Iranian General killed by US Drone.

[Fame Monster]

Given the length of this thread it has probably already been discussed but there's also this to consider:

It is interesting to note some of the things that the Saudis have continued to get up to without many people noticing.

As almost everyone knows, the House of Saud or Saudi Arabian government are actually the allies of the USA and UK. They have also - having formerly sponsored Salafi-jihadist terrorist groups - now distanced themselves from al-Qaeda and ISIS, and officially promote a strict but more peaceful or 'quietistic' version of Salafism/Wahhabism.

However, according to the author Ali Rizvi, when he was a primary student at an international school in Saudi Arabia, a school inspector snipped the points off some paper snowflakes his class had made for a display. This was because they looked too much like the Star of David, and the Saudi government disapprove of the Jewish state of Israel.

Saudi school textbooks are also a bit different. For example, in Year 9, students learn about dealings with Jews and Christians: ‘The apes are the Jews, the people of the Sabbath, while the swine are the Christians, the infidels of the communion of Jesus.’

Additionally and more seriously, The King Fahd Complex for printing the Holy Qur'an maintains a staff of 2,000 employees and distributes about 10 million copies of the Qur'an throughout the world each year, including English translations (or interpretations if one favours the view that only the original Arabic retains the purity of the message).

One of the favoured translations is that completed by Dr Muhammad Taqiuddin al-Hilali and Dr Muhammad Muhsin Khan.

Here's what one Muslim reviewer wrote about this translation a decade ago:

'[Khan-Hilali] is now the most widely disseminated Qur'an in most Islamic bookstores and Sunni mosques throughout the English-speaking world, [one which] comes with a seal of approval from both the University of Medina and the Saudi Dar al-Ifta...the numerous interpolations make this translation particularly problematic, especially for American Muslims who, in the aftermath of 9-11, are struggling to show that Islam is a religion of tolerance.

From the beginning [the reviewer notes] the Hilali and Muhsin translation reads more like a supremacist Muslim, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian polemic than a rendition of Islamic scripture. In the opening sura, for example, verses which are universally accepted as, 'Guide us to the straight path, the path of those You have favoured, not of those who have incurred your wrath, nor of those who have gone astray' become 'Guide us to the Straight Way, the way of those on whom You have bestowed Your Grace, not (the way) of those who have earned your anger (such as the Jews), nor of those who went astray such as the Christians).' What is particularly egregious about this interpolation is that it is followed by an extremely footnote to justify its hate based on traditions from medieval texts.'

This lengthy quotation is taken from Bruce B. Lawrence's The Koran in English: A Biography.

I recognise that this post is somewhat tangential to the thread as a whole but thought the content was worth a mention because of what it tells us about our 'friend' and 'ally' in that part of the world.

It is also interesting to set this alongside the (in my view) valid concerns that people have had about Anti-Semitism within the Labour Party and Corbyn's links to Hezbollah.

Anyway, good luck to all those who think there's a moral high ground to be located anywhere above the level of the gutter in all this.

There's the question of how much the House of Saud (these days) are behind this or are they just doing to appease a religiously intolerant public in order to cement their grip on power?

 

[robbieh]

My point is that none of those things you list are a justification for what Soleimani did in Iraq from 2004/05 onwards. The US/UK going to war with in Iraq in 2003 is nowhere near a justification for the proxy war he started, let alone something that happened in 1979 or the 1950s.

Do you think Soleimani was right to start a proxy war with the West?

So you are saying it's quite OK for the US and ourselves to be involved militarily 1000s of miles away, whereas the people next door can't?

 

[Trevor Morley's Tache]

There's the question of how much the House of Saud (these days) are behind this or are they just doing to appease a religiously intolerant public in order to cement their grip on power?

Jamal Khashogi was killed by Saudi's operatives inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul because he was asking too many questions. There are certainly strong rumours of links to members of the Trump administration; notably Jared Kushner.

