#paul_pillar

#Paul_Pillar, avant les frappes iraniennes

Is Israel’s plan to draw the US into a war with Iran? | Responsible Statecraft
▻https://responsiblestatecraft.org/iran-israel-war

[…] the bombing of the embassy facility in Damascus was a clear enough escalation (and expansion of Israeli offenses against the laws of war), that it probably reflected a carefully calculated decision at the highest levels of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government . The calculation did not have much to do with any dent, which is likely to be short-term and minimal, that loss of the IRGC officers would make in Iranian capabilities.

Rather, the attack was part of an effort to escalate Israel’s way out of a situation in which its declared objective of “destroying Hamas” is out of reach, the worldwide isolation of Israel because of its actions in Gaza is becoming undeniable, and even its habitually automatic U.S. backing has patently softened. For Netanyahu personally, escalating and expanding the war, insofar as this also means continuing it indefinitely, is also his only apparent hope for staving off his political and legal difficulties.

Escalation as an intended way for Israel to work its way out of the Gaza dead end has two elements. The main one is to provoke Iran to hit back, which can enable Israel to present itself as defending rather than offending and to push debate away from the destruction it is wreaking on Gaza and toward the need to protect itself against foreign enemies. The other element is to increase the chance of the United States getting directly involved in conflict with Iran.

Israel, Palestine, and the “G-Word” | The National Interest
▻https://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul-pillar/israel-palestine-and-%E2%80%9Cg-word%E2%80%9D-208535

https://nationalinterest.org/sites/default/files/main_images/Shutterstock_Gaza%282%29.jpg

So, how does the concept of genocide fit into this picture? Garrity observes that it is part of the same conceptual and semantic confusion that has afflicted references to ethnic cleansing. She notes that some analysts and commentators consider genocide a subtype of ethnic cleansing, some treat the two phenomena as separate, and some consider them as overlapping. 

Garrity has scholarship in mind and suggests that her substitution of the four dimensions of control, assimilation, expulsion, and massacre facilitates rigorous research into why, for example, a regime chooses one of these methods over another. Indeed, the Israeli-Palestinian case provides ample material for such research, such as dissecting the Israeli decision to rely heavily at this time on the combination of expulsion and massacre.

The policy lesson in all this should be that substance matters more than semantics. As the South African case proceeds at the ICJ, expect Israel and its defenders to try to turn the proceeding into one of semantics—to define #genocide narrowly. To the extent this tactic succeeds, it will deflect attention from what is actually happening in the Gaza Strip, including the immense human suffering involved.

#Paul_Pillar

The Blurred Lines of Religious Zealotry
▻http://www.lobelog.com/the-blurred-lines-of-religious-zealotry

#Paul_Pillar, sur les très grossiers radotages du sioniste #Dennis_Ross,

Where Ross’s schema completely breaks down is with some of the biggest and most contorted squiggles in the line he has drawn. He places Saudi Arabia in the “non-Islamist” camp because it has supported el-Sisi in his bashing of the Brotherhood and wasn’t especially supportive of Hamas when Israel was bashing the Gaza Strip. Saudi Arabia—where the head of state has the title Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, the country’s constitution is the Koran, and thieves have their hands amputated—is “non-Islamist”? Remarkable. Conversely, the Assad regime in Syria, which is one of the most secular regimes in the region notwithstanding the sectarian lines of its base of support, is pointedly excluded from Ross’s “non-Islamist” side of the line because of, he says, Syrian dependence on Iran and Hezbollah. Of course, any such alliances refute the whole idea of a “fundamental division” in the region between Islamists and non-Islamists, but Ross does not seem to notice.

US sent CIA Director as Ambassador to Tehran after CIA overthrew Iran’s Democratic gov’t (US now Complaining about Hostage-Taker Amb.)
▻http://www.juancole.com/2014/04/ambassador-overthrew-democratic.html

In 1953 the US Central Intelligence Agency conspired with right wing generals and other anti-democratic elements in Iran to overthrow the elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh. See Ervand Abrahamian’s recent study of this episode, “The Coup.” A liberal from an aristocratic background, Mosaddegh had committed the sin of coming to power just after the parliament nationalized Iran’s petroleum industry (i.e. declared that it belonged to Iran–as it did– rather than to BP’s then incarnation, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co.). The US put Mohammad Reza Pahlevi back on the throne, and he became an insufferable dictator and pro-American stooge.

An operative in the CIA in the 1950s and 1960s was Richard Helms, the “gentlemanly planner of assassinations. He rose to become deputy director of the CIA and then, 1966-1973, director. Helms was a serial murderer who attempted to rub out Fidel Castro and Salvador Allende among others.

In 1973-77, Helms was sent by the Nixon administration to be ambassador to Iran. Sending a career CIA operative and former director of that organization as diplomatic envoy to the country where the CIA had destroyed democracy was a huge slap in the face of the Iranian people, and they knew it. (Because Third Worldism was in vogue, many leftist youth in Iran were probably also aware of Helms’s sinister role in Chile and Cuba).

The hostage crisis? It happened precisely because the US embassy in Tehran was used as a planning HQ for the 1953 coup. When the Carter administration admitted the shah for medical treatment into the US, the revolutionaries became alarmed that this step was a prelude to Washington putting him back on the throne yet again. It wasn’t a wild notion.

