Thoughts on Iraq

A few months ago, I wrote that the US was out of Iraq, unlike it had been for much of my life so far, unless the government decided to launch airstrikes in response to the ongoing violence there. It’s no secret that our invasion was a key factor in creating the current conflict there—it helped install a sectarian Shiite leader and allow Shiites to commit an outright ethnic cleansing against Sunnis in Baghdad. Not surprisingly, in a region already rife with sectarian conflict, actions like these helped turn Iraqi Sunnis toward increasingly extremist responses, which explains a great deal of the increase in numbers of ISIS, or the Islamic State, as it’s now calling itself.

We then have some idea of how this current situation came about. US military intervention was enormously detrimental in Iraq the last time. What’s the current response of the government? Airstrikes and military advisors—i.e., more military intervention. Further, there’s no justification now that couldn’t have been used for our invasion and ousting of Saddam—ISIS is genocidal, but so was he; no one doubts the brutality of Saddam’s regime, nor the brutality of ISIS; and the US at least allegedly played a role in helping both come to power.

None of that is to say military action is therefore unjustified, just that we should exercise great caution in assuming that the cruelty and viciousness of the Islamic State demands US intervention, any more than Saddam Hussein’s cruelty and viciousness did (of course, there are still people who think we made the right move in our previous invasion, but those people are too far detached from reality to be worth spending much time on). Military intervention is not always an effective way to deal with problems like these; the US launched airstrikes against Kosovo in the late ‘90s, and the result was an enormous escalation of the violence there. We should be very wary in assuming that won’t happen here. The beheading of James Foley was done in retaliation for the airstrikes, of which ISIS has already vowed to avenge any and all; so, unless they significantly limit ISIS’s ability to harm and kill innocents, it ought to be very seriously considered whether such airstrikes run the risk of being counterproductive.

The fact that we’ve sent in hundreds of military advisors is also concerning; the Vietnam War started with military advisors. This isn’t try to draw any ill-thought-out parallels, but it should be clear at this point that Iraq is huge quagmire when it comes to any military intervention. It’s troubling that we seem to be gradually creeping toward doing exactly what Obama promised we wouldn’t—sending in combat troops. Even if Obama keeps that promise, he stays in office for only about two and a half more years; this situation doesn’t exactly show signs of blowing over in the near future, and who knows if whoever succeeds Obama will abide by the same standard. There’s good reason to think Hillary Clinton wouldn’t, for instance.

Then, of course, there’s the issue that everything that has so been done by the Obama administration has lacked congressional approval; that’s especially troubling when Obama has specifically said there is no end date for our current actions. One has to wonder exactly what we’re getting into, and question why the president doesn’t even seem inclined to have these actions—actions extending into the future indefinitely—approved by Congress, as they constitutionally should be.

It should also be noted that our current motive is less than pure, as usual. Once again, the oil fields in Iraq are an important motivating factor for the US government. Of course, if military action for oil can actually do good for the people in the affected region, then the impure motives should be no concern—but, once again, we have to be wary of what we’re told when we realize the powerful forces that may be backing action not to the benefit of either Iraqis or everyday Americans.

None of this is to say that the world should sit idly by while the mayhem in Iraq unfolds. On the contrary, the events there deserve the attention of the United Nations. There’s no reason that, pending a Security Council resolution or something similar, the United States shouldn’t be involved in taking appropriate action. However, any long-term intervention of any nature in Iraq should be both well thought out and approved by Congress. The United States cannot continue to pretend to be the world’s policeman as it takes military action serving the interests of corporate elites (but working much to the detriment of everyday people), nor can the executive branch continue to absorb powers reserved for Congress. All of us must bear that in mind as we contemplate what the appropriate way forward is in handling the Iraq situation.

Correction: This post originally stated that the US had deliberately helped Saddam Hussein come to power; I have deleted that claim and linked a new source to acknowledge that the reality was somewhat more complicated and qualified that this involvement is alleged. 

Why Hillary 2016 Will Suck

It’s pretty safe to say Hillary Clinton is running for president. She’s all over the place, putting in her two cents on whatever issue is getting attention, and next month, she’s heading to Iowa. At this point, it’s a matter of when she’ll officially announce her candidacy, not if. She’s also the frontrunner—by, like, a lot. Granted, that doesn’t mean too much yet, but if election season has already started for the 2016 Democratic primaries, we might as well start to evaluate the candidates that are out there. My evaluation for Hillary can be summed up in about three words: she is awful.

