Sunday Reads: On General Sherman & the IDF, Saudi Arabia’s influence on ISIS, America’s ‘dirty wars’
US
According to Russell Crandall, America has been fighting 'dirty wars' since its inception –
America’s self-identity is that we are a reluctant nation when it comes to starting wars, but when forced we fight total wars regularly and successfully—and sometimes even leave behind the defeated societies better than they had been before… Yet despite our desire to fight the good fight against a foe who will play by our rules, America’s history is overwhelmingly one of fighting opaque and incomplete dirty wars—from the American Revolution through Afghanistan.
Victor Davis Hanson sees a resemblence between the war tactics of a controversial figure in American history and those used by the IDF in Gaza –
Sherman’s rhetoric was bellicose, indeed uncouth — even as he avoided killing as many southerners as he could. He left civilians as mad at their own leaders as at him. For all that and more, he remains a “terrorist,” while the bloodbaths at Cold Harbor and the Crater are not considered barbaric — and just as the world hates what the IDF did in Gaza far more than the abject butchery of the Islamic State, which at the same time was spreading savagery throughout Syria and Iraq, or than the Russians’ indiscriminate killing in Ukraine, or than what passes for an average day in the Congo.
Israel
Michael Eisenstadt and Rob Satloff summarize the conclusions of a discussion held by military experts on the possibility of disarming Hamas and creating a long-term cease fire –
Constraining the ability of Hamas et al. to fire rockets at Israel is therefore key to preventing another conflict that could cost numerous civilian lives and lay waste to infrastructure and lodging built with billions of dollars in reconstruction assistance. For the first time, key international actors — including the U.S. government and the European Union — are on record calling for the disarmament of Gaza as an essential precondition for averting another military confrontation and permitting the reconstruction of civilian infrastructure.
Or Kashti writes about a new anthropological study which examines the rising levels of racism among Israeli teens –
“For me, personally, Arabs are something I can’t look at and can’t stand,” a 10th-grade girl from a high school in the central part of the country says in abominable Hebrew. “I am tremendously racist. I come from a racist home. If I get the chance in the army to shoot one of them, I won’t think twice. I’m ready to kill someone with my hands, and it’s an Arab. In my education I learned that … their education is to be terrorists, and there is no belief in them. I live in an area of Arabs, and every day I see these Ishmaelites, who pass by the [bus] station and whistle. I wish them death.”
Middle East
According to Tom Holland, ISIS is destroying the biggest melting pot in history –
As the fighters of the Islamic State drive from village to captured village in their looted humvees, they criss-cross what in ancient times was a veritable womb of gods. For millennia, the Fertile Crescent teemed with a bewildering variety of cults and religions. Back in the 3rd Christian century, a philosopher by the name of Bardaisan was so overwhelmed by the sheer array of beliefs to be found in Mesopotamia that he invoked it to disprove the doctrines of astrology. ‘It is not the stars that make people behave the way do but rather the diversity of their customs.’
Ed Hussein believes that the ISIS crisis would not have occurred without Saudi Arabia's long term support for Salafi hatred –
Unlike a majority of Sunnis, Salafis are evangelicals who wish to convert Muslims and others to their “purer” form of Islam — unpolluted, as they see it, by modernity. In this effort, they have been lavishly supported by the Saudi government, which has appointed emissaries to its embassies in Muslim countries who proselytize for Salafism. The kingdom also grants compliant imams V.I.P. access for the annual hajj, and bankrolls ultraconservative Islamic organizations like the Muslim World League and World Assembly of Muslim Youth.
Jewish World
James Kirchick writes an interesting piece on a heated Israel debate taking place in NY’s premier LGBT synagogue –
Listening to the complaints of some present and former congregants about Kleinbaum, the criticisms sounds familiar. “It’s about pushing a very particular form of political views on congregants and then choosing good, fair and honest people who are Jewishly educated and thoughtful about Israel and accusing them of being McCarthyites,” the former congregant, who has worked for prominent Jewish organizations, complained to me. It is the sort of grumbling that many Jews have about their rabbi’s politics (whether too right or too left), merely transposed onto a gay synagogue, with all of the pre-existing drama between lesbians and gay men. Appropriately, an old Jewish joke comes to mind: A Jew is found shipwrecked on a desert island. Over time, he built two synagogues for himself: The first in which he prayed, the second he refused to step foot in, even if you paid him. What the crisis at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah really shows is that gay Jews now have the luxury to kvetch about the same things as everyone else.
Does ‘Love thy neighbors as yourself’ apply to gentiles? Richard Elliott Friedman offers some interesting musings on the subject –
When the text already directs every Israelite to love aliens as oneself, what would be the point of saying to love only Israelites—in the very same chapter! Now my friend Jack Milgrom, of blessed memory, wrote that it is precisely because the love of the alien is specifically mentioned there that love of “neighbor” must mean only a fellow Israelite.
. We cannot forget, I kept saying to myself. We cannot describe the horror of their deaths, but we must never forget. Never again, should be our motto too. Le'olam lo shuv. We should never again let extremists do what they have done.</p>
<p> And now, as my grandmother lies dying, I have few words. Hers is not a violent death unless one counts the invasion of tubes. But the body looks violent. The blood thinners made her bruise easily so she is covered in patches where the red pooled against the papery skin.</p>
<p> This waiting, knowing she will not emerge, is a violent waiting because it is so still. We associate violence with force, the hit, the shot. There are, however, violences that are not accompanied by movement. In fact, they are the opposite. I am learning that violence is this vacuum too. It is a violence that prevents movement, resists our efforts to change the situation—would we hasten the end to mitigate pain? The violence is the stasis. It prevents us from making any decision out of fear. It is a force that has applied itself. I keep thinking of Faulkner’s title, “As I lay Dying”. Remember those terrifying lines in <em>The Rime of the Ancient Mariner</em> that describe a hellish stillness? He kills the albatross. The breeze drops and they are stuck on that ship unmoving under a “hot and copper sky” with a “bloody sun”, as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean.<br />
Water, water, every where,<br />
And all the boards did shrink;<br />
Water, water, every where,<br />
Nor any drop to drink.<br />
In this slow death, we have not communicated with her. Before she had a cardiac arrest that led to this state on a ventilator, she had started to scream. It was the most terrifying screaming that lasted through the night and into the day until she was massaged and sedated. Was she afraid? Did she know? When we asked her if she was in pain, she said no. But she kept screaming.</p>
<p> One of my aunts was speaking of what some Muslims say is ‘Qabr ka azaab’ or the punishment of the grave. According to one religious scholar, she said that angels come to us as we lie dying. There are different angels depending on how good or bad you have been in life. If you have been good, two of them come and sit and wait, radiating light. The angel who comes to extract the soul arrives. It takes it out and hands it to the two waiting angels. Then, in the grave, you are asked three questions: Who is your maker? What is your deen or belief system? Who is Muhammad (PBUH)? The evil people get two frightening angels that come to extract your soul which shrinks into the body, unwilling to leave. You are shown glimpses of heaven and hell.</p>
<p> One thing I do know is that this imminent death is teaching me certain lessons. One is a fear of God. I get lazy. The picture of what happens to you in the grave has scared the living daylights out of me. As I cast around for answers, I know one thing is for certain. I do not understand death and probably never will. But this I know. It is changing me even as I do not know it. And as with most moments of confusion, I turned to Roethke’s impossibly mysterious yet apt lines:<br />
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know. <br />
What falls away is always. And is near. <br />
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. <br />
I learn by going where I have to go.<br />
<br />
</p>
</div>
<p class=)