103 thoughts on “Sandpit”

  1. For the sandpit I have Jefferson Smith’s c. 2009 piece, Why Conservatives Are Always Wrong, which AFAICT isn’t hosted in full anywhere on the internet any more.

    It’s a polemic, as the title suggests, but IMO a very good one. Touches on a lot of Corey Robin’s themes, but a bit punchier, and while it describes American conservatism, there’s more than a little crossover with the local variety.

    Presumably an essay-length post will go into moderation automatically, so JQ can decide if he wants to host it here.

    Some formatting edits made to preserve readability through the transition from HTML.

  2. According to stats I have looked up, the USA’s GDP is about 15 times Australia’s GDP. However, the USA’s Gross National Income is about 25 times Australia’s GNI. I wonder, why the difference and what does it mean? Any takers on giving an answer?

  4. Ozblogistan is unhappy with such a massive cut/paste, and fair enough. I’ll wait on JQ to give the go-ahead or not, and perhaps email it through.

  7. Sorry I didn’t realise that the sandpit was for stuff related to Bernie Fraser’s resignation. Still it’s not too far a stretch to see connections.

  8. @Ikonoclast

    Re: GNI & GDP and the US empire:

    I wonder, why the difference and what does it mean? Any takers on giving an answer?

    I’ll have an inexpert, and generalised, go: Maybe it’s because the US (especially via Wall St banksters and the infamous global corporations) is a massive money-hoover?

  9. @Val

    Yes, how dare the citizens speak up, or even sing up for that matter. What do they think Canada is? Some kind of free-speech democracy? Where did they get that notion?

    Harper and/or the people who made this decision have forgotten one thing. Citizens have a right to free political speech in their own time in an open democracy. Being a government worker does not sink this right.

  10. Here’s some serious weird (with the caveat that I have a very low opinion of Leigh Sales and the half-past seven show). Quotes from tonight’s episode:

    When Labor left office, unemployment was at 5.8 per cent, it’s now 6.3 per cent,” presenter Leigh Sales said.

    “Growth was 2.5 per cent, it’s now 2 per cent, the Australian dollar was 92 cents, its now around 70 cents, the budget deficit was $30 billion when you took office, and now it’s $48 billion.

    “How do you explain to the Australian people that you were elected promising, in your words, to fix the budget emergency, yet in fact Australia’s economic position has worsened under your leadership?”

    Mr Abbott responded: “I don’t accept that.

    “The boats have stopped…”

    The media and political class falling over each other to praise Dutton and Abbott for picking a few refugees out of the available millions while continuing the torture and indefinite detention of a few thousand refugees of our own, is extremely weird.

    We have just effectively declared war on Syria. That is bound to work out well for us and the Syrian people. Not.

    Sadly, I’ve been banned from criticizing the ALP here – but others can look into that side of things and decide for themselves where we’re heading. It isn’t looking good.

  13. I suppose, in this context, it’s reasonable to suggest that fascism is the ideology of ‘Western’ longevity.

  14. Psycho:

    LEIGH SALES: We have Syrian refugees in our own detention centre on Manus Island. Why do those people not deserve a chance at refuge in Australia?

    TONY ABBOTT: Well we don’t want to reward people smugglers and we don’t want to reward people smuggling. So, we are very much going to go to people who have sought asylum, sought refuge on the borders of Syria, in Turkey, in Lebanon, in Jordan. We’re not particularly going to go and look for people who have used the services of people smugglers to get into Europe, because the last thing we want is to add to the problem of people smuggling, the last thing we want is to reward people smugglers and their clients. What we want to do is help people who really, under these circumstances, are never able to go back to their ancestral homes.

    So, the people who managed to get the furthest away from the “death cult” are the least deserving of our compassion and assistance. And, by extension, the people who have travelled the furthest are the most able to return to “their ancestral homes”.

  15. @Val
    Thanks Val.

    I had heard/read about the song, etc, but had not tracked down the video. Unfortunately the song is an extremely accurate summary of Mr. Harper’s career as PM. I can see it being used as a crib sheet in current affairs or history classes. I think it touches on some/most of the high points of his time in office.

    He is petty, extremely controlling, and vindictive. These, by the way, are his good points.

  16. @Ikonoclast
    As an add-on, Louise Arbour’s daughter, Emilie Taman, requested a leave-of-absence from the Justice Department to run for the New Democratic Party and was denied. Madame Taman is now being referred to as Former prosecutor Emilie Taman in at least one paper.
    Madame Arbour is some annoyed.

