General Politics thread

This same message is around 50 percent of Sanders' stump speeches. Politics is full of inane bullshit like this, and I'd be surprised if that ever changed, even under a perfect anarchist utopia.

I've been meaning to ask this for a while now: Has anyone else here read The Atlantic's "What ISIS Really Wants," and what do you think about it? Because it feeds into my own prejudices so perfectly

But you had to jump through a lot of hoops and spend hours on the phone with your insurance company, right? Because the best way of setting up public healthcare is to have it provided through private for-profit companies, instead of letting a *shudder* government agency do everything for you.

No shit! Of course there are, because it's free for everyone.

(Of course the actual answer is that sometimes there are, depending on where you are and what you need.)

Interesting talk on workplace democracy.

I've been listening to some wonderful comps of Yemeni music lately, and taken an interest in this doc on the same. It reminded me how sad the humanitarian disaster there is and how far from being an issue of American electoral politics. 

The Saudis bombed a hospital again the day, killing mostly children. Some US commanders regard the Houthis as the only effective opposition to al-Qaeda and ISIL in Yemen (where al-Qaeda is strongest), though the US continues to arm the Saudi coalition and shield them from UN war crimes investigations.  The US is apparently set to transfer another $1.5 billion in weapons to the Saudis without significant domestic opposition or debate.

Incidentally, I didn't realize that Al-Jazeera America is ceasing operations.  I only follow the website (which I assume is unaffected), which is far more informative and cosmopolitan than its rivals.  And unlike RT, despite being funded by the Qatari royals, it's apparently able to maintain enough editorial independence to provide excellent reporting on the atrocities of the coalition of which Qatar is a member.  It's not easy to find consistent, reliable information about developments in the region, which tends to be very piecemeal, I find, so that's unfortunate.

The Saudi-Iranian rivalry does figure largely in it, no doubt.

That's an interesting map.  I could stand to read a book or two about its history, which I've not done.  It does have a fractured history.  The Ottomon vilayet didn't include Hadhramaut, though it does seem to have encompassed the Sanaa to Aden area, which is divided along ethnoreligious lines, so there was that partial, at least de jure unity earlier, it seems, though not extending further east, as you say.  And whether it was geographically divided in the same ethnoreligious way then, I don't know.

P.S.  I might be wrong: I can't actually find a map of the eyalet (not vilayet) showing the port of Aden included in the same division with Sanaa, though the Ottomans did hold the port for long periods.  I didn't mean to make a pedantic point, I just find how the territory's been organized interesting.  In any case, your point that there doesn't seem to have been any non-imperially imposed unity before the nineties seems right.

 

This is more economics than politics, but nobody's going to read an Economics Thread. This fascinating article in the Atlantic claims that American men are, on the whole, pathologically committed to working extra hours at all costs, including at the expense of free time or general happiness, and that this is why (a) the gender wage gap is most pronounced at the highest levels and (b) Americans are less happy than their European counterparts.

Wait? They were only merged in 1992! Did people learn nothing from Sykes-Picot?

On your first point I kinda agree. I think there's a lot of promise in shifting our ties in the region towards the Iran/Shi'a bloc (which for arguments sake, let's include anti-fundamentalists Sunnis like the Kurds and (with some reservations) the Egyptian government, as well as the sectarially mixed Iraq government) and away from the Saudi (and increasingly Turkish)/Sunni bloc, and it'd be a massive lost opportunity if rapprochement reverses or even stalls. Much like Russia, I get the sense that there is a traditional security from attack focus behind their geopolitical wants/needs that transcends (or at a minimum always reaches parity with) any specific publicly stated ideological component. So I don't doubt that there is a desire on Iran's part to ease up on Israel stuff (though Netanyahu losing power would really help ease the optics on that).

Iranians were once very favorably disposed to Americans (it was the British that they hated), but that sentiment got eroded away over the quarter century before the Revolution by our unquestioning support of the Shah. I'm not at all saying we shouldn't have supported the Shah, but as a client state/regime of ours we should have had a firmer hand on them and forced his government to make more concessions to his public (and to mitigate our responsibility for the excesses/abuses). 

On The Moth this week there was a former Israeli soldier talking about being a poor soldier from a family of poor soldiers. He mentioned his brother being the only member of the Israeli armed services prosecuted for being a pagan. (Apparently he had built a Native American-sort of totem pole and was accused of praying to it.)

I wanted to post something about theocracy, military, and America. Then I realized that Googling "Israel", "military", and "pagan" lead down some dark holes, and now this is all there is.

"Prosecuted" or kicked out, at least. He was specifically said to be the first and only member of the IDF to be prosecuted for paganism. Dammit, I would link to the episode if NPR's website wasn't blocked at work; I just heard it this past Saturday on WAMU.

Anyway, I'm not saying that Israel or the US are a theocracy, and I don't know much about the former. I suspect the US military is less of a religious institution than the American Cult of Military Love.

Found it.

I have mixed feelings about the draft. On the one hand, perhaps it would give our elected leaders greater pause before getting involved in armed conflicts. On the other, it probably wouldn't - look how easily a majority got talked into the Iraq debacle.
On the one hand, perhaps it would better level the playing field, as the current military draws heavily from/preys upon the low rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. On the other: don't be silly. The well-off are always more likely to be able to wriggle out of duty.
In the end I'm against it. Even "good wars" like WWI-II had domestic dissenters, and the more recent wars with a draft were proxy conflicts. I don't believe conscientious objectors should be made to serve to support unjust causes or the ends of the elite. Most of society is already stuck in that role; the least we could do is not mandate going off and getting shot for it.

It's definitely dicy terrain and on balance I'm against restoring the draft, but I absolutely get the arguments/sentiments for it. I do think it would be more egalitarian in sprit than practice to have a draft system (and as with most western countries that do, or in recent decades still had, a draft there should be a lot of public service/conscientious objection alternatives). As Vietnam shows, even with a draft there are a lot of ways (particularly for proxy wars and situations where the US/the world is less directly endangered) for the well off to shift the burden downward. And as WW II shows, if it is a situation that truly merits a draft, volunteers would be more readily be on hand anyway.

In a way a new draft established in the near term would be a cure that ineffectively treats a symptom, rather than root causes (loss of egalitarianism, general self-sacrifice sentiments, preparedness, etc.) If you started a draft now for some war it would result in an absolute debacle. You'd get tons of soldiers that flat out did not want to be there from day one and aren't at all in the mindset of the Army life. If the US ever wanted to have a draft that worked, we'd have to plan it out to start 20 years down the road and largely refocus on preparing youth so the transition to the military wasn't so abrupt/jarring (emphasizing the social aspects of education to what they were like in the early/mid 20th Century).

As to a draft preventing proxy wars, Vietnam shows it's not an effective deterrent. However, having a draft probably would ensure that if a war turns unpopular the public will turn against it harder and somewhat faster than w/o a draft. 

Albert Fish Taco Concerning the issues with willingness to fight, it should be noted that, even going back to the Anglo-Saxons, professional soldiers have always taken priority on the front lines, as they are more experienced, better trained, more familiar with their fellows, and thus less likely to die or desert (a principle illustrated well in Band of Brothers). The main use of conscripts has been logistical or administrative, which is a much bigger deal in wartime. It's worth remembering that only a minority of American soldiers during the Vietnam War served in Vietnam itself, and that conscripts were only a small minority of combat troops therein.