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It could also be that they're new, rapidly expanding, and an existential threat to multiple collapsing regimes that are coming to a head on a much shorter timeline? The Taliban have been around for a long time and the U.S. has already taken a crack at them with middling results. They're positioned to make a play for retaking Afghanistan as soon as international forces leave as well as making inroads in Pakistan but it's not like they're seizing cities every week like ISIS have been. And as awful as they are, they're not exceptional in terms of insurgent groups America's fought in the region and haven't been deliberately trying to grab headlines and make waves lately. Most Americans probably feel getting Bin Laden means that debt's paid - hell, they actually got a hostage back alive from that war and people were actually pissed off about it! The short answer is the Taliban are old news and are somewhat contained, as they have been for the last 13 years, while ISIS are in the here and now and no one knows what instability they'll cause/take advantage of tomorrow. Dolash fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Sep 4, 2014 |
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Sep 4, 2014 03:33
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Plus the Taliban are more or less only operating in Afghanistan/Pakistan. ISIS' goal is to expand its reach as far as possible. The Taliban will probably come back for at least some time once we withdraw, just because by default they regained popularity after we wore out our welcome, and there was no other major resistance group fighting against the US.
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Sep 4, 2014 03:47
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Rocks posted:My wife is Iranian, and her Mom showed me pictures of her going to college in the '70s in Mashad and it looked indistinguishable from any other photo of Americans in the '70s, right down to the bell bottoms and fros. Pretty strange how a culture can be that westernized and then be completely different 40 years later. Zizek more or less said what happened in Afghanistan and Iran is what happens when you fail to "westernize" a society- it turns around and goes reactionary at full speed, mainly because it's their only way of rejecting it. Job Truniht fucked around with this message at 04:02 on Sep 4, 2014 |
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Sep 4, 2014 03:56
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/04/world/middleeast/surviving-isis-massacre-iraq-video.html?_r=1 I really hope we don't end up "collateral damaging" the people that aided this guy escape ISIS.
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Sep 4, 2014 04:33
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It's probably worth mentioning that the Taliban doesn't seem to have any appeal to anybody but Pashtuns, i suppose the ISIS comparison would work better if ISIS were entirely composed of Sunni Kurds.
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Sep 4, 2014 04:35
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Job Truniht posted:Zizek more or less said what happened in Afghanistan and Iran is what happens when you fail to "westernize" a society- it turns around and goes reactionary at full speed, mainly because it's their only way of rejecting it. When have we ever 'westernized' a society successfully? Name even one case? What does that even mean?
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Sep 4, 2014 04:39
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Iran is a lot more westernized than people think. Parts of Tehran look like any old city in the US except for the hijabs everywhere.
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Sep 4, 2014 04:44
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icantfindaname posted:When have we ever 'westernized' a society successfully? Name even one case? What does that even mean? As far as I can tell, successfully "westernizing" a society means you killed all the natives and replaced them with white people
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Sep 4, 2014 04:46
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icantfindaname posted:When have we ever 'westernized' a society successfully? Name even one case? Japan maybe?
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Sep 4, 2014 04:46
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Torka posted:Japan maybe? Japan had already liberalized (economically anyways) by WW2, they basically ripped the German Empire off wholesale and were successful enough to go from a premodern agricultural society to a "good enough to hold off the USA in total war for a while" society in about 60 years. The only thing we changed was we forced them to adopt a liberal democratic veneer even though the same people mostly ended up running the place after the war, just like Germany. Even if you're going to describe what Japan did as 'westernizing', we definitely didn't impose it from above, they did it themselves.
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Sep 4, 2014 04:52
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icantfindaname posted:When have we ever 'westernized' a society successfully? Name even one case? What does that even mean? Do Hong Kong and Singapore count?
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Sep 4, 2014 05:01
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icantfindaname posted:Japan had already liberalized (economically anyways) by WW2, they basically ripped the German Empire off wholesale and were successful enough to go from a premodern agricultural society to a "good enough to hold off the USA in total war for a while" society in about 60 years. The only thing we changed was we forced them to adopt a liberal democratic veneer even though the same people mostly ended up running the place after the war, just like Germany. Even if you're going to describe what Japan did as 'westernizing', we definitely didn't impose it from above, they did it themselves.