    Madame Arbour whttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Arbour

  18. Michelle Grattan claims that Bernie Fraser quit the CCA due to ongoing hostilities with Minister Hunt.

    The tension with the minister apparently wore Fraser down.

  19. Whilst it is easy to isolate and condemn Bolt for misrepresenting the father of the drowned boy Aylan Kurdi as one who put his family in mortal danger for the want of a good dentist, its hard to see how so many Australians can reasonably support his position.

    Bolt, Abbott and all the others are quite happy to bomb civilians, for whatever excuse, but are unable to deal with the consequences of their actions.

    Currently Turkey has 1.7M Syrian refugees.

  20. Yes, Western politics is descending into farce. It is becoming farcist as Megan would say.

    “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” – Karl Marx.

    One might think this explains the world-historical appearance of fascism followed by the world-historical appearance of farcism. In fact, it points to the truth of another well known saying from Hannah Arendt namely “the banality of evil” and to the point where we are in the cycle.

    Human evil is banal. It is farcical. It is rooted in the rankest stupidity. Living through the cycle of evil as it rises and falls, one notes first its farcical nature, then later tragedy ensues. In retrospect the tragic aspect looms large in our history and at the beginning of the next farcical cycle none can credit where it might lead once again. Thus it is first experienced as farcical and merely appearing to be repeating tragedy as farce. In fact, farce is the precursor of tragedy.

  21. @Ikonoclast

    From the article.

    “There is by now evidence from a variety of laboratories around the world using a variety of methodological techniques leading to the virtually inescapable conclusion that the cognitive-motivational styles of leftists and rightists are quite different.”

    It’s not a dichotomy of cognitive-motivational styles, people in any ‘population’, if the measurement tool allowed for this level of discrimination, would align on a continuum from left to right and would not look like two separate groups of people who are irretrievably different.

    It’s has always seemed to me that it would be better or more functional, if we could re-name these differences yin and yang rather than left and right. These names are not so ’emotional’ and so it would provide for the possibility of understanding ourselves more objectively,

    And I haven’t thought about the article much but I can’t see why, even if “conservatism is positively associated with heightened epistemic concerns for order, structure, closure, certainty, consistency, simplicity, and familiarity, as well as existential concerns such as perceptions of danger, sensitivity to threat, and death anxiety. ” that this means these cognitive emotional styles cannot be made less extreme – less yin or yang – and more like the ‘other’.

    It’s just a correlation.

    The yang? tendencies are based on the genetic endowment but they are encouraged when and if the family, the society, and the wider environment values individuality and the set of behaviours that go with that ideology. If individuality, creative personalities and expressing oneself is valued, children are not encouraged to moderate their differences in response to the needs of others and they are not encouraged to see how fitting in is ‘better’ than remaining sensitive to threats and uncomfortable with new experiences.

    I can’t see any support for the claim that conservatives or right wingers can’t change. Motivational theories abound and Norman Doidge has a lot of evidence for the plasticity of even older brains and our capacity to change.

    But because they are such sensitive fearful people, we have to be gentle with them if we want them to see the light and develop any motivation to change.

  22. @Megan

    Here’s some serious weird (with the caveat that I have a very low opinion of Leigh Sales and the half-past seven show). … The media and political class falling over each other to praise Dutton and Abbott …

    Possibly Leigh Sales praised Dutton and Abbott in the part you didn’t quote, but there’s no praise by her in the part you did quote.

  23. @Julie Thomas

    Interesting thoughts. I am not sure of the proper translation of yin and yang from the Chinese. I think in translations of Chinese terms we might often get poetic and spiritual images from too-literal translations when the Chinese in fact intend something much more empirical and rooted in this world. An example I came across was from the military theorist Sun Tzu. One translated sentence is sometimes rendered like this, “Consult Heaven before your operations.” The literal word is heaven but it means the skies in this context. So the sentence does not mean consult Heaven (and the Deities) before your operations, it means “look at the skies to see what season it is and what weather is coming” which makes a whole lot more practical sense.

    “Heaven signifies day and night, cold and heat, times and seasons. Thus, Heaven signifies the broader environment of a conflict, regardless of the nature of that conflict.”

    In a similar style I think we need to ask what “yin and yang” really signify to the Chinese. It might be difficult to impossible for monolingual English speakers (like me) to ever really comprehend what yin and yang mean (unless one goes ahead and learns Mandarin and Chinese philosophy). I am fairly strongly convinced that our language limits in turn limit what we can conceptualise.