It’s hard to even figure out where to begin, Hillary’s such a hopeless old hack, to borrow Hunter S. Thompson’s phrase (not one he lived long enough to apply to Hillary Clinton, but one I think he’d agree applies to her pretty well). Let’s start with the economy—not exactly a really exciting topic, but an important one. Clinton seems perhaps a bit less bipartisan and a bit more aggressive than Obama, so maybe she could be good economically, at least. Or not. As it turns out, she’s pretty chummy with Wall Street—not exactly a good sign. They might even prefer her over some of the potential Republican candidates. And with an ever-widening gap between the rich and poor, Clinton’s approach seems to be every bit as weak as Obama’s, if not weaker—all you hear from her is talk about “consensus,” how we’re “in this mess together”—but that idea isn’t even coherent. Wealth inequality means some people are better off than others, and the only way to correct it is some form of redistribution—the rich have to get poorer for the poor to get richer; granted, that’s not true when there’s economic growth, but the benefits of that growth are currently going to the richest, so at least that has to change, which is obviously to the detriment of the richest. Good luck getting Hillary Clinton to say that—or act in a way that treats that as the reality.

What about social issues? Nothing too impressive there, either. Hillary came out in favor of gay marriage in 2013, so don’t expect her to exactly lead the way when it comes to promoting more tolerance and greater rights for persecuted groups. Her view on the drug war isn’t really anything to write home about—basically “maybe we can think about legalizing marijuana if it works in Colorado and Washington.” Even her rhetoric on medical marijuana is pretty lackluster. Obama had rhetoric that sounded better in 2008, and we all know how that turned out. She also supports the death penalty, not that that should come as a surprise for any Democrat at this point.

Clinton also doesn’t have much to say about how the government has shredded the Bill of Rights in the name of protecting us from terrorists. She’s another Snowden-basher, who mostly wants to focus on what a scumbag he is, etc., etc. Oh, and maybe we can reform the NSA or something like that. But first let’s talk more about how much Edward Snowden sucks. While in Congress, she was a supporter of the PATRIOT Act, and its renewal. Don’t expect any big change from the Bush-Obama “counterterrorism” policies if Hillary gets into the Oval Office.

Foreign policy is where things get really awful, though. Obama might not have made many changes from the Bush years, but Clinton sounds more like John McCain or Lindsey Graham than she does Obama. She’s a diehard defender of Israel, including of pretty much all of its recent actions—bombing a UN shelter for civilians was done in the “fog of war,” according to Hillary—and Prime Minister Netanyahu, a diehard right-winger, has actually done his best to be a broker for peace in the region. She’s even agreed with his remarks essentially ruling out a two-state solution. She’s big on getting involved in foreign conflicts—apparently, what helped the Islamic State gain so much power was that we didn’t sufficiently arm moderate rebels in Syria, despite all evidence that arming Syrian rebels has only helped groups like ISIS. She’s also a long-time defender of the drone war that continues to go on. Clinton is basically a neocon, as evidenced by the fact that she voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq, and was still refusing to call her vote a mistake in 2007.

She’s also a little on the fascist side when it comes to personal expression. While a senator, she introduced a bill to outlaw flag burning, punishing it with up to a year in prison. That’s a year in prison for burning a piece of cloth. Let that sink in for a minute. She also co-sponsored the Media Marketing Accountability Act, introduced by Joe “Marilyn Manson caused Columbine” Lieberman, which would have criminalized marketing “adult material”—in Lieberman’s own words, anything that contains “sex and violence”—to minors. Because teenagers aren’t already aware of sex or violence, or anything like that.

To be blunt, Hillary Clinton is an absolutely god-awful candidate. I may not always agree with Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, or Bernie Sanders, but I’ll take any of them over Clinton any day of the week. In fact, if the 2016 race comes down to Hillary Clinton or Rand Paul, I might find myself voting for Paul, in spite of all the issues I have with him. He at least makes good points about US foreign policy, the drug war, the drone war, the NSA, and a few other areas. Clinton makes good points on virtually nothing.

Note: Originally this blog stated that the Syrian rebels committed massacres, and linked to a source. However, I have judged that source unreliable, and have not been able to find a reliable source to back up the massacre it alleged. I apologize to everyone for the error.

