Subject: American Sniper and Wahhabism
(Wikipedia link).
Members of the Wahhabi religion comprise 22 percent of the Muslims
in Saudi Arabia and are historically centered in Saudi Arabia. To
be and remain a Wahhabi one must agree that it is one's
responsibility to work toward killing anyone and everyone who
refuses to convert to the Wahhabi way of seeing things. The
Wahhabis comprise 100 percent of "The Islamic State." The
Islamic State seeks the territory now known as Iraq, Syria,
Lebanon, Israel, as I recall from some recent article. Saudi
Arabia too? According to the eminent Alistair Crooke writing "Middle
East Time Bomb: The Real Aim of ISIS Is to Replace the Saud
Family as the New Emirs of Arabia" in Huffington Post,
(updated November 2, 2014): "We should understand that there is
really almost nothing that the West can now do about it but sit
and watch."*
I wonder how all that might relate to Saudi Arabia recently having
decided to have a closeout-everything-must-go-sale on oil, or so
it appears. (See "sent
2/2/15 .... Historic moment: Saudi Arabia sees End of Oil Age
coming and opens valves on the carbon bubble - EnergyPost.eu.")
The very best thing to know about the Wahhabis is that there
are none around here, and there are not likely to be any
around here ever.
When we want to worry about tribes, the main thing we have to
worry about here is some so-called Christians. (See generally.,
"sent
12/2/14 "Dear [evangelical Christians]: You’re Being Had" by Jay
Michaelson {LINK}. And adding 2/7/15, see also now: "The
Fiery Cage and the Lynching Tree, Brutality’s Never Far Away
(print-friendly LINK), by Bill Moyers, February 6, 2015. It
seems more precise in a way.)
In the last paragraph of sent
2/2/15 ..1. "‘Group-Thinking’ the World into a New War" I
talked a bit about Michele Obama's response to the recent movie, American
Sniper (IMDB link), a
somewhat autobiographical version of real war in Iraq American
sniper Chris Kyle.
This is a newer piece by eight (8) year Army combat MP (including
one (1) year in Afghanistan) Brock McIntosh: "As
a veteran, I see ‘American Sniper’ as dangerous, but not for the
reasons you’d think," (LINK)" February 3, 2015. Brock
McIntosh is not very critical of Chris Kyle. Brock McIntosh takes
Chris Kyle's word for the beliefs that he had in his head when he
enlisted. Then he details the actual falsity of some beliefs that
Chris Kyle had. Not all of that is likely to surprise you at this
point. Many have learned much since Chris Kyle enlisted. Brock
McIntosh reinforces our knowledge with his own personal
experiences. Then what Brock McIntosh actually criticizes is an
American situation in which global and American leadership
could implant those false beliefs into Chris Kyle's head and into
the heads of more than a few other people.
The piece by Brock McIntosh is well worth reading, and not just for a rehash of the false
beliefs that were put into many people's heads leading up to the
American invasion of Iraq but of trying to encourage resistance to
false stories, current stories about why we Americans should keep
on attacking other countries, for example. Print-friendly
link.
I myself am very frustrated by the situation of
America, the United States, continuing to increase and increase
and increase the military budget year after year. Remember I was
considered to be a big worker on the side of peace during the
Vietnam war, despite my "professional" neutrality. To be honest,
world peace seems to me quite hopeless now. And the American
"security" apparatus is totally out of control, just driving
itself. We even know about this: [download
(ge.tt) LINK for 58 min "Bush and Obama--Age of Terror" video
(mp4 format). No web page, just download.] And we know from
information several years ago that the military and related
industries, private contractors, and supporting businesses
comprise at least one third of the U.S. economy overall.
So maybe perhaps we should put our energies to other problems
besides world peace, like peace at home perhaps.
Should I mention again Fox News as a continuing major
source of falsity (that jokes are told about in major broadcasts
in Europe)? (this question could well relate to the article by
Brock McIntosh linked below. I just thought I'd throw it in
again as a contribution. Seriously. If you are a Fox News fan
the least bit you might want to consider forcing a change just
for a month or so to begin with just to see whether your life
might get better. I happened to notice the other day, here's a good place to look
for many vastly better news sources,
scrolling down the right side of the page (LINK). You
might be familiar with some or many of them.
Larry
*Or make it worse, of course, referring to all that Americans have
the power to do to and for the Middle East or any part of it. We
are just a big part of the problem, background and foreground.