  24. Ying and Yang could be as described by Newton – for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction

  25. @Ikonoclast

    “In a similar style I think we need to ask what “yin and yang” really signify to the Chinese.”

    I’ve spent a lot of time and effort reading about this and I don’t think it we need to understand what ‘they’ mean; it’s not that difficult to conceptualise these terms as end points of a normal curve, and a normal curve as the distribution that should describe all ‘populations’.

    There isn’t just one definition of yin and yang; other cultures not only the Chinese, are familiar with this way of explaining the universe and how it works as a conceptualisation of opposing ‘forces’ that should be reconciled as part of a whole rather than peace being a matter of one side winning over the other. We could even use the language of dynamics and attractor states.

    It would be a good thing for this country, if we did want to understand how the Chinese civilization conceptualised the human nature problem and if we thought about what there is in Chinese thinking – and other cultures – that we can use to take advantage of the human diversity that exists in the world rather than seeing it as a threat.

    The specific definitions of yin and yang vary between and among the various sects. The important part of this ‘theory’ is that it is the balance between the two forces – however they are named – that is the thing to be worked out or understood and manipulated to achieve peace. The point is that what seems on the level of observation that we are accustomed to use, to be dichotomous and irreconcilable, will look different if you look from a different level and it is possible to see that the two parts are part of the one whole.

    It wasn’t difficult for a couple of my neighbours to understand the concept as I explained it in the most simple form, a couple of days ago, as the difference between male and female tendencies – not the difference between a particular man and a particular woman – and that it is only possible to understand how we should ‘be’ and live or what our famous “way of life” should be by creating a balance between any two groups and not by domination of one type of person over the other type of person.

    I think that we could easily assimilate these abstract concepts into our culture by re-telling the story in our own language.

  26. Megan, I was meaning to respond to your post of September 7th, 2015 at 00:43 on Monday Message Board before comments were closed.

    The striking thing about Syria is that it has withstood an invasion by proxy terrorists of the U.S. and its allies from almost every corner the globe for more than four years now, but at a terrible cost – over 220,000 dead so far. What other country has been able to withstand such extreme adversity and yet continue to maintain its culture and essential services (including free medicine, housing, shelter for Palestinian refugees and the 1.3 Iraqi refugees who fled the wars and sanctions in which Australia shamefully partcipated since 1990). Even Australia’s achievement in 1942 seems modest in comparison.

    Surely the resilience shown by Syria owes much to the fact that Syria is not run according the neo-liberal dictates of bodies such as the IMF and the World Bank.

    Why do even some of those opposed to war with Syria repeat media lies against its democratically elected President?

    Most unfortunately for the anti-war movement, even some who oppose Australian military intervention in Syria, including Greens member of Parliament Adam Bandt, accept the claim that President Bashar Al-Assad is a brutal dictator guilty of murdering many tens of thousands of his own people. [1]

    In fact, Bashar Al-Assad was re-elected President on 4 June 2014 by an overwhelming majority of Syrians. See Syria’s press conference the United Nations doesn’t want you to see with embedded 52:45 minute YouTube video. [2] This report is of a press conference at the United Nations in New York on 19 June 2014. At that press conference five international observers testified that the elections were conducted fairly. Not one of the journalists present took the opportunity to challenge that testimony. Those, who had reported before and since that Bashar al-Assad was a corrupt and hated dictator, was torturing and murdering his own people, was dropping ‘barrel bombs’ on civilians, was poisoning Syrians with chemical weapons, etc., etc., etc., seem to have lost their voices on that day, or were absent.

    …

  27. @Megan
    If I’d made a drinking game of Our Tony’s performance last night, I would’ve died of acute alcoholic poisoning. As it was, I got nearly angry enough to Elvis my tv set.

    Sales didn’t even have to break a sweat to make him look like a complete tool.

  28. About the prediction in that article Ikon linked to above, that right wingers can’t learn to use a left wing cognitive style, I’d agree that someone like Tony Abbott couldn’t change his ‘mind’, ever or maybe a death bed confession would be within his capacity.

    Hoping for people like Tony and other types of ‘rusted on’ rwnj’s to have an epiphany or some sort of remorse for their choice of ideology is not going to work out well. I have to remind youngest son when he is in the mood to Elvis the tv in response to right wing stupidity, that he is supposed to be learning the counselling psychologist cognitive style which is ‘unconditional positive regard’ which does not involve strings of invective and that sort of behaviour.