Atheists' Real "Mistake:" Disagreeing with the Majority

Perhaps it’s criminally irresponsible of me to make my first blog post in over a week about a random article I found online, when the US has begun airstrikes against Iraq and is sending in more military advisers, but that’s what I’m going to do anyway (I will address the Iraq situation, in time). I guess this blog post is a response to a response, technically, because the article I’m discussing here (by Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie) is written as a response to an interview with Philip Kitcher. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Kitcher, and I haven’t read the interview, but the Rabbi uses it mostly as an excuse to attack atheists as a group, which is the only reason I’m writing a response.

The title of the article itself—“The Three Mistakes Atheists Make”—isn’t exactly indicative that we’re in for anything too brilliant. Contrary to what a lot of theists seem to think, atheists actually aren’t a uniform group, so it’s a bit dubious to imply that all of them, from Ayn Rand to Bertrand Russell to George Carlin, would make the same intellectual mistakes, but I guess that’s a nitpick. More noteworthy is that none of the things Yoffie lists are actually mistakes, just behaviors that he personally doesn’t like. But enough about the title—let’s launch into the actual content of the article.

 The first “mistake” that atheists make, according to the Rabbi, is that “[t]hey dismiss, often with contempt, the religious experience of other people.” This isn’t really a fair accusation—sure, some atheists dismiss others’ religious experiences, but the fact that a person ultimately doesn’t believe an incident proves anything doesn’t mean they dismiss it, let alone with contempt. Yoffie’s problem seems to be that atheists aren’t convinced God exists when other people think they’ve experienced Him. “[T]here is something both sad and arrogant about non-believers asserting with certainty that no one else is capable of a God encounter,” he posits. But many atheists—including prominent ones, like Richard Dawkins—don’t claim to know that God doesn’t exist with certainty, just to disbelieve He does due to lack of convincing evidence. And, ultimately, it’s far more rational to believe religious experiences are “psychiatric matter[s] or…general feeling[s] of uplift that [are] then related by the person involved to a religiously entrenched myth” (the “sad and arrogant” idea the Rabbi refers to) than that they have been chosen randomly to be briefly contacted by the invisible, omnipresent ruler of the universe.

“Mistake” number two is that atheists “assert that since there are no valid religions but that religions do good things, the task of smart people is to create a religion without God -- or, in other words, a religion without religion.” Apparently, the hundreds of millions of Buddhists in the world are, in Rabbi Yoffie’s opinion, following some sort of phony pseudo-religion, since Buddhism is nontheistic. The Rabbi goes on to make some equally absurd assertions, claiming that “Philosophy can do many things, but it cannot create deep loyalty, profound engagement, or a willingness to sacrifice for one's beliefs.” Has Yoffie not heard of Che Guevara—an avowed atheist—who spent numerous months leading a brigade through the Bolivian jungle to fight the oppressive government there until he was captured and killed? Or the revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin, another avowed nonbeliever, who suffered years of imprisonment and exile while fighting for his beliefs? What, aside from personal philosophy, could have motivated atheists like these to devote themselves so thoroughly to their chosen causes? Or do they just not exhibit “deep loyalty, profound engagement, or a willingness to sacrifice for [their] beliefs?” As someone with less than a glowing view of humanity, it strikes me as unbelievably pessimistic to think that no one could devote themselves to a cause unless they believe it’s what some supreme being wants them to do—and it’s a view that just doesn’t line up with reality.

The Rabbi then states that atheists’ third mistake is to “see the world of belief in black and white, either/or terms.” What follows is not just wrong, but utterly confused. Kitcher (and presumably most other atheists, in Yoffie’s mind) argue that there are so many religious views and traditions that the most reasonable view is that none of them are true. Okay. Then the Rabbi says that in Kitcher’s view, you’re either a believer or not one, essentially contradicting what he just said. He had just stated that Kitcher saw an “incredible diversity of religious doctrines.” How, then, can Kitcher see religious belief as a black and white matter? Because he doesn’t explicitly acknowledge that you can “kinda sorta” believe in a religious doctrine?

Furthermore, it seems to be Rabbi Yoffie who sees the issue of belief in black and white. He earlier cites the fact that eighty-five percent of people associate with a religious tradition, ignoring that many may hold to religious views nothing like his own—and it’s obvious from even the title that he sees nonbelievers as a uniform group who all make the same mistakes and think the same way. Yet atheists are the ones seeing the world in black and white?

