Discussion: State Dept. Spox Says US Can't 'Kill Our Way Out' Of War With Islamic State

Discussion for article #233326

Cue conservative outrage in 3…2…1.

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Did Matthews have any specific suggestions on what to do?

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humiliated morally

Tweety, as any long-suffering viewer can attest, is intimately familiar with moral humiliation…

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She is right. Better brains than that of Matthews have addressed this question, in much the same way, albeit not as quickly as Harf was forced to do.

Absolutely agree with you on that. I think the line: “We can’t kill our way out of this” is excellent. If progressives want to argue against this cry out for war, that one liner is as good as anything I’ve seen.

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With Afghanistan and Iraq it SHOULD be obvious that the U.S. CANNOT kill our way out of a war.

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http://www.evolutionnews.org/1491936043_b60bd49eaf.jpg

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Maybe Chris heard the Arkansas candidate suggesting that one ICBM could clean up the mess.

Anyhoo, Harf is right. Tackling youth unemployment in France, South Asia and the Middle East/North Africa region would tend to dry up the supply of foot soldiers. Not a lot of the mid- or executive-level blower-uppers have time for the front lines. The economic and political reforms required might not sit well with the odd kleptocratic regime or so out there, though :frowning:

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Trouble is 97% of the GOP is jumping up and down on the Group W bench.

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“The American people I think are getting humiliated morally by this”

This embarrassment began on March 20, 2003, fuckface.

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Jesus said to Judas, “the poor we will always have with us.” That has been true ever since adherents claim the words were uttered some 2000 years ago–but shoving an AK 47 into the hands of unemployed men with no wives or children to engage in widespread piracy–THAT’s a new wrinkle. So who is paying for the AK47’s thrust into the hands of idle youth? And why is it the job of American taxpayers to find jobs and get wives for all the young unemployed Muslim men in the world? What is this situation: “Give us money, jobs, and women, or we will tear your civilization apart?” America’s got poor people too. I do not hear the voices clamoring to give jobs, or even job training to America’s poor. Just where exactly, does social responsibility begin and end? Who is it that is REALLY benefiting from the conflict engendered by ISIL? And what is their agenda, really? I find it very difficult to believe it really is all about a new Caliphate? That seems like a very unrealistic, impractical fantasy, given the modern realities. So, what is the objective, really? Just sell more arms and munitions? Ain’t much of a war, but it’s the only one we got?

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I really think the GOP and Fox are doing everything they can to whip ISIL into a prairie fire so that they can use it against the Dems in the POTUS election. And with the “BENGHAZI” iconography already set in their base, a horrific war with ISIL against white people works in the the GOP’s plan.

They need panic and crisis to terrify people into voting for them. ISIL is the game for 2016.

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Pointing to France is really the key. While Harf is right that we can’t kill our way out of this, I think she’s wrong the fundamental problem is a lack of economic opportunity for Muslims. “If only they could open a small shop,” she seems to be saying, “they won’t want to kill people.” That’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the source of the problem, which isn’t about economics so much as it is about power and pride. Since European colonialism after the end of WWI, and maybe even going back a century or two before that, Middle Eastern peoples have been excluded and marginalized from the main centers of power and wealth in the world and their culture has been mocked and caricatured by people in those centers. Reading Albert Memmi or even Frantz Fanon can help us understand this dynamic, but it looks like Harf is stuck in a purely economistic understanding of power.

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But helping poor people is hard! Sure we could take all the money we spend on killing them to help them, but then we wouldn’t have enough money to kill them! Which is really all we want to do…

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My plan: Egypt annexes Libya, gets tons of oil money and lots and lots of jobs for its impoverished citizens. Of course the idea that impoverishing Muslims is what makes them maniacs doesn’t hold water: where are the Egyptian fanatics going all ISIL? Where are the American black muslims going all ISIL?

No, it’s a different issue: it is ressentiment, a bitter anger towards everyone who seems to be better off than you, that you use to excuse a violence you always wanted to commit anyway.

Not every problem has a solution. Neither killing nor opportunity is likely to eliminate this criminal scourge anymore than any other criminal scourge has ever been eliminated. All you can do is follow multiple approaches and hope to reduce the incidence.

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The radicals in ISIS want political power, just like every radical in every country ever has wanted. We can’t kill them all any more than we can get rid of the disenfranchised in our own country. As long as they are marginalized they will want more than they have. The Middle East is rife with legitimate discontent with their autocratic governments and hereditary monarchies.

We obviously cannot kill them all. We can prod and encourage them to let more of their own people share in the control of their own destiny, however utopian that may sound. Or we can have more of the same mess that we have now, and just continue to react to each new crisis with more weapons.

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This is going to be my mantra. Thanks.

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As long as there are poor Muslims, the trumpet’s blowing, they’ll join. We can’t stop that, can we?"

Am I the only one troubled by this statement? And can someone unpack “getting morally humiliated” for me? Seriously.

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