    From wiki, “Unconditional positive regard, a concept developed by the humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers, is the basic acceptance and support of a person regardless of what the person says or does, especially in the context of client-centered therapy.[1] Its founder, Carl Rogers, writes:

    “The central hypothesis of this approach can be briefly stated. It is that the individual has within him or her self vast resources for self-understanding, for altering her or his self-concept, attitudes, and self-directed behavior—and that these resources can be tapped if only a definable climate of facilitative psychological attitudes can be provided.[2]”

    So a clinical psychologist or any psych who deals with people has to learn to use this cognitive style even if the client is a Tony Abbott.

    But I have to admit that I’m not really familiar with the specifics of Elvising the tv. 🙂 I get the general idea though.

  29. @James

    In the closed Monday Message Board I asked you ‘Why do you trust this source?’ and you responded ‘Which source?’

    I was asking about the only source mentioned in the only comment of yours that I linked to. I hope that’s not too difficult, but do let me know if I can be of any further assistance.

  31. If the mainstream media claims about Syria were true …

    J-D wrote on September 4th, 2015 at 09:54 on the (now closed) Monday Message Board of 24 Aug 2015 :

    Why do you trust this source?

    J-D wrote on September 10th, 2015 at 14:56 :

    In the closed Monday Message Board I asked you ‘Why do you trust this source?’ and you responded ‘Which source?’

    I was asking about the only source mentioned in the only comment of yours that I linked to.

    I had not realised that you had linked to the post you were referring to. I am not in the habit of linking to other posts as I prefer to use the one link allowed by the forum software for JohnQuiggin _dot_ com to link to other sites, usually my own.

    I trust that video, because it is consistent with everything else I know about Syria. Of course, I cannot know for certain that the whole video, including crowds of supporters of President Bashar al-Assad, was not staged, but, if it was, the actors they must have hired seem to have done an extremely good job. So too, must all the many thousands of other actors in the almost innumerable other videos now available which show hundreds, if not many thousands of Syrians greeting President Bashar al-Assad wherever he goes in Syria.

    J-D wrote on September 10th, 2015 at 14:56 :

    And now I will ask you a separate question: Why do you trust those five international observers?

    If the mainstream media claims about Syria were true, then what those observers told the press conference must have been a pack of lies. Any competent journalist would have had no trouble in tearing to shreds the claims made by those observers. The fact that none of the observers’ claims were challenged shows me that either :

    1. The journalists, who had been reporting elsewhere that Bashar al-Assad was a brutal mass murderer, were grossly negligent in not having put that to the observers, or

    2. Those journalists knew that the ‘reports’ they had written about Syria were untrue and that they would be shown up for the liars that they were if they had attempted to present that narrative to the press conference.

  33. Please explain, J-D.

    The Syrian Girl video: #RefugeeCrisis: What the media Is hiding

    Below is of the start the transcript of the above 13:24 minute video “#RefugeeCrisis: What The Media Is Hiding, Help #SyrianRefugees Go Home” by Mimi al Laham, also known as “the Syrian Girl”.

    This is Syrian Girl. The media’s painting the refugee crisis as an acute issue, but the Syrian war and refugees had been there for four years and Aylan [Kurdi] wasn’t the first child refugee to drown. Last month an eleven year Syrian girl old drowned off the coast of Egypt. So, why is there such a media push now? Well, it’s just in time for when France, Britain and Australia were asked to join the US’s war on Syria. In fact, the US asked Australia to join his coalition a week before Aylan died. So, they’re using sympathy for this child’s death to drop bombs on more children while crying crocodile tears over them as they run from those bombs.

    Just look at this headline from the Sun: “BOMB SYRIA” “FOR AYLAN”. You’d think they’d make themselves less obvious. This is the city that Aylan comes from. The area was blown to smithereens by the US. Rupert Murdoch couldn’t even wait for Aylan’s body to go cold before he started exploiting it for more war on Syria. …

  34. @James
    I take it you don’t accept the view that the Australian government actually prompted the request from the US to assist in bombing Syria, in an effort to improve the government’s polling?

  35. @James

    The explanation of my statement is as follows.

    In the first instance you write that you trust the source because it is consistent with everything else you know about Syria. This is not a good reason, because the fact that a source agrees with you is not a good reason for thinking it to be a reliable source.

