this is such a confused piece of writing! many people connected to syria have been saying for a long time now that partrick cockburn doesn’t know his head from his —, but this article in the nation is a masterpiece of erroneous analysis.
Patrick Cockburn: “The “war on terror” has failed because it did not target the jihadi movement as a whole and, above all, was not aimed at Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the two countries that fostered jihadism as a creed and a movement. The US did not do so because these countries were important American allies whom it did not want to offend. Saudi Arabia is an enormous market for American arms, and the Saudis have cultivated, and on occasion purchased, influential members of the American political establishment. Pakistan is a nuclear power with a population of 180 million and a military with close links to the Pentagon.”
apart from the fact that assad is cockburn’s good guy, there are some other serious problems with his thinking. the US didn’t want to “offend” pakistan and saudi arabia? good manners are never an impediment to pursuing imperial goals. pakistan is an american client state where the US has supported the army for over 60 years. even now it uses the pakistani military as a mercenary force. saudi arabia is ruled by a ruthless dictatorship which the US protects anxiously (they have military bases in saudi arabia). the war on terror isn’t just a management failure on the part of an overly courteous US, it’s imperial aggression and conquest. like the war on drugs in central and south america, it only helps create the chaos and violence that it claims to be fighting. finally, i think he got the wrong country when he talks about a “nuclear power and a military with close links to the pentagon” which can do no wrong even though it fosters terrorism.
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so while cockburn admits america’s culpability in creating ISIS, he is still completely on board with the racist, imperial premise of the war on terror. his only objection is that the wrong set of brown people got invaded and obliterated (it shouldn’t have been iraq & afghanistan, it should have been pakistan & saudi arabia). altho i have no sympathy for the saudi dictators or the pakistani military establishment, what cockburn fails to explain is america’s role in propping up their power.
i grew up in pakistan in the 1980s, in a society traumatized by general zia ul haq. yet america continued to support his regime because he was channeling money and arms into afghanistan, to fight the soviets. the misogynistic hudood ordinance, the preposterous blasphemy laws, the expansion of wahabi influence exerted by saudi arabia, the divisions created b/w shias and sunnis, the explosion in drug trafficking and widespread addiction as well as the inflow of automatic weapons into pakistan – most of this was facilitated by zia in order to consolidate his power.
now for cockburn and his friends at the NYT to constantly incite war against pakistan is madness. it’s a damn client state. as cockburn points out 180 million people live there, most of whom are not members of the rhetorically reviled yet perennially US subsidized pakistani army.
accepting the very legitimacy of the WOT is a non-starter. it’s as sound an argument as “israel’s right to defend itself.” let’s talk about colonialism, control and violent exploitation first. don’t give me a list of which brown people need to be bombed next.
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what i mean by “his friends” at the NYT is that the paragraph that i quoted in my first comment (which u posted) is standard fare for the NYT. they’ve been saying that for years. i know he’s not american. i’m more familiar with his brother’s writing tho.
if patrick doesn’t support bombing anyone, what does he mean by:
The “war on terror” has failed because it did not target the jihadi movement as a whole and, above all, was not aimed at Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the two countries that fostered jihadism as a creed and a movement.
how could the war on terror have “targeted” the jihadi movement in pakistan and saudi arabia?
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i find it interesting that when so-called western powers (such as the united states or israel or great britain) commit war crimes and violence on a massive scale (hiroshima and nagasaki, vietnam, korea, the philippines, iraq, afghanistan, palestine, ireland, india, kenya, i could go on forever) we never advocate “targeting” them in a war on murderous imperialism. they too are types that cannot be reformed. one quick reading of american history proves that. why do we always self-identify with the US? i live here and call it my home but i feel like a citizen of the world. military intervention in a country like pakistan (it’s already being droned btw) or saudi arabia or iraq (for the umpteenth time) is as disturbing to me as advocating arab or russian military intervention in the US because it’s a regime that simply cannot help killing large numbers of people.