…plus a few observations as tweeted. I’m sure I missed a few good pieces (possibly while I was busy yesterday, for instance). Please feel free to link anything interesting or useful in the comments.
War
IS/ISIS/ISIL/QSIS/Daesh-related links 2014.8.20-9
Posted in International Relations, Neo-Imperialism, Twitterei, War Tagged with: Daesh, Iraq, ISIL, ISIS, neo-imperialism, QSIS, Syria
“What we would expect…” – terrorism and poverty
bank-robbing is unrelated to economic motivation, since most banks are located in nice buildings.
Essential Threat
In light of the ritualized sacrifice of a single man, on the altar of what we cannot help but believe – no possible justification – the many may be revealed to us as allies, as “with us,” perhaps first symbolically, but now also practically. Put simply, Foley’s death marks if it does not itself restore American re-engagement on behalf of those we had all but abandoned in the region.
Posted in Featured, Neo-Imperialism, The Exception, War Tagged with: Daesh, Iraq, Islamic State, Syria
Fact, Value, and the Destruction of Daesh
Not very long ago, “Islamic state” might have referred to a Western stereotype of “Mohammadean” passivity and fatalism. Today, while the West sometimes seems to have been overtaken by the condition or some version of it, the phrase now stands…
OBL’s Argument (5): Shapes of Justice
The de-construction of rules for the resolution of serious political disagreements, politics of the end of politics, is the drawing near of danger: War is or occurs for us, and escalates, as that de-construction, in search of a foundation of…
Posted in Philosophy, Politics, War Tagged with: Bin Laden, Hamas, Hobbes, Israel, Liberalism, sovereignty, terrorism
OBL’s Argument (4): Retributions
Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah — from the Lord out of the heavens. Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the…
Posted in Philosophy, Politics, War Tagged with: Bin Laden, Hamas, Hobbes, Israel, Liberalism, sovereignty, terrorism
OBL’s Argument (3): Leviathan
Freedom from second thought is also provided by the morally supremely convenient notion (or version of the same notion) that government accountability works in one direction only, or, even better, that we can choose which actions of our government or…
Posted in Philosophy, Politics, War Tagged with: Bin Laden, Hamas, Hobbes, Israel, Liberalism, sovereignty, terrorism
Genres of the Genocidal
Tahar (@laseptiemewilay): Civilians are not that innocent. Children are just collateral. Now genocide. It is unsurprisingly the same argument expressed differently. @RexBrynen wiped from the inter-ether, I mean the post, not the victims of genocide in reply to RexBrynen 09:08:15,…
OBL’s Argument (2): Gomorrah
On my Twitter feed recently, among commemorations of the Austro-Hungarian declarations of July 28, 1914, now recognized as the beginning of World War I, another anniversary was also briefly noted: Of Operation Gomorrah, on July 28, 1943, an aerial bombardment…
Posted in Philosophy, Politics, War Tagged with: Bin Laden, Hamas, Hobbes, Israel, Liberalism, sovereignty, terrorism
ever higher (interlude on Binladenism and Gaza)
(an interlude in the discussion of Osama Bin Laden’s interesting argument) Corey Robin denounces as “casuistry” and “the higher sociopathy” an attempt by Yishai Schwartz to justify the Israeli invasion of Gaza. Schwartz’s argument has the character of the public…