Good question, terrible answer. What do you think?

stevejazzx

From this clip
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt9QCAUPPeY
A guy has a kind of mangled attempt at a question to Chomsky that Chomsky handles terribly (putting it down to his age and / or the sound at the event).

Anyway, I think part of the question is quite interesting and to my knowledge it hasn't been explored here that much so, giving the guy the benefit of the doubt, I think what he meant to ask, roughly, was this

Is there any way to the separate staunch secularism/atheism of say, Hitchens and Harris from their viewpoints in relation to current foreign policy. It is implied that they are essentially warmongering in this regard. If Hitchens were alive he would almost certainly advocate the forceful removal of ISIS. Would you agree or do you think there is any possible alternative to the solution as someone like Chomsky has always alleged?

Hitchens had a considerable move from an almost extreme leftist view (very similar to Chomsky) of (US) foreign policy to a near and sudden neo-con approach of lets take the war to them (fundamentalist religions particularly Islam) attitude somewhere around the beginning of century and to this day I can't understand it.
I suppose therefore what the questioner in the clip is wondering is; how responsible is (was) his unflinching secularism for such a dramatic change in viewpoint.

Sam Harris's biased and illogical overview of the Israel/Palestine conflict has left many people at odds with someone they otherwise find entirely agreeable; nonetheless he states that he would not entertain, for even one second, any dialogue whatsoever with religious extremists and ultimately advocates the use of force for their removal.


My personal outlook is that given the current savagery and barbarism of ISIS that Hitchens was right and Chomsky was wrong but that is such a bleak outlook it disturbs me greatly.
Conversely I do feel the west is in someway partly responsible, not perhaps for creating ISIS but perhaps for creating the conditions in which all of this has come about (those conditions should be apparent to anyone following the politics of the middle east for the last 60 or more years).

So what do you think?

mewso

I suppose there is a certain irony that the dream of an Islamic State has effectively been facilitated by the infidels of the west. I haven't followed this closely but I'm guessing this can all be traced back to Sayyid Qutb as covered in The Power of Nightmares, who was disgusted by the western lifestyle enough to start a crusade for an IS and ultimately failed.

I would have strongly disagreed with Hitchens on Iraq and would also disagree with Harris on Gaza but my biggest problem with Iraq was why they went in and this baloney it was to rescue the Iraqi people from Saddam. I would consider attacking/invading ISIS more justifiable than Iraq but again I'm not fully clued up on it. Do they have control of oil resources?

Turtwig

Ethically there is never going to a be good answer. Criminals are generally a product their cultural background and environmental upbringing. People do what they're conditioned to do and what they feel is necessary to survive. Breaking that mould is incredibly difficult. Extremist beliefs can be scary. They have an entire different set of psychological filters through which they see the world to us. Communicating in a manner that you are going to be understood is always going to be incredibly difficult.

In politics there are decisions. Sometimes bad decisions have good outcomes, sometimes good decisions have bad outcomes. At best, all anyone can do is make the best possible decision based on the limited information available to them and then hope for the best. The perfect decision may still end up in absolute sht. Hence why it's very difficult to accurate proportion blame to something. Then to compound the problem people don't care about reality they only care about their perception of it. We as humans are conditioned to be more extreme in our perceptions of, well, everything. Extremist ideologies spread faster than moderate ones simply because that's way of our nature.

Putting decisions together with communicating you always have a recipe for disaster. It'd be nice if we could communicate effectively with other humans and decide our fates mutually, but we can't. There are groups of people that would happily tear down the fabric of our society to impose their own visions of it on us. How do you deal with these people?

First, you have to assess whether your own survival is worth whatever ethical sacrifices you are willing to make. From my own belief, cleansing an extremist ideology as Harris postulated makes us no better than them. It's not worth surviving if we don't have the values that we're currently surviving with. Quality and way of life is everything to me.

You also have to assess whether's it's possible for you to enter into constructive relations with these other people. Taking crime as an example, we could just isolate communities rife with crime or we could proactively engage in trying to reduce the sociological factors that produce crime in the first place. Obviously for a group like ISIS this is intrinsically more complicated. Maybe I'm incredibly naive and romantic but I believe we should still try. Humans can't learn empathy unless they witness other examples of it. Dropping bombs and scaring the sht out of people generally is only going to fuel one thing: bloodlust. But there still comes a point when you gotta be realistic. If ISIS got control of the world's nuclear arsenals. I'd happily be the ones to let them fire on us first rather than a preemptive defensive strike. Not because I don't think our survival is worth is, but precisely because I believe our way of living to be totally worth it. That's just my belief though others I presume would value some means of survival more and the question to ask is how selfish am I in giving this opinion? That I would stake all my values over the lives of everyone in my society. Their opinions matter too and they might not be so willing with death instead of a different way of life. It might be that a pre-emptive strike is the only to guarantee their survival.

