Tuesday, January 03, 2017

The Six Most Common Middle East Conspiracy Theories-- Guest Post By Reese Erlich

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Our old friend Reese Erlich’s most recent book,  Inside Syria: The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect, just came out in paperback and he’ll be speaking at UCLA on January 19. I’m planning on attending and I hope you’ll make it as well if you’re in the area. Meanwhile, he wrote a fascinating piece that will give you some idea about what a reality-based Trump administration would be confronting in the Middle East while Reese is speaking in Westwood. Enjoy (copyright 2016):



I speak about the Middle East to people of various political persuasions around the US, from leftist college students to conservatives on AM radio talk shows. Most Americans are wary of further US military intervention in the region and ask intelligent questions about this very complicated topic. But I inevitably run into people advocating conspiracy theories—from both the left and right.

Conspiracy theories, although seemingly quite radical and anti-government, actually divert attention from the very real evils that exist in the region.

Here are six of the most common myths:

1. The US created the Islamic State

Some leftists argue that the US created al-Qaeda in order to fight the USSR in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Now it's done the same with the Islamic State (ISIS or IS) in order to sow dissention in Iraq and Syria.

The theory got even wider credence when Donald Trump declared that President Barak Obama was the "founder" of IS and "the co-founder was crooked Hilary Clinton."

Ah, where to start? The US didn't create either al-Qaeda or the Islamic State. Yes, the US backed the most right-wing mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the 1980s. But those reactionaries, some of whom later formed al-Qaeda, always had their own agenda. They took money and arms from the US while planning to attack the US and its allies at a later time.

The Islamic State, then known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), formed in Iraq as one of the many groups fighting the 2003 US occupation. The US and Iraqi Sunnis defeated AQI militarily in the 2007 Anbar surge. AQI regrouped, moved to Syria, and emerged as IS in 2014.

The US has been bombing IS since 2014 and is organizing ground assaults on IS-controlled cities in Iraq and Syria—hardly the sign of an alliance. The US occupation of Iraq laid the political basis for the formation of IS but did not create it.

2. The US was the secret instigator of all the Arab Spring uprisings.

A few journalists and book authors on the left point to the failures of the Arab Spring and that most regimes in the region remain pro-US. They argue that the US instigated the Arab Spring demonstrations in order to emerge a stronger power at the end of the day. One commentator even claims the US had planned the Arab Spring five years in advance.

Funny, that's not what almost everyone said at the beginning of 2011. When the people of Tunisia rose up and young people occupied Tahrir Square in Cairo, leftists and progressives correctly argued that these were immensely popular movements against local dictators and US domination. Even Iran's clerical rulers tried to take credit for the uprisings, calling Egypt an "Islamic Liberation Movement."

The two main actors who opposed the Arab Spring were al-Qaeda, which had no visible support at the time, and the US government. Vice President Biden expressed strong US support for Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak just a few days before he fell from power.

It's often forgotten now, but Arab Spring demonstrations continued for months throughout the region, and for years in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Are these demonstrators bravely protesting against US-allied regimes somehow instigated by the US?

3. The Syria uprising was not a popular movement but instead was instigated by the US in order to remove the anti-imperialist Assad.

Not surprisingly, the Assad government makes this argument. It is surprising, however, that a small number of American leftists fall for it.

Just a few weeks after the uprising began in Syria in March 2011, Assad called the demonstrators terrorists backed by Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the US. In reality, the protestors were a mixture of civil society activists and conservative political Islamists, the same combination of folks who rose up throughout the region. The Assad regime cracked down hard, beating, arresting, torturing and killing protestors.

Although there had been scattered armed attacks from the beginning, armed conflict only became dominant towards the end of 2011 and early 2012. By 2014 extremists such as the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front and the Islamic State came to dominate the armed opposition.

Assad cheerleaders argue that he is an anti-imperialist and a key player in the "Resistance Front," consisting of countries that support the Palestinians and oppose Israel. There's only one problem with that claim. Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank don't support Assad. Hamas, the party controlling Gaza, broke with Assad and backed the popular uprising starting in 2011.

Fatah and the PLO, the dominant forces in the West Bank, are officially neutral but have a long history of conflict with the Assad family. Hafez al-Assad, the current president's father, jailed PLO activists and tried to replace Yasser Arafat with a pro-Syrian leader. Bashar al-Assad never allowed the PLO to organize within Syria.

Of course, the US, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Turkey have all armed rebel groups, including extremists such as the IS. They each seek to install a government in Syria favorable to their views. But being attacked by imperialists and their allies doesn't make you an anti-imperialist.

