Re: [Marxism] Hersch's latest lunacy

[Clay Claiborne via Marxism]

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On Mon, Dec 21, 2015 at 10:42 AM, Tristan Sloughter via Marxism 
> wrote:



   Much of this is in support of what those arguing against the
   "anti-imperalist" left have been saying, is it not? Sure there is plenty
   lacking, but he says the US military, Assad regime, Russia and Israel
   have been coordinating within Syria.

   I've seen the "anti-imperalist" tankies on twitter become very riled up
   by this article.


Well, I think its Hersh's attempt to square the circle.  All the 
imperial Left tankies have to deal with the increasingly open 
collaboration of the Obama administration with the Assad regime. It is 
those stubborn things - facts - that are slapping them in the face with 
what we have been saying all along. Now they all have to scramble for 
explanations that show how they've been right all along about Obama 
being for regime change in Syria as it becomes increasingly clear that 
he opposes it and has been working all along against it. Earlier we saw 
a bunch of "U-turn" explanations, but those breakdown when it comes to 
explaining past history. Now we get the Hersh explanation - it was not a 
u-turn, Obama and the Pentagon have been going in different directions 
all along!


This mornings news cycle. I wake up to Sy Hersh on DN and Donald Trump 
on ABC News, and both singing the praises of Putin. What a world we live in!


I think Max Fisher's critique is good enough that I don't have to read 
it or write my own. It just get so tiresome. It's like trying to 
convince people that still believe in Santa Claus.


Anyway, I working on another long piece I think the anti-imperialists 
are going to love.  Luna & Basel Watfa are both Syrian refugees in 
Germany that have been contributors to Linux Beach. Luna wrote and Basel 
translated the eye witness report to the East Ghouta sarin attack. She 
has a most interesting history, which I am now writing up in some 
detail. She took pictures of the dead as part of the VDC team in East 
Ghouta in the days after the massacre. She was arrested in Damascus a 
month after the founder and 3 other VDC members were disappeared at gun 
point. They found the photos of 800 sarin victims on her laptop. She was 
tortured into confessing and spent a year in detention. She was charged 
with sending fake pictures of a chemical massacre to the foreign media. 
I want to put all those "anti-imperialists" that called the pictures 
fake and the evidence phony right along side of Luna torturers at al-Khatib.


Clay
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Re: [Marxism] Hersch's latest lunacy

[Tristan Sloughter via Marxism]

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Much of this is in support of what those arguing against the
"anti-imperalist" left have been saying, is it not? Sure there is plenty
lacking, but he says the US military, Assad regime, Russia and Israel
have been coordinating within Syria.

I've seen the "anti-imperalist" tankies on twitter become very riled up
by this article.
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Re: [Marxism] Hersch's latest lunacy

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 12/21/15 1:42 PM, Tristan Sloughter via Marxism wrote:

Much of this is in support of what those arguing against the
"anti-imperalist" left have been saying, is it not? Sure there is plenty
lacking, but he says the US military, Assad regime, Russia and Israel
have been coordinating within Syria.

I've seen the "anti-imperalist" tankies on twitter become very riled up
by this article.


I'll have to keep this in mind. I plan to write something on Hersh's 
article and on Andrew Cockburn's in the latest Harpers that is 100 
percent garbage.

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Re: [Marxism] Hersch's latest lunacy

[MM via Marxism]

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> On Dec 21, 2015, at 1:46 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism 
>  wrote:
> 
> On 12/21/15 1:42 PM, Tristan Sloughter via Marxism wrote:
>> Much of this is in support of what those arguing against the
>> "anti-imperalist" left have been saying, is it not? Sure there is plenty
>> lacking, but he says the US military, Assad regime, Russia and Israel
>> have been coordinating within Syria.
>> 
>> I've seen the "anti-imperalist" tankies on twitter become very riled up
>> by this article.
> 
> I'll have to keep this in mind. I plan to write something on Hersh's article 
> and on Andrew Cockburn's in the latest Harpers that is 100 percent garbage.