Hence, why there is no good answer.

robindch

mewso wrote: »

[...] my biggest problem with Iraq was why they went in and this baloney it was to rescue the Iraqi people from Saddam [...]

Perhaps it's the passage of time, but I don't recall any significant "save the Iraqis" discourse - it was all "WMD, WMD!" so far as I recall.

That aside, I think Bush and friends invaded Iraq for largely the same febrile reasons that Putin has chosen to invade Ukraine - the two both apparently began to believe their own crazy propaganda, or at least, chose to act as though they believed it. And both successfully increased their popularity by presenting a strutting, strongman image. Bush (and Blair) became unstuck shortly afterwards and never recovered and it seems that Putin, now that he's managed to leave a trail of death and destruction in Eastern Europe, may ultimately suffer the same fate too.

As for the video, well, it's one confused, rambling question inducing a confused, rambling, irrelevant answer. I don't quite see the connection between state-level violence and secularism which the belief the state should not favour one religion over another. Is the questioner confusing secularism with hatred of religion and the belief that it should be destroyed? I've no idea. It's like listening to two people with experience only of knitting discussing the sheer depravity of sewing.

stevejazzx

robindch wrote: »

That aside, I think Bush and friends invaded Iraq for largely the same febrile reasons that Putin has chosen to invade Ukraine - the two both apparently began to believe their own crazy propaganda, or at least, chose to act as though they believed it. And both successfully increased their popularity by presenting a strutting, strongman image. Bush (and Blair) became unstuck shortly afterwards and never recovered and it seems that Putin, now that he's managed to leave a trail of death and destruction in Eastern Europe, may ultimately suffer the same fate too.

What a bizarre paragraph - why would you compare Putin and Bush?
- if you think Putin is to the Ukrainian conflict as Bush was to to Iraq I'm afraid you've lost me again and I imagine any fair minded reader also. The two wars are vastly different and the two presidents mentioned play dramatically different roles.
Apples and oranges doesn't even come close - I appreciate you didn't get the question but I am struggling to find any relevance...to anything.

robindch wrote:

As for the video, well, it's one confused, rambling question inducing a confused, rambling, irrelevant answer. I don't quite see the connection between state-level violence and secularism which the belief the state should not favour one religion over another. Is the questioner confusing secularism with hatred of religion and the belief that it should be destroyed? I've no idea. It's like listening to two people with experience only of knitting discussing the sheer depravity of sewing.

Well - I did attempt a preface.
The question he's asking is simple - is it Hitchen and Harris's staunch secularism that has lead to their more aggressive outlook on foreign policy?
Surely you understand that if one group wants freedom from religion that can therefore influence their outlook on groups seeking to impose a religion - the question deals with how far you could/should take this viewpoint given extreme circumstances. In this case 'secularism' is just a catch all word for Hitchens and Harris general disposition in relation to religion.

stevejazzx

mewso wrote: »

I would have strongly disagreed with Hitchens on Iraq and would also disagree with Harris on Gaza but my biggest problem with Iraq was why they went in and this baloney it was to rescue the Iraqi people from Saddam. I would consider attacking/invading ISIS more justifiable than Iraq but again I'm not fully clued up on it. Do they have control of oil resources?

Yes - many western companies remain (after the US exit 2008-2010) in Iraq controlling and bidding for certain contracts. Emerson (US) along with BP will soon control a huge portion of the oil - they do already but ongoing contracts about to be granted will see them dominate.
Prior to invasion of 2003 western countries had all but been shut out.

That said ISIS or IS seem to be unrelated and Iraq will be destroyed over the next few years. Iraq is second only to Saudi Arabia in terms of reserves with much of country yet to be mined.

Hotblack Desiato

The key word in your post is 'bid'.

So western companies (or, perhaps, just American?) should not be allowed bid for contracts in Iraq?

Prior to 2003 western companies were indeed shut out, but sanctions were in place.

Not many countries in the world can exploit their oil/gas resources without any foreign expertise. Saudi Arabia is full of western contractors, for instance. Things could be kept ticking over to some extent in the short to medium term without them, but in the longer run production and revenues will decline.

Just what is your point? The Iraqi government cannot exploit its resources using domestic expertise alone. The Irish government can't either.

stevejazzx

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

The key word in your post is 'bid'.

So western companies (or, perhaps, just American?) should not be allowed bid for contracts in Iraq?

Prior to 2003 western companies were indeed shut out, but sanctions were in place.

Not many countries in the world can exploit their oil/gas resources without any foreign expertise. Saudi Arabia is full of western contractors, for instance. Things could be kept ticking over to some extent in the short to medium term without them, but in the longer run production and revenues will decline.

Just what is your point? The Iraqi government cannot exploit its resources using domestic expertise alone. The Irish government can't either.