4. Iran is the number one state sponsor of terrorism in the world.

This falsehood is promoted by many leading politicians in the US as well as by the rulers of Saudi Arabia and other Arab dictatorships. They argue that Iran supports Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi movement in Yemen, along with Shia insurgents in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. James "Mad Dog" Mattis, Trump's nominee for Secretary of State, even claims that Iran cooperates with the Islamic State in a common terrorist campaign against the US.

Iran certainly asserts its political and military presence in the region, seeking to lead an anti-US/anti-Israeli alliance stretching from Lebanon through Syria, Iraq, Bahrain and Yemen. The Iran-backed groups are conservative political Islamists (mostly Shia) who engage in armed struggle, but they have genuine popular support. Hezbollah, for example, is both part of the ruling coalition in the Lebanese Parliament and an armed militia. Some of the groups have used terrorist tactics, such as intentionally blowing up civilians, but they are not the same as terrorist groups such as the Islamic State.

As for Mad Dog's assertions, he's simply creating a conspiracy myth. The Islamic State has attempted to launch terrorist attacks inside Iran, and Iran is fighting the IS in both Iraq and Syria. Mad Dog's misinformation campaign seeks to lump together everyone opposed to US policy into one block and gin up popular support for an eventual military attack on Iran.

Saudi Arabia is a far bigger supporter of terrorist groups than Iran. It supports the Al Qaeda affiliated Syrian Conquest Front (formerly al Nusra) and backs terrorist groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan, including the Taliban.

But since Saudi Arabia is key to US oil interests and a military ally, by definition, it can't be listed as a state sponsor of terrorism.

5. The US intentionally creates failed states like Libya in order to keep the region in turmoil.

Advocates of this view look at conditions in Libya today, the result of US and European intervention, and say that the US always intended to create a failed state. That view doesn't square with reality.

The US, France, Britain, and other Western powers became involved in Libya, in large part, because of its oil. Those countries wanted to overthrow dictator Muammar Gaddafi in order to keep Libyan oil flowing over the long run on terms favorable to Western oil companies.

Yet today Libya has almost completely stopped exporting oil, leading to an estimated 8.3% drop in GDP, according to a World Bank report. Since when do imperialist countries conspire to cut off their own oil supplies?

In reality, the US and its allies implemented a series of plans aimed at reestablishing Western domination of Libya—but they keep failing.

Plan A: Use Western air superiority to help pro-Western rebels quickly overthrow Gaddafi. Failure #1: the quick overthrow lasted almost eight months.

Plan B: Find a former government official friendly to Washington to install as strongman and hold elections that US-backed parties would surely win. Failure #2: US-backed Mahmoud Jibril became interim prime minister, but he lasted only seven months. The parliament has little popular support.

Plan C: Using the CIA, find militia groups willing to ally with the US. Failure #3: the CIA attempted to make alliances with various militias, but those efforts blew up during the infamous attack on the Benghazi CIA annex in 2012, resulting in the death of the US ambassador.

The US certainly carried out policies that resulted in a failed state, but that was not the goal.

6. The Bush administration planned the 9/11 attacks in order to further repression and start wars in the Middle East.

This one is the granddaddy of all modern conspiracy theories, promulgated by both the left and right. Even right-wing populist and former president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, gave credence to the view. The theory attracts support because the US has engaged in false flag operations in the past, for example, trying to blame communists for the 1953 CIA coup in Iran.

I won't spend time debunking the phony assertions that the World Trade Center was wired with explosives in advance. The editors of Popular Mechanics have done an excellent job criticizing that and many other falsehoods.

Please consider a major flaw that is rarely discussed, the attack on the Pentagon. 9/11 Truthers claim the US fired a missile into the Pentagon, as seen by the cylindrical shaped destruction of the building. This is consistent with the assertion that government operatives, not al-Qaeda hijackers, caused the devastation in New York.

Well, in fact, thousands of commuters on Washington DC freeways saw the airplane descending towards the Pentagon. An AP news photo showed part of the airplane fuselage sitting on the front lawn of the Pentagon that day.

And, if a missile had hit the Pentagon, what happened to American Airlines #77 that left Dulles Airport that morning? Well, answer some 9/11 Truthers, it was forced to land at a secret location and all the passengers were gassed to death. Think of the omniscient power of the conspirators!