Yoffie closes by stating that “most people instinctively reach out to God, and God in turn reaches out to them.” Obviously, a claim he doesn’t bother to back up with any evidence whatsoever, but rather a nice-sounding line that can make religious bigots feel good about themselves by reminding them that they’re normal, and all those atheists are just bitter, arrogant jerks who want to rain on their parade.

This article is character assassination masquerading as logical critique. Yoffie isn’t criticizing ideas or arguments that are inherent to atheism; he’s attacking atheists as a group, reinforcing the stereotype that they’re all a bunch of smug, conceited, selfish malcontents rather than just people who have examined the facts, applying the same logical standards to the question of God’s existence as they would to anything else, and concluded that they’re unconvinced. Sure, there are atheists who are smug, arrogant, selfish, etc., but that’s no reason to attack the whole group. Rabbi Yoffie has revealed himself to be kind of a self-righteous moron, but it would be unfair to blame all Jews for that fact.

Ultimately, the article is just another example of how it remains acceptable to slander and other-ize atheists in America. It’s an attitude as despicable as any other form of stereotyping and discrimination, and we’re at a point where no one—religious or not—should tolerate it. Anyone discussing Christians or Jews as if they were one homogeneous group that all thinks alike would be seen as bigoted and ignorant, rightly so (I leave out Muslims from that list because they’re another group it’s acceptable to other-ize and stereotype, even, sadly, on the part of atheists like Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens). Why should it be any less wrong to do so against atheists?

Coup In America

There aren’t too many parts of our government that I have high regard for—there are some, which might come as a surprise to those who misunderstand me when I label myself an anarchist—but it’s beginning to become clear that some agencies pose a unique threat to maintaining anything like an open society. Not surprisingly, the CIA is at the top of the list—it’s an agency with a long, incredibly ugly history that includes coups, assassinations, human experimentation, and of course, more recently, torture.

It’s the last of these that, in a convoluted way, is at the heart of the most recent controversy involving the agency. The US Senate has been working on a report, soon to be released, that concludes that “enhance interrogation techniques” and the like were unnecessary and excessive. Even though the CIA is no longer authorized to practice those measures, its members apparently took serious issue with such a report, as it has now come out that five CIA employees searched computer files and read emails of Senate investigators.

This is after Director John Brennan had denied any wrongdoing on the part of the agency—probably a move he regrets, in retrospect. What’s troubling about this isn’t that it’s extraordinarily bad by CIA standards—let’s keep in mind the drone strikes they’ve executed and the innocent civilians that have been needlessly killed by them (and those are just some of their crimes in recent history)—but that this seems to indicate that, by the standards of those in the CIA, even the US Senate is so radical and anti-authoritarian that it has to be spied on to keep it in line.

I won’t bother pretending we have anything resembling democracy in the United States (or that we’ve had any such thing for at least numerous decades), but we’re getting into some particularly dangerous territory when even those who have gotten past the phony, corporate-run elections we hold are still not the ones who are really in charge. Furthermore, the CIA had no real motive for any of this—everyone knows they tortured people, and the Senate report is not that likely to cause some huge change. One almost has to conclude that the CIA abused its power here just because it could.

To many it might be unthinkable, but we need to abolish the CIA. It’s hard to come up with much of a cogent defense of the agency. It came about as part of the US’s absurd Cold War strategy; its historical role largely seems to have been the violent imposition of US interests on every country that threatens them; it’s committed numerous human rights abuses all throughout its existence, up to the present; and at this point, it’s gotten so out of hand that it doesn’t even respect Congress’s authorized powers, essentially defying the very branch that helped give birth to it. Whatever legitimate duties it performs, there has to be some better way to achieve them than to keep this radically anti-freedom, anti-transparency, anti-accountability cancer on both our society and the world at large, that calls itself the CIA.

Lawmakers have called for Brennan to be fired—appropriate, sure, but not something that will accomplish much of anything. Doubtless, if he’s fired he’ll be replaced by some other insider who can keep the CIA on the same dictatorial path it’s always been on. The only solution is to simply abolish the agency. The CIA has on more than one occasion displayed its lack of respect for Congress. It’s time for Congress to return the favor and display the ultimate lack of respect for the CIA by revoking its right to exist. But, of course, this is Congress we’re talking about. Even when their own powers are threatened, it’s hard to imagine they’ll actually achieve something worthwhile. That’s our system at work.