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Sep 4, 2014 05:02
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Anyone have a subscription here? Cameron and Obama wrote a joint op-ed on ISIS, and of course, it's behind a paywall. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article4195915.ece
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Sep 4, 2014 05:02
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Maybe South Korea, unless we include it in the Japan package?* Lebanon seems "western" sometimes, at least compared to the neighborhood. India's political system is western-like, even if the culture is not. Singapore? Do we count communist Vietnam as westernized since its ideology comes from some western Germans? (Not definitely stating that those countries were "westernized", just thinking aloud here.) *maybe we could call it... a co-prosperity sphere?
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Sep 4, 2014 05:03
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Syrian refugees are now 25% of Lebanon's population.
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Sep 4, 2014 05:07
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Great interview on Tavis Smiley tonight with the head of the Council on Foreign Relations discussing ISIS and potential interventions. As long as Assad doesn't gas Alawites, US is willing to look the other way.
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Sep 4, 2014 05:08
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icantfindaname posted:Japan had already liberalized (economically anyways) by WW2, they basically ripped the German Empire off wholesale and were successful enough to go from a premodern agricultural society to a "good enough to hold off the USA in total war for a while" society in about 60 years. The only thing we changed was we forced them to adopt a liberal democratic veneer even though the same people mostly ended up running the place after the war, just like Germany. Even if you're going to describe what Japan did as 'westernizing', we definitely didn't impose it from above, they did it themselves. While I don't care a whit if it meets the definition of westernization, the occupation of Japan included a centralized, concerted effort to reshape Japanese culture and society along liberal-Democratic lines, even if the effort was unevenly successful. The deicide of the emperor is the most well known example of the effort, but more consequentially the Zaibatsu were (partially) dissolved, the aristocracy (officially) abolished, and a massive agrarian reform program broke the back of rural landowners. The SCAP Civil Censorship Detachment strictly banned any media deemed ideologically suspect, and the Civil Information and Education section actively worked with publishers to insinuate America approved ideology into the fabric of Japanese media. The occupation also, in the face of serious Japanese opposition, instituted legal equality of the sexes and enfranchised women. You could argue about the success of the project, but it's clear reshaping Japanese culture was a core component of the occupation, and it was actively pursued by SCAP for more than six years.
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Sep 4, 2014 05:31
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"Westernization" had meant "suppressing Communism by any means necessary because we honestly believed the Domino Theory was an accurate projection" for every project between Japan and Iraq. None of these Cold War era projects made an honest attempt of making countries into Western-style democracies, they just forced the markets open. Post Cold War, Iraq was a project attempted by people with their heads stuck so far up their rear end we're lucky it didn't turn out even worse. So no, none of the US' Westernization attempts succeeded but none of them were really set up to do so. South Korea might be the exception but my uneducated impression was that the West didn't exert a lot of political control after the war. Shear Modulus fucked around with this message at 05:46 on Sep 4, 2014 |
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Sep 4, 2014 05:42
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Volkerball posted:Syrian refugees are now 25% of Lebanon's population. Sounds like Lebanon needs to invent a new executive branch leadership position.
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Sep 4, 2014 05:49
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Barudak posted:Sounds like Lebanon needs to invent a new executive branch leadership position. For some reason, the US only accepted 63 Syrian refugees so far this year. Maybe we need a new executive branch leadership position.
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Sep 4, 2014 05:55
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Volkerball posted:Syrian refugees are now 25% of Lebanon's population. And a full 3 million Syrians have left the country as refugees, that's like roughly full ten percent of the country's pre-war population. Even more are displaced within Syria proper. It's like the most insane thing. Like a third to half of Syrians are displaced/refugees, Jesus Christ. It's just crazy. illrepute fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Sep 4, 2014 |
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Sep 4, 2014 06:11
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If we're using "westernization" in the broadest sense (national state, centralized army, breaking of the aristocracy and feudalism, industrialization, etc.) to like late 19th century standards then you could say Turkey and Japan were the most successful at this. They both also lack a history of colonialism so that is no small factor I imagine.