The Bush administration did not plan 9/11, but it did take full advantage of America's anger and fear. It used 9/11 to invade and occupy Afghanistan and Iraq, pass the repressive Patriot Act, and engage in widespread torture and abuse in Guantanamo and secret CIA sites scattered around the world. That's reason enough to oppose the US government. Conspiracy theories simply divert attention from the government's real crimes.

All of the conspiracy advocates share a common methodology. They look at the situation as it exists after the fact and then create a fictional narrative showing that today's crisis was planned all along.

They overestimate the power of the US empire while underestimating the power of ordinary people to make change. If the Bush Administration murdered almost 3,000 people on 9/11 and successfully covered it up, how can we possibility fight back? If the US-created Arab Spring caused chaos, why should anyone rise up against their oppressors?

Pardon me for my optimism. But I don't believe in conspiracy theories and still believe in the power of ordinary people to make fundamental change.



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15 Comments:

At 10:17 AM, Anonymous Paul Healy said...

The US and NATO allies instigated regime change in Iraq on false pretenses, Libya on false pretenses, Syria on false pretenses and fully supported regime change in Ukraine. All of these changes were for the worse and all were directed at Russian allies.
It's difficult for me to imagine these were all "popular" uprisings by ordinary citizens.
957 people in the US were killed by the police in 2016. Should we have a revolution here as well?

 
At 11:25 AM, Blogger Bob In Portland said...

My bullshit detector went off. I met Reece Ehrlich maybe 25 years ago. He held a small seminar in one of the rooms of San Francisco's City College downtown campus on "investigative reporting". It was an interesting discussion, but I came away with one unanswered question: "Investigative reporting is dangerous. How do you stay alive?" I guess the answer is to regurgitate CIA responses to things that should be investigated. If you're already in the belly of the beast, causing a little indigestion isn't a capital offense. It's a modified limited hangout.

 
At 11:49 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Specks of truth that don't come anywhere close to a whole.

The Tunisian uprising was mostly WOMEN reacting to some oppressive new laws.

The rest were mainly students (and other non-ignorants) instigating protests that grew into movements encouraged by the success of TUNISIAN WOMEN. The catalysts differed in each case, but remember Egypt's dictator Mubarek was more than a little bit of a tyrant, as he had to be in the face of rampant popular Islamic fundamentalism. Note that the elections held were won by the Islamists, but the military staged a coup to prevent that from taking hold.

Also remember that wherever a tyrant rules, there WILL be pockets of popular dissent. The US and its NGOs excel at finding and encouraging them whenever a government, of any kind, becomes unfriendly to exploitation by American corporations.

It is true that most international terrorism is sunni based. And the sunnis get most of their funding and religious support from Saudi Arabia (American petrodollars at work). You should remember, too, that a great deal of sunni victims are shia. The center of shia financial support is Iran, but most of the shia rancor is and always has been aimed at Israel, not so much at the secular or Christian west.
al quaida and isis (and all splinters from both) are sunni.

the us (read: secstate $hillbillary) and its vast networks of NGOs HAVE catalyzed, funded, armed and supported "insurgencies" in Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Ukraine and Honduras (and elsewhere in THAT area causing much of our little illegal immigrant thingie along our southern border).
In the Syrian thing, the goal was regime change. We supported several different islamist groups that wanted Assad's power. Some or most of them are now part of or allied with ISIS, which germinated from the vacuum in Iraq and then spread across their border. So the US, it can be said, did much to found ISIS (by removing Saddam and installing a shia-friendly puppet; and by supporting the nascent ISIS pieces in Syria to remove Assad). To say obamanation founded it is simplistic, which is why it worked with der fuhrer's base. To say $hillbillary founded it actually has more than a few grains of truth to it.

part 2 below

 
At 11:50 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

part 2:

And the US' pathetic record of creating failed despotic regimes is NOT for the purpose of keeping things volatile. It's because we keep trying to make people bow to American corporations... and people hate that. Only within our borders do people willingly (gleefully, even) bend over for corporations to do what they will.
The fact that we suck at creating such puppet regimes is actually why the region is so chaotic (and getting chaoticer), not because we want it that way.

