the true irony.
PS...Finally Yes, I worked for a globalizing company that sold off as many divisions as possible to foreign business interests to spin-off overhead costs. No my name does not end in Exum. I am not Jewish. Most likely my relatives fought on both side in WW2, think a lot of people could say that. What we are discussing is learned behavior.
Can Hizbollah be candid
Can Hizbollah be candid about strategy in a public document? It is not that they have some sinister world-domination plan they are keeping secret, but rather that HA is an instrument of Iranian power projection, and as such its strategic objectives can't be separated from those of Iran.
Furthermore, this document's smugness and boilerplate whining hints at the intellectual limits of HA's ideology. To think in any depth about the internal dynamics of Lebanon and the wider Arab word, and to formulate a positive set of goals in a genuinely Lebanese context would require some very uncomfortable introspection, especially with regard's to HA's relation to Syria, and its often stated but seldom acted upon love for the Palestinians. It easier to foster a purely reactive (in strategic terms) 'culture of resistance' against one's favorite bogeymen.
They're very fat and tasty
They're very fat and tasty this time of year.
On a serious note, Mark Moyar has noticed that Death by micromanagement from above is a problem for Military Officers, for the Army in particular.
No Shit
I think most of us figure that out by Captain at the latest. More like 2LT.
I would be interested in
I would be interested in hearing Exums take on what factors he thinks would merit Hezb shifting its stance towards the US? The Cairo speech? Give me a break. Obama is just selling the same old SUV that GWB tried to ram down everyones throat, using a different spiel. Where is the substantial difference in US foreign policy between this admin and the previous, except for a larger focus on targeted assassinations in Af/Pak and less on full on warfare? Where is the emergency aid to Gaza, where half a million kids are starving and post-traumatic ths christmas? Where is any sign that the grip of the Hasbara machine on the US pov of the conflict is weakening? Nowhere is the answer.
It will all go the way of the healthreform: The US system is so dominated by non-reactive forces guarding their piece of turf through their own(ed) legislators that any change seems impossible. Thus do empires fall.
@Fnord, Well, I thought we
@Fnord,
Well, I thought we just passed Healthcare "Reform"!! Which turns out to be - making it a Federal Mandate that we be pimped out and sold to the Biggest Insurers....and Big Pharma...and the Trial Lawyers (who are getting another layer of lawsuits and 50$ mil up front). BTW for all the hype about the Evil Insurers and Pharma companies they were part of the deal from day One.
Same with bashing Wall Street. Then they bail them out with us wageslaves and salary serfs bloodsweat.
As far as "change"...Fnord, the founders designed the system so that it was difficult to rapidly change it. They wanted some stability, and change to be broad based, measured and slow.
That's why we've had one Constitution in 220 years, no violent coups, only one Civil War (which probably wouldn't have happened had the Supreme Court stayed in their lane - I refer to Dred Scott).
Take Heart. We'll be bankrupt soon. Then the Euro's can go peddle this shit to China (which doesn't take BO's calls, if you missed it). LOL. Constable Han, the worlds new policemen.
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