 

[Ban-jani]

The answer to both of these questions is, of course, no. However, yesterday, I came across the following sentence (it’s taken from page 214 of John Holroyd’s excellent book Judging Religion: A Dialogue for Our Time):

‘In one poll…59% of the US citizens interviewed thought that a nuclear strike killing 100,000 Iranian civilians would be justified if Iran attacked a US aircraft carrier killing 2,000 military personnel.’

So I did some digging around and found this:

https://news.stanford.edu/2017/08/08/americans-weigh-nuclear-war/

Here are a couple of extracts from the link. The authors are Scott Sagan, a political science professor and senior fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, and Benjamin Valentino, a Dartmouth College professor of government.

‘Sagan said it suggests that the U.S. public’s support for the principle of noncombatant immunity is “shallow and easily overcome by the pressures of war.”
When considering the use of nuclear weapons, the majority of Americans prioritize protecting U.S. troops and achieving American war aims, even when doing so would result in the deliberate killing of millions of foreign noncombatants, according to Sagan and Valentino. Sagan noted, “The most shocking finding of our study is that 60 percent of Americans would approve of killing 2 million Iranian civilians to prevent an invasion of Iran that might kill 20,000 U.S. soldiers.”

They explain that a number of variables – Republican Party identification, older age, and approval of the death penalty for convicted murderers – significantly increase support for using nuclear weapons against Iran.Sagan’s findings from a survey experiment conducted in July 2015 involved a representative sample of the U.S. public asked about a contemporary, hypothetical scenario designed to replicate the 1945 decision to drop a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima.

He and Valentino created a news story in which Iran attacked a U.S. warship in the Persian Gulf, Congress declared war, and the president was presented with the option of sending U.S. troops to march into Tehran, which would lead to many American military fatalities, or dropping a nuclear weapon on an Iranian city to try to end the war. “Would the U.S. public approve of the use of a nuclear weapon against a city in Iran in an attempt to end a war that the Iranian government had started in response to the imposition of U.S. economic sanctions?” Sagan asked.

Their findings demonstrate that, contrary to the nuclear taboo thesis, a clear majority of Americans would approve of using nuclear weapons first against the civilian population of a nonnuclear-armed adversary, even killing 2 million Iranian civilians, if they believed that such use would save the lives of 20,000 U.S. soldiers.In addition, contrary to the principle of noncombatant immunity, an even larger percentage of Americans would approve of a conventional bombing attack designed to kill 100,000 Iranian civilians in the effort to intimidate Iran into surrendering, according to Sagan.

The research also shows that women support nuclear weapons use and violations of noncombatant immunity no less (and in some cases, more) than male respondents, they wrote.

“Women are as hawkish as men and, in some scenarios, are even more willing to support the use of nuclear weapons,” Sagan added. “Most polls about war show that women are more dovish than men, but this is because they are more protective of their loved ones. If they are forced to choose between killing U.S. soldiers and killing foreign civilians, those same instincts appear to lead to more support for dropping the bomb.”

The experiment also provides insights into how a belief in retribution and an ability to assign blame retrospectively to foreign civilians allows people to rationalize the killing of foreign noncombatants, Sagan said. “Belief in the value of retribution is strongly related to support for using nuclear weapons, and a large majority of those who favor the use of nuclear weapons against Iran stated that the Iranian people bore some of the responsibility for that attack because they had not overthrown their government,” he and his co-author wrote.

The conclusions are stark and disturbing, Sagan said.

“These findings highlight the limited extent to which the U.S. public has accepted the principles of just war doctrine and suggest that public opinion is unlikely to be a serious constraint on any president contemplating the use of nuclear weapons in the crucible of war,” Sagan and Valentino wrote.

Note that if I had come across research that uncovered the maintenance of similar attitudes among Iranian citizens I would have posted that.