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Sep 4, 2014 06:25
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illrepute posted:And a full 3 million Syrians have left the country as refugees, that's like roughly full ten percent of the country's pre-war population. Even more are displaced within Syria proper. It's like the most insane thing. Like a third to half of Syrians are displaced/refugees, Jesus Christ. Yeah, it's hosed. It sucks too because countries like Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon are the biggest refugee safe havens, and also the most worried about ISIS spreading to their own countries. You've got this massive destabilizing influx of refugees putting a strain on the social fabric of these countries, an absolutely massive number of people living aimlessly in refugee camps with no future or reason to live, and ISIS knocking on the door. It's a disaster. Europe and the west as a whole should be ashamed of how little they did to make the conditions tolerable. UNHCR got like 30% of the donations they were calling for last year. It's ridiculous.
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Sep 4, 2014 06:37
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Volkerball posted:Anyone have a subscription here? Cameron and Obama wrote a joint op-ed on ISIS, and of course, it's behind a paywall. http://macapla.com/post/vertice-nato-l-articolo-di-barack-obama-e-david-cameron-non-ci-faremo-intimdire-da-barbari-assassini- After the introduction it looks like they have the full text of the op-ed in English.
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Sep 4, 2014 07:03
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420 Gank Mid posted:http://macapla.com/post/vertice-nato-l-articolo-di-barack-obama-e-david-cameron-non-ci-faremo-intimdire-da-barbari-assassini- quote:First, those who want to adopt an isolationist approach misunderstand the nature of security in the 21st century. Developments in other parts of the world, particularly in Iraq and Syria, threaten our security at home. Tell me more Barack Obama, president of the United States during the entirety of the Syrian war.  It pisses me off so bad that politicians always have to resort to the selfish aspects of what could demand an intervention to get support than the reasonable ones. Calling for empathy isn't working, lets try scaring the piss out of them. I just got in the weirdest conversation with a conservative, Christian American. He started off with the whole "Islam is a violent religion" bigoted talking points, but after I pointed out that the Kurds were largely Sunni's, he mentioned something about feeling just as upset hearing about Kurds being attacked as he did Americans and Christians, and the next thing I know, he's got me explaining the various groups fighting ISIS, and how their religious backgrounds relate to their fights. 
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Sep 4, 2014 07:40
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Berke Negri posted:If we're using "westernization" in the broadest sense (national state, centralized army, breaking of the aristocracy and feudalism, industrialization, etc.) to like late 19th century standards then you could say Turkey and Japan were the most successful at this. They both also lack a history of colonialism so that is no small factor I imagine.
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Sep 4, 2014 09:19
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Turkey had the Ottoman Empire and Japan made a rather well publicized attempt at imperialism that turned out somewhat poorly. Are you referring to Japan's ambitions in China, Korea, or Greater East Asia? I'd go so far as to say that an organized Japanese state has been colonizing in the region since the early 2nd millenium.
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Sep 4, 2014 09:22
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My Imaginary GF posted:Are you referring to China, Korea, or Greater East Asia?
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Sep 4, 2014 09:26
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Volkerball posted:Iran is a lot more westernized than people think. Parts of Tehran look like any old city in the US except for the hijabs everywhere. There's a vice documentary about upper-middle class kids in Tehran and their lifestyle is basically exactly the same as ours except they have to bootleg all our tv shows.
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Sep 4, 2014 09:51
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A friend went couch surfing through Iran, and in Teheran there's a lot of liberal/non-religious/alcohol drinking youth. Obviously you can't be as open about things as in the west but they despise the religious police just like most western youth would. In poorer cities, things are much more strict and people in general are more religious however (this is also where the revolution had huge support).
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Sep 4, 2014 09:57
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Berke Negri posted:They both also lack a history of colonialism so that is no small factor I imagine. More precisely, they both lack a history of being victims of colonialism.