As for bush, forget him. He was a believer, but the recipe that de facto prez cheney was following was written by PNAC back in the '90s, mostly as a plan to dominate the earth's oil supply so that the American military would never go thirsty.
It is true that PNAC wrote that for such a plan to have popular support (in America; they never gave a rat's ass about them folks over there), it would require another "pearl harbor moment/event", which 9/11 surely was.
It is also absolute truth that bush/cheney didn't pay ANY attention to what the intel was on those hijackers, even though the total of what all the different intel groups had would have almost even told them which flights were going to be taken.
It's also true that cheney and his cabal at CIA were cobbling together OTHER lies to purvey (yellowcake from Niger which became condoleeza rice's "mushroom cloud" scare speech).
And the Anthrax scare that actually killed people HAD to be cheney or Rumsfeld because of the weaponized nature of the substance that was mailed to liberals in congress and to media figures. It's possible to develop spores, but to weaponize it as it was requires specialty equipment that only the military has. And we know now that Saddam had destroyed all his bio weapons years before. HAD TO BE CHENEY or RUMSFELD. But, of course, neither our fascist media nor obamanation will ever look into that.

 
At 12:45 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

So the conclusion of the glib apologia is: the US DOES, ultimately, cause mass murder across the Middle East but it really doesn't INTEND to do so? (BS meter pegged at maximum until billows of smoke issue forth!!!)

At BEST, this "analysis" paints the US as the bumbling Dagwood Bumstead of global affairs.

As such, it should stay the fuck OUT of global affairs lest it gets us all killed .... even IF it doesn't mean to.

John Puma

 
At 3:46 AM, Blogger VG said...

John Puma- another great comment at DWT- this one terse and to the point, others with expository excellence. Thanks for all. Maybe I know you from somewhere else, now defunct?

Valley Girl.

 
At 7:28 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

no, john. not what I meant at all. the us does kill gleefully and intentionally, and not just Mideast. But the corporate goals are not to do so to sow instability, but to install servile puppets that will allow us corporate rape of their markets and resources. think the shah of iran.

But the us sucks at stability as much as we excel at killing. So we end up with muslims and arabs everywhere (1.5 billion) who hate us with good reason.

Best I've read on this is "Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein.

 
At 9:09 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

To Anon @ 7:28 AM

I was referring to Erlich's post.

My understanding of "Shock Doctrine" is that the instability does not arise from some deficiency (as "sucks" implies) on the part of the US but is a fully intended, integral element of the process to attain control.

Likewise, having a greater and greater proportion of the Muslim world hate us is not an undesirable side-effect to those adhering to the shock doctrine but, rather, the perfect way to sustain our fear/hate "true" propaganda machine and the perpetual war machine it supports.

JP

 
At 9:14 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

To Valley Girl:

Thanks for the kind compliment.

I WAS a "valley boy" from about 1956-1968!

JP

 
At 9:35 AM, Blogger VG said...

John Puma- "I was referring to Erlich's post." Indeed, that is EXACTLY how I read your comment- as a response to Erlich's post, and NOT as a response to what "anon" had said in the two comments before.

Hence my earlier favorable comment on what you said.

However, as you started out the comment mentioning "anonymous", and did not mention Erlich by name, I can now see how the confusion came about.

Valley Girl

 
At 10:40 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

John, yes, the shock is meant to instill economic instability... so that their economies can be "helped" by the "kindly" us institutions (worldbank, etc.) to the benefit of the corporations at the expense of the natives.

When the us foments or executes a coup, it is to install a puppet that is friendly to us corporations. Using just Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia as illustrations... we suck at the friendly puppet part of this. All the killing we are very good at.

They are not mutually exclusive, but we don't always HAVE to invade or foment an uprising. Sometimes a tsunami, hurricane or earthquake does the job. But we don't always (or even often) wait for that.

 
At 10:50 AM, Blogger VG said...

This is to JP. Everyone else, please forgive me for this digression.

When I first started commenting on blogs (one blog in particular) back around 2002, I was aware that there was a lot of animus towards/ belittlement of female commenters on the internet. Meaning that what they said was attacked and doubted more than comments by male commenters. So, in a contrarian mood, I decided to choose a moniker that was clearly female, and not only that, referenced a totally superficial clueless female.

As in “Valley Girl”, by Moon Unit Zappa. That song totally cracks me up when ever I listen to it. It was also a bit of an homage to Frank Zappa, local hero where I went to college.

JP, of course I assume that we are referencing the same valley- aka “The Valley”. If so, we, like, totally overlap time-wise!

Valley Girl

 
At 8:37 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

To Valley Girl:

San Fernando, I presume!

John Puma

 
At 2:03 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...



JP:

Fer sure!

VG

 
At 3:43 AM, Blogger VG said...

John- maybe email Howie at his DWT addy and ask for my email addy? make sure subject line is absolutely clear. Mention melody. Howie gets a gazillion emails.

 

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