The US inability to separate out intelligence work from dirty tricks and covert operations, and its inability to separate out the latter from diplomacy, is what put American diplomats’ lives in danger in late 1979.

Appointing Aboutalebi to a position in New York was intended as an insult.
But sending Helms to Tehran as ambassador was truly a douchebag FU moment.

So as usual, however much the Iranian hard liners (who have never forgiven the US for the coup) want to insult the US, we’ve done much worse to them.

Warped Motives on Syria
▻http://nationalinterest.org/print/blog/paul-pillar/warped-motives-syria-8978

Par #Paul_Pillar,

Perhaps the CW topic of the moment is now also serving for the administration a purpose similar to what it serves for the neocons: as a convenient peg on which to hang an intervention taken for other reasons. Except that for the administration it is not because it always wanted to intervene in Syria but instead has decided—after a couple of years of unrelenting nagging from others for it do so—that it finally has to act in some forceful way. Using a CW incident as a peg saves it from looking like it is changing a policy for no other reason than that it is succumbing to political pressure.

A glimpse of the underlying political calculations comes through in a comment from an anonymous U.S. official [9] that the level of military attack being contemplated is “ just enough not to get mocked. ” Politically, that is an understandable calibration. But it is not a sound motive to enter a foreign war.

Some of the same people who have been pestering the administration about intervening in Syria have also been berating it more generally for being too tactical and reactive, especially in the Middle East, and not being sufficiently bold and strategic. But responding with an armed attack to a single reported use of a particular kind of weapon is about as tactical and reactive as one can get. A truly strategic approach to the topic would not only lay out a thorough sense of what is at stake for the U.S. in Syria and what we intend to accomplish there, but also would consider carefully the repercussions of any U.S. military action on other important U.S. equities in the region.

There are several of those equities that would need to be considered, but take, for example, just one: the negotiations with Iran about its nuclear program. Analysts’ views vary regarding current Iranian perspectives toward Syria, but a U.S. military intervention would at a minimum complicate the effort to reach an agreement with Tehran and at worst would kill off what is, following the election of President Hassan Rouhani, an excellent chance to negotiate an accord. It surely would make it politically harder inside the Iranian government to sell the making of concessions to the United States. One Western diplomat stationed in Tehran says [10] a U.S. attack on Syria would be “a game changer for negotiations with Iran.” So we come full circle from President Obama’s comment about Syria use of CW as a game changer.

We also come full circle on the objective of controlling proliferation of unconventional weapons. The most reliable way to preclude an Iranian nuclear weapon is through a negotiated agreement placing restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program. An attack made supposedly to deter use of one kind of unconventional weapon would thus increase the chance that another nation would develop a different kind of unconventional weapon—one that really is a weapon of mass destruction.

Of course, some of those pushing for U.S. intervention in the Syrian war are the same ones who want to kill the prospects for a negotiated agreement with Iran. That is one of the most warped motives of all for a U.S. attack.

The Big Insinuation Still Works- ▻http://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul-pillar/the-big-insinuation-still-works-8664

Par #Paul_Pillar

Dans leur longue histoire de pratique du sombre art de la manipulation du public, les dirigeants politiques ont connu beaucoup de succès pour amener les gens à croire ce qui n’est pas vrai, et même ce qui ne nécessiterait qu’un minimum d’investigation pour démontrer sa fausseté.

Les régimes totalitaires, en particulier, ont été en mesure de le faire en s’appuyant en grande partie sur ce qui est connu comme le Grand mensonge [Big Lie]- un mensonge qui submerge tout scepticisme par l’autorité et le manque d’équivoque avec lequel il est prononcé à plusieurs reprises. La puissance du Big Lie vient en partie de son audace, mais aussi de la répétition (...)

Dans les sociétés avec une liberté d’expression et une presse libre il y a une certaine dissuasion contre l’énonciation d’énormités flagrantes. (...)

(...)

Pour ceux qui sont dissuadés de raconter des mensonges, la même sorte de répétition qui aide à fabriquer le Grand mensonge peut être utilisée avec un effet considérable grâce à une technique plus indirecte. Il s’agit de cultiver une idée dans l’esprit du public en la posant comme une question, en l’élevant comme une possibilité, ou tout simplement en associant deux choses autrement indépendantes en parlant d’elles dans les mêmes phrases.

Faites ceci suffisamment de fois, encore et encore, et alors même une proposition qui n’a aucun fondement dans la réalité prend racine dans la conscience publique. Une fois ancrée, elle devient résistante au déracinement et a une bonne chance de devenir la sagesse conventionnelle qui, en tant que telle, sera encore plus souvent mentionnée.

La technique qui obtient ce résultat d’initiation d’une idée fausse n’est pas le Grand Mensonge ; c’est la Grande insinuation.

Un exemple flagrant de ce processus est l’effort de l’administration George W. Bush, dans sa campagne pour renforcer le soutien à la guerre en Irak, d’associer le régime irakien avec le terrorisme d’Al-Qaïda et surtout avec les attaques du 9/11. L’association a été réalisée non pas par des mensonge spécifiques, mais en répétant incessamment « Irak », « terrorisme » et « 9/11 » dans le même souffle...

#techniques_de_manipulation en #démocratie