Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Seymour Hersh on US Policy in Syria

A truly fascinating interview with the investigative reporter Seymour Hersh on US policy in Syria in the videos below. More here. Seymour Hersh’s article “Military to Military” in the London Review of Books is here.

If true, we see here how US foreign policy is much more complex than people both on the left and on the right think.



6 comments:

  1. Maybe Jon Lovitz is a less reliable source. Maybe. I won't waste time looking at this.

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    1. Odd. Could it be Seymour Hersh's reporting here conflicts with your own conservative views on US foreign policy and you don't care to look any further? Serious question. There is actually plenty of evidence to support what Hersh is saying.

      Also, I'll just note that what Hersh says here also conflicts with some left-wing views on US foreign policy too.

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    2. He has too long a history of error, exaggeration, possible falsification, and tendentiousness. One cannot rely on him. Would you read a book by Tom Woods say and trust it not to be quite unreliable? I think not

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  2. Speaking as someone who is constantly flabbergasted by the incoherence of the public face of American foreign policy in the Muslim world, I'd say this article does more than demonstrate that US foreign policy is more complex than many allow. It also shows it's more coherent, and less reckless, if what Hersh writes is true. The same could be said about Hersh's revelations on the Bin Laden raid, if they had turned out to be true. Much respect to the JSOC for their assessment of the reality on the ground in Syria...and for recognizing that the despicable Erdogan is quite clearly assisting, if not allied with, Daesh and al-Nusra.

    LK, my advance apologies for making a request that is tangibly related at best, but this thread seemed to be the most appropriate recent article you put forward to ask. Could you by chance recommend further reading that takes down Said's thesis in Orientalism? I had long accepted Said's claims, but your disapproval caused me to take a more critical look at Said's contentions, and I must admit that my faith in Said's thesis is quite shaken after reading critiques by Irwin and others. I figured you'd be the best person to ask for more material that would transfer a shaken faith, into a clear rejection of Said's claims.

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    1. SHN,

      Regarding Said's Orientalism, like you I used to respect it, but after more research and critical thought I now see it as just another branch of the Postmodernist rot that infected the left, and as such it is important to purge this nonsense to make the left stronger and better.

      I see from your comment you already know Irwin's works, but I recommend these as good critiques of Said:

      Irwin, Robert. 2008. Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and its Discontents. Overlook Press, Woodstock, NY.

      Irwin, Robert. 2006. For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and their Enemies. Allen Lane, London.

      Ibn Warraq. 2007. Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism. Prometheus Books, Amherst, N.Y.

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    2. See also:

      Windschuttle, Keith. 1999. “Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism Revisited,’” The New Criterion 17.5
      http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/courses01/rrtw/Windschuttle.htm

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