On the same page in that aforementioned book by Holroyd, I also found this:

‘Looking briefly at civilian victims of coalition attacks in the Middle East, the Iraq war of 2003 left 116,000 civilians dead and many more injured according to one report. A further report reveals that the overall ‘War on Terror’ begun by US President George Bush in 2002, killed over 1.3 million civilians as a result of the actions of coalition forces. These figures, however, only refer to deaths in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. Further US led operations in Libya, Somalia and Yemen add to this toll. Atrocities, including the murder and rape of unarmed civilians, would also seem to have taken place on several occasions in Iraq during the second Iraq war, including in Haditha, Hamandiya, Sadr City, Samarra, Ishaqi, and, of course, we shouldn’t forget Fallujah’.

I guess this serves as a reminder of just how successful the ‘War on Terror’ has been and how civilians typically tend to suffer the most. 1.3 million eh...

Yes, the Iranian theocracy is several rungs below other participants in the moral sewer of Middle Eastern and Persian politics.

But I hope I can be forgiven for believing that neither we nor the US come out of 'The War on Terror' looking all that much better.

One of the features of veteran on-the-ground journalist Robert Fisk's earlier writing (Pity the Nation, The Great War for Civilisation) was that it showed up all the main protagonists back then (Bush, Blair, Sharon, Arafat, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Shin Bet, Saddam Hussein, the Shah of Iran, Khomeini, the Saudis, Hafez al-Assad and so on) for what they are or were.

And that's what tended to infuriate the different supporters of that motley bunch back in the day. Nobody truly got to claim the moral high ground from Fisk's perspective.

These days, I find his reportage slightly less cogent and too infused with his own agenda. But not much has changed in the moral superiority stakes. When we start to hold ourselves to the same moral standards that we apply to others in foreign relations, then I'll take notice. Until that happens, consider me a subscriber to a 'plague on all their houses' position.

Really good post mate and I do agree with the general sentiment but my point was more to do with the controls on Iran’s nuclear programme and the fact that whilst I wish the world to have none at all, I definitely do not and haven’t ever wanted a nation like Iran to have one, due to the threats to eliminate another country, the military marches with mushroom cloud banners and general religious extremism.

The West struggles to take a moral high ground, I do agree, especially considering what Trump has just ordered, but let’s not pretend that Iran deserve nuclear weapons, after threatening to use them on Israel.

I think the US public suffer from a large amount of misplaced patriotism, that often clouds objectivity to a situation, as do every other country to some level, but it’s different when the leadership are acting and doing things, as Trump is now to be fair.

 

[SWP's back]

There's the question of how much the House of Saud (these days) are behind this or are they just doing to appease a religiously intolerant public in order to cement their grip on power?

Their public is religiously intolerant as they (HoS) believe that controlling Islam cements their power.

 

[Fame Monster]

So you are saying it's quite OK for the US and ourselves to be involved militarily 1000s of miles away, whereas the people next door can't?

In certain circumstances, yes - it's right that we get involved in wars 1000 miles away but I've already said that, in the case of Iraq, I don't believe we shouldn't have gone to war with them.

You haven't answered my question btw.

 

[SWP's back]

yes - it's right that we get involved in wars 1000 miles away

Why and when?

 

[aguerrrroooooooooooo]

In certain circumstances, yes - it's right that we get involved in wars 1000 miles away

 

[Fame Monster]

Why and when?

When another country attacks you (World War II/Falklands), where religious extremists are committing some of the worst terrorist acts imaginable (ISIS and Al Qaeda), cases of humanitarian intervention (Sierra Leone, Bosnia) etc.

 

[robbieh]

In certain circumstances, yes - it's right that we get involved in wars 1000 miles away but I've already said that, in the case of Iraq, I don't believe we shouldn't have gone to war with them.

You haven't answered my question btw.

No problem with him being involved. Just like the Saudis, Russians, the US, and Israel , Iran has it's interests to protect. He may well have been a ruthless shit, Indeed he probably had to be to last as long as he did. But there are plenty on our side too. The Saudi's, our allies, backed Isis as well as anti Assad jihadists in Syria.