There's nothing to argue about here.
Everyone knows the US has muscled its way in are exploiting Iraq oil and resources to their favor. It amounts to large scale corporate theft as it deprives the Iraqi Ministry of oil of options to deal independently with large oil companies, essentially the Iraqi ministry of oil takes what its offered now.
If you're trying to preach to me about the harsh practicalities of the 'grown up' corporate world you would do better picking a different country than Iraq.
Iraq is an unarguable example of US hegemony with the sole benefactors being weapons manufacturers and oil giants, the great majority of whom are American.

recedite

Turtwig wrote: »

Quality and way of life is everything to me.

That's the bottom line, and preserving their relatively privileged lifestyle is the basis of US foreign policy. In order to do that they need to remain the superpower in charge of the world, and the dollar needs to remain as the default world currency, mandatory for trading in barrels of oil.

Its a mistake to think that their decisions are based on bringing "freedom and democracy" to other nations. Very often US (and European) selfish interests are best served by creating chaos in other countries. If these countries cannot be persuaded to behave respectably and toe the line (as the UK does for example) then chaos and destruction for them is preferable. Supporting Israel helps the US to maintain the middle east in a state of chaos.

Iraq is an example of deliberate chaos. After invading Kuwait, Saddam had the potential to create a unified wealthy Arab superstate with the ability to threaten Israel. Saddam was also doing deals with the Russians. Currently the Iraqi post-war dinar is kept artificially low, and pegged to the US dollar, which means the oil can be taken out cheaply, and then sold on at a high international market price by US and multinational oil companies.

Libya; Gadaffi was left to his own devices until he started talking about selling oil in gold dinars instead of US dollars. The US national debt is at 13 trillion dollars, including 1.1 trillion owed to China and Japan each. When it needs more money, it prints more dollars. If dollars weren't needed around the world to buy oil, the US dollar would be a worthless piece of paper.

Afghanistan; reduced to chaos because they refused to evict Bin Laden and his Saudi friends.

Saudi Arabia; fine, because they are toeing the line.

Palestinian West Bank and Palestinian Gaza strip; both kept in a divided and chaotic condition in order to benefit Israel, which indirectly helps the overall objective of keeping the Arabs disunited.

Ukraine; the seeds of chaos have been sown. Putin's plan for the new "south stream" gas pipeline into Austria and Europe has been thwarted. Other existing gas pipelines through Ukraine to southern Germany will become dysfunctional over the next few months because of the "disputes" over who pays for gas and who is "syphoning it off".
Meanwhile the US has significant control over the output in the middle east and gears up its fracking industry at home.

Islamic Caliphate; should the US attack it? Only if it seems to be spreading and uniting the disparate sunni Arabs. It could very easily spread into Jordan and Saudi. If it remains small, and only harasses what is left of Syria, and also its other neighbours Iran, and the shi-ite rump state of what was Iraq, then it will be left alone.

Looking at it from this point of view, the beheadings are regrettable but tolerable. Its the sacrifice of a few US citizens in order to maintain the lifestyle of the many.

Brown Bomber

mewso wrote: »

I suppose there is a certain irony that the dream of an Islamic State has effectively been facilitated by the infidels of the west. I haven't followed this closely but I'm guessing this can all be traced back to Sayyid Qutb as covered in The Power of Nightmares, who was disgusted by the western lifestyle enough to start a crusade for an IS and ultimately failed.

I would have strongly disagreed with Hitchens on Iraq and would also disagree with Harris on Gaza but my biggest problem with Iraq was why they went in and this baloney it was to rescue the Iraqi people from Saddam. I would consider attacking/invading ISIS more justifiable than Iraq but again I'm not fully clued up on it. Do they have control of oil resources?

ISIS are making millions selling oil (from Syrian and Iraq) on the black market, they are also in control of large swathe of land with millions of inhabitants - they collect taxes.

An important point to note here is that the origins of ISIS is in 2004 with regular Iraqis joining the only viable occupation resistance movement in the so-called "Sunni triangle", who refused to take the US-backed Shia death squads targeting them and massive killing of civilians and the destruction of their homes.

You can read here and here the reports of the only 2 Western reporters on the ground after the Fallujah aerial bombardment with chemical weapons.

I think this context is important. People are more likely to push back against cruelty and injustice than fight for abstract ideas of any disgust at the "other".

This is for me part of the idiocy of Hitchens' (and co's) warmongering. It always creates more problems than it solves. To illustrate the mess just consider that the US is in negotiations with Assad to enable attacks against ISIS within Syria. Largely the same group of of people the US helped train, arm and feed to fight against Assad.

Just how wrong Hitchen's often bloodthirsty, orientalist pro-war rants were can be summed up by this quote:

“Will an Iraq war make our Al Qaeda problem worse? Not likely.”

As for the question posed in the thread title. It is my opinion that secularism itself isn't the problem but when neo-colonialists use secularism as a mask to hide their desires to civilise the savages abroad (through violence).