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Sep 4, 2014 10:31
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For those curious about what Zizek thinks of ISIS: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/03/isis-is-a-disgrace-to-true-fundamentalism For those not, er don't click I guess.
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Sep 4, 2014 11:50
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ChairMaster posted:It's literally only the videos they release. I've been consistently surprised that people everywhere, even on the internet where you'd expect people to be a bit less naive than that, still managed to be shocked and angry at these things that have been happening constantly in the Middle East for years just because it's shot in HD this time. It's almost like humans aren't innately rational and seeing a thing has a different psychological impact from reading about the thing! I honestly don't understand why you're surprised.
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Sep 4, 2014 12:41
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Gmaz posted:A friend went couch surfing through Iran, and in Teheran there's a lot of liberal/non-religious/alcohol drinking youth. Obviously you can't be as open about things as in the west but they despise the religious police just like most western youth would. In poorer cities, things are much more strict and people in general are more religious however (this is also where the revolution had huge support). Same in Saudi. The younger generation is pretty much indistinguishable from any group of kids in Europe or NA except their wives can't drive. It is pretty funny to be on flights out of Saudi; whenever seatbelt sign goes off a bunch of young women go back to the bathroom and change into sexy western clothes.
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Sep 4, 2014 13:40
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I've got an Iranian friend that recently left Malaysia to go back to Iran who said that while he was happy to leave Malaysia he hated having to go back to Iran and buy his alcohol from drug dealers. He basically hated religious laws. I also met a Saudi guy telling me about all the girls he'd managed to sleep with. Apparently all those jokes about how women deal with wanting to sleep with guys while keeping their 'virginity'? When medical checks get involved they turn out to be true. It's anal
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Sep 4, 2014 13:47
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MrNemo posted:I also met a Saudi guy telling me about all the girls he'd managed to sleep with. Apparently all those jokes about how women deal with wanting to sleep with guys while keeping their 'virginity'? When medical checks get involved they turn out to be true. This is also a thing in the Bible Belt.
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Sep 4, 2014 14:02
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My wife had an Iranian friend who was studying in the UK for a couple of years and was hugely disappointed the UK wasn't an endless orgy of drugs, alcohol and sex like she had hoped. She said she had more of that back in Iran then in the UK.
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Sep 4, 2014 14:11
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Brown Moses posted:My wife had an Iranian friend who was studying in the UK for a couple of years and was hugely disappointed the UK wasn't an endless orgy of drugs, alcohol and sex like she had hoped. She said she had more of that back in Iran then in the UK. IIRC there was a famous Turkish conservative that went to Iran to see how Sharia law is implemented and came back with the conclusion that Turkey should stay how it is because there's more alcohol and drug use in Iran.
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Sep 4, 2014 14:16
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Brown Moses posted:My wife had an Iranian friend who was studying in the UK for a couple of years and was hugely disappointed the UK wasn't an endless orgy of drugs, alcohol and sex like she had hoped. She said she had more of that back in Iran then in the UK. Well she was comparing it to Iran, land of the anonymous sex orgy party. An Iranian (but Norwegian-born) friend of mine was once invited to a party there by some friends her age. Turned out it was a sex party. She was massively weirded out and said it was super awkward to attempt to have a conversation while there was a sex-pile in the tub a few meters away. computer parts posted:This is also a thing in the Bible Belt. This is a thing in lots of places. Though aren't medical procedures to determine virginity basically worthless as women are likely to "lose" their virginity as children playing on a swing or riding a bike or something? Randarkman fucked around with this message at 14:33 on Sep 4, 2014 |
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Sep 4, 2014 14:25
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Randarkman posted:This is a thing in lots of places. Though aren't medical procedures to determine virginity basically worthless as women are likely to "lose" their virginity as children playing on a swing or riding a bike or something? yes and yes, though surely a young Saudi woman of station and breeding pursuing a pastime so vulgar as 'swinging on a swing' is a scandal in and of itself!
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Sep 4, 2014 14:40
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