    In the second instance you do not encapsulate your reason for trusting the source with equal succinctness, but it is apparent from what you write that you trust the five international observers because when they made their claims they were not contradicted on the spot by their audience of journalists. This is not a good reason, because it is not the case that claims are reliable whenever they are not contradicted on the spot.

  36. Australia’s war is illegal and against the people of Syria

    J-D

    I note that you have yet to provide even one source to substantiate your own views on the Syrian conflict.

    Presumably, I was right to say that you are arguing that the video that I linked to on September 4th, 2015 at 02:16 on the “Monday Message Board” of 24 August 2015, and innumerable others like that video were staged and that many thousands of very good actors were hired to stage those videos. Presumably you also think that the many more Syrians, whom we are told by the MSM, oppose President al-Assad have been hidden away from the view of all the local and international journalists who recorded those scenes.

    J-D on September 11th, 2015 at 16:55 wrote:

    … you trust the five international observers because when they made their claims they were not contradicted on the spot by their audience of journalists.

    You are attempting to make my views seem crude and simplistic in order to be able to parody them. What I wrote on September 11th, 2015 at 01:26 was:

    If the mainstream media claims about Syria were true, then what those observers told the press conference must have been a pack of lies. Any competent journalist would have had no trouble in tearing to shreds the claims made by those observers. The fact that none of the observers’ claims were challenged shows me that either :

    1. The journalists, who had been reporting elsewhere that Bashar al-Assad was a brutal mass murderer, were grossly negligent in not having put that to the observers, or

    2. Those journalists knew that the ‘reports’ they had written about Syria were untrue and that they would be shown up for the liars that they were if they had attempted to present that narrative to the press conference.

    Given that the Syrian conflict was so much the focus of the news at the time, how do you explain the complete failure of the media outlets that had so demonised President Bashar al-Assad to even utter a word at that media conference, let alone report it?

  37. @Tim Macknay wrote:

    I take it you don’t accept the view that the Australian government actually prompted the request from the US to assist in bombing Syria, in an effort to improve the government’s polling?

    This reminds me of the book “War for the asking” (1981) by Michael Sexton. That book shows that the Australian government invited itself into the Vietnam. It’s hard to be sure whose idea Australia’s entry into the illegal war against Syria originally was, but whether Australia or the United States took the initiative, the Australian government like nearly government of Western Europe, remains a vassal of the United States.

  38. @James

    You raise several different points. I can respond to any of them, or to all of them if you wish, but I feel that to attempt to do so in a single comment would make it inordinately and confusingly long, so I would appreciate it if you could select the points you think should have priority for discussion.

    If left to myself, the points I would give priority to are these: that whatever the other significance of your remarks, nothing in your most recent comment provides a good reason to trust your sources; and that each of the assertions you have made about me specifically is substantially mistaken.

  40. @Megan

    You have misunderstood the discussion.

    I have not written that I don’t trust James’s sources. I have expressed no view about their trustworthiness.

    This is not a discussion in which James and I have expressed incompatible views about the trustworthiness of James’s sources and what is at issue now is which of our views is better supported.

    This is a discussion in which I have asked why James why those sources are to be regarded as trustworthy, and what is at issue now is whether James can supply any good reason for trusting them.

    If you trust James’s sources and can provide good reasons for doing so, I am eager to see them.

  42. @Megan

    Possibly; but even if it is my signature style, it’s also possible that you misunderstand my signature style. It wouldn’t surprise me.

  44. ALP supporters must be proud to have their refugee policies praised by UKIP’s Nigel Farage:

    We must be mad to take this risk with the cohesion of our societies. If we want to help genuine refugees, if we want to protect our societies, if we want to stop the criminal trafficking gangs from benefitting as they are, we must stop the boats coming as the Australians did…

  45. If Jeremy Corbyn adopts an economic policy based on Abba Lerner’s Functional Finance, he’ll deliver full employment at current prices. Sadly, he shows no sign of questioning the neoliberal framework. He rabbits on about the need to reduce the government deficit. His badly named People’s Quantitative Easing is really Overt Monetary Financing, which is consistent with Functional Finance and would be extremely good for employment, incomes, and output. Unfortunately he has chosen to co-opt the term “quantitative easing”, which is about shuffling the wealth portfolio of banks (replacing bonds with reserves), not increasing aggregate spending in the economy.

  46. “So, why is there such a media push now? Well, it’s just in time for when France, Britain and Australia were asked to join the US’s war on Syria. In fact, the US asked Australia to join his coalition a week before Aylan died. So, they’re using sympathy for this child’s death to drop bombs on more children while crying crocodile tears over them as they run from those bombs.”