For some time now I’ve been trying to anticipate how the cartoonish 
anti-imperialist position is going to play out, as and when reality makes it 
increasingly impossible to maintain the simplistic and untenable: Will it take 
the form of a slow reorientation, possibly imperceptible to the person making 
it, so that they come out the other side insisting they had “always believed” 
something or other contrary to the Baathist apologetics they engage in now? Or 
will there be some kind of genuine reckoning and admission? My money’s on the 
former.
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Re: [Marxism] Hersch's latest lunacy

[Michael Karadjis via Marxism]

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On 12/21/15 1:42 PM, Tristan Sloughter via Marxism wrote:

Much of this is in support of what those arguing against the
"anti-imperalist" left have been saying, is it not? Sure there is 
plenty

lacking, but he says the US military, Assad regime, Russia and Israel
have been coordinating within Syria.



Yes, but the point is it doesn't need all the conspiracy. When I first 
heard there was yet another Hersch conspiracy piece, all backed up by 
the assertions of *one* unnamed "high-placed source", I was determined 
to not waste time reading it. But the critique by Max Fisher at 
http://www.vox.com/2015/12/21/10634002/seymour-hersh-syria-joint-chiefs 
made it look interesting. Basically, Hersch imagines that much of the 
Pentagon went behind Obama's back over the last few years - Obama wanted 
to help the Syrian rebels, while the Pentagon and various other powerful 
figures in the US foreign policy establishment sabotaged this by 
secretly working with Assad, Russia and Israel to ensure Assad remained 
in power.


Of course, most supporters of the Syrian revolution will have some 
trouble imagining Obama being the valiant knight wanting to aid the FSA, 
anything other in fact, but will have no trouble with all that the 
Pentagon is alleged to have been doing, except to most of us that just 
looks like the official US policy all along. It is almost as if Hersch 
has had to admit he was partially wrong, but admits it  in a roundabout 
kind of way by turning official US policy into this behind-the-scenes 
conspiracy. And Hersch's main point  throughout the article is that this 
"Pentagon" policy was correct - an anti-imperialist conspiracist way of 
saying US imperialist policy has been correct all along.


He does have some of the names right here - in fact one point where I 
think Fisher's piece is incorrect - Hersch names chair of the Joint 
Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey as had of this Pentagon pro-Assad mob. 
Fisher claims Dempsey was more in favour of arming some very carefully 
"vetted" rebels" as early as 2012, but Obama was opposed. Perhaps, but 
by mid-2013, Dempsey was very anti-rebel, famously noting that *none* of 
the forces fighting the Assad regime serve American interests 
(http://blogs.reuters.com/david-rohde/2013/08/22/a-moment-of-truth-in-damascus-and-washington/; 
possibly he thought it had become too late due to Obama's hesitance a 
year earlier).


But in order to explain why the alleged conspiracy took place, he 
invents another conspiracy. According to this one, these fine Pentagon 
citizens discovered that the Evil Turk had been going behind Obama's 
back on the other side, transferring aid that the US was sending to 
moderate rebels over to Nusra and ISIS. As I haven't read the Hersch 
piece yet, I assume they first tried to warn Obama about this, but he 
was too thick or weak to do anything about it, that's why they had to 
defend American interests in their own way.


However, this allegedly began in 2013, when all the US was sending any 
rebels at all, no matter how "moderate," were radios, night goggles, 
tents, ready-meals and so on, not military equipment. Unless he means 
Saudi or Qatari arms which he assumes were approved by the US for 
certain groups etc. I'll need to read what he says here, unfortunately. 
But it appears to me almost certainly nonsense (Turkey and Qatar were 
already well-known to be arming moderate Islamist/MB types, who had 
nothing to do with Nusra, let alone ISIS, and the US already objected 
even to that, and attempted to block it, as various articles about the 
CIA's movements in southern Turley late 2012-early 2013 reveal quite 
clearly). 


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[Marxism] Hersch's latest lunacy

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

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http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-military
Clay and Michael, give it a go
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