{"id":21800,"date":"2018-08-04T23:04:09","date_gmt":"2018-08-05T07:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.richgibson.com\/blog\/?p=21800"},"modified":"2018-08-05T00:36:27","modified_gmt":"2018-08-05T08:36:27","slug":"rouge-forum-dispatch-in-pacified-areas-people-are-instruments-of-their-own-oppression-gibson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.richgibson.com\/blog\/rouge-forum-dispatch-in-pacified-areas-people-are-instruments-of-their-own-oppression-gibson\/","title":{"rendered":"Rouge Forum Dispatch: In Pacified Areas, People Are Instruments of their Own Oppression: Gibson."},"content":{"rendered":"

We Say Fight Back!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Teachers Strike at JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University<\/b> (JNU<\/b>) is a public university located in New Delhi<\/a>, India<\/a>.)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"No<\/p>\n

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www.facebook.com\/linda.teach.7\/videos\/2200200276881198\/?t=59<\/a><\/p>\n

What Does It Mean to Give David Petraeus the Floor?<\/h1>\n

Some historians worry that giving the former general an invitation to keynote means giving him a pulpit.<\/h2>\n

\"Image<\/p>\n

Over the past decade, a familiar narrative<\/a> about Petraeus\u2019s role in the Iraq War has solidified among elements of the foreign-policy establishment<\/a> and several of its stenographers<\/a> in corporate media<\/a>: As the situation on the ground was rapidly deteriorating in 2006 amid high US casualties and a brutal sectarian conflict unleashed<\/a> by the US overthrow of Saddam Hussein and subsequent dismantling of the Iraqi state, David Petraeus emerged. Armed with a Princeton PhD in international relations, the new general rescued the US military from losing the war and Iraqi civilians from widespread violence by implementing a \u201csurge\u201d of troops who embarked on a comprehensive program of counterinsurgency, or COIN, based on FM 3-24<\/a><\/em>, the COIN field manual he developed months before his foray into Iraq. Riding his wave of fame in Washington, Petraeus soon persuaded<\/a> Barack Obama to initiate a surge of his own in Afghanistan, where deadly night raids commenced and, according to journalist Steve Coll<\/a>, as commander of US forces Petraeus frequently misspoke by saying \u201cIraq\u201d when he meant \u201cAfghanistan\u201d\u2014a result of his propensity to hype up his alleged success in the former.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/p>\n

But as COIN critics such as Douglas Porch<\/strong>, Gian Gentile, and Andrew Bacevich have argued, the decline in violence in Iraq was less a result of Petraeus\u2019s program than of shifting sectarian alliances and increasing Sunni-Shia segregation that began well before the surge. \u201cPetraeus and his acolytes merely boarded a train that had already left the station at least six months earlier,\u201d wrote Porch. Other critics, like Charlotte Blatt, have argued that the surge had little long-term strategic success, as violence and sectarianism soon returned to pre-surge levels. This nuanced reality did not stop Petraeus from \u201ccreating the myth of his success\u201d as a savior general, as the journalist Gareth Porter has documented<\/a>.\u00a0 www.thenation.com\/article\/mean-give-david-petraeus-floor\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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www.facebook.com\/workingclasshistory\/videos\/939752932876524\/?t=0<\/a><\/p>\n