    I think it is possible that Europe is expecting a much greater flow of refugees now due to the plans of bombing, as everyone will be trying to leave Syria to escape being bombed. So this expectation of greater flows of refugees to Europe has led to more efforts to work on the refugee crisis.

    I think I read Germany said it would take 800,000 refugees this year or a high figure like that

  47. Despite a concerted campaign by the political establishment and particularly the UK Labour elite against him, Corbyn has won the leadership vote in the first round by a landslide 59.5%.

    Tom Watson won deputy spot after three rounds but with a large primary vote.

    This alone may prevent the UK from killing more Syrians as Cameron said he wouldn’t join in the slaughter without broad parliamentary consensus.

    Corbyn said in his speech that one of the first things he will do as leader is attend the pro-refugee rally this afternoon in London (it’s midday there at the moment).

    Sadly, I don’t believe a Corbyn is a possibility in Australia’s ALP because it is too tightly controlled by the faceless people.

    In this country, our ‘Corbyn’ will have to come from outside the establishment parties and that will be a long road.

  48. ZM on September 12th, 2015 at 20:09 wrote:

    “In fact, the US asked Australia to join his coalition a week before Aylan died.”

    As Mimi al Laham, the Syrian Girl, pointed out in the video I linked to above on September 11th, 2015 at 12:39, an 11 year old Syrian girl drowned of the coast of Egypt in the month prior to when Aylan drowned, but this attracted little coverage in the mainstream newsmedia.

    The best way to end the refugee crisis is for the United Sates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, Turkey, France and The United Kingdom to cease giving weapons to the tens of thousands of terrorists who have been attempting to invade Syria since March 2011.

    On the illegality of Australian intervention in Syria

    Senator Ludlam has called for War Powers reform and the obligation that all decisions on war involvement must be taken only in consultation with parliament. David Macilwain argues that the matter of Australian intervening militarily in Syria without Syria’s permission should be pursued in the Senate and with the attorney general, George Brandis, because it is in breech of international law.

    …

  49. @J-D

    All you have done is make this value judgement that all the video and printed evidence I have provided about Syria is not good enough for you:

    In both instances, the reason you give for trusting the source is not a good reason.

    … but have failed to give an example of what sort of evidence you would accept as justifying, as examples, Australia’s decisions to go to war against Syria in 2015, Iraq in 2003 and 1990, Afghanistan in 2001, and Vietnam in 1965.

    Allegations of the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government? Iraqi WMD’s? incubator babies? the Gulf of Tonkin incident? 9/11?

    When you give an example of what you would consider valid evidence contrary to the evidence I have given above, this debate can proceed.

  50. The whole region (Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Afghanistan, etc) is in a state of flaring civil wars, and in the midst of that, a geographical shake-up thanks to the ISIS entrant. Since we have no clear objective beyond remote control fighting with ISIS in that region, it seems that all we will do by taking further remote control action is to damage the local population’s infrastructure, unintentionally yet inevitably kill and injure hundreds of civilians, and alienate even more of the population, even as they flee the conflagration for the relative safety of western countries.

    The western countries have had a terrible recent history of failed war objectives in the Middle East; as far as I can see, virtually all of the wars since the late 1990’s have resulted in a bigger mess than before the war(s) in question. Furthermore, with the states being fairly arbitrary borders drawn by colonial invaders at various times throughout the previous 150 years, sooner or later a group like ISIS was going to crop up; if ISIS hadn’t made a thing of goading the US and western countries by beheading their citizens, chances are the west would have been ignorant of ISIS until it had achieved its goal of an independent caliphate, or run out of steam and just become another semi-tribal group with their own militia. Given the number of such groups scattered across the Middle East, ISIS would have looked no different to the west, and probably have been ignored.

    We cannot defeat ISIS in any meaningful sense, unless we are willing to take troops onto the ground, hunt down every last ISIS supporter and lock ’em up/kill them, and then somehow magically reinstall the stable power bases which existed prior to the ISIS upheaval. Since there isn’t a snowflake’s chance in Hell of a coalition forming and doing just that, since there will always be significant numbers of ISIS supporters left after we finish air-bombing them, we cannot achieve a meaningful military objective, nor a meaningful political one, by merely sending a few jets and armed forces over there. Why are we there, especially as we know that air-strikes kill a lot of the wrong people, and just make a very bad thing worse.

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