4 ms·

I used to refer to what Bret Devereaux is criticizing as the "Star Trek view of other cultures". USS Enterprise arrives at a planet times the size of the earth

by nanis 6y ago

I used to refer to what Bret Devereaux is criticizing as the "Star Trek view of other cultures". USS Enterprise arrives at a planet times the size of the earth to find ten billion sheep herding nomads with a single leader who lives in a tent or some such. From there, it is a hop, skip, and a jump to Biden proposing Iraq be divided into three separate zones among the Kurds, the Shia, and the Sunnis ... completely neglecting the actual ethnic, religious, and power dynamics on the ground. Or, people turning a blind eye to the slaughters that happened in Bosnia in the 90s (a sprinkling of that and Chechnya over what was cooked in Aghanistan gave us the multinational Jihadi networks that organized 9/11 among other things) because "these people have been killing each other for 600 years" ... An implicit reference to the Ottomans whose ancestors came from the Eurasian steppe. So, yes, I love Devereaux's work, especially because I run into a lot of people who think and talk about actual history through the filter of these shows/books.

aardvarkr 6y ago
That went zero to a hundred real quick, without so much as a logical step in between. This sounds more like an AI generated comment because it’s so nonsensical.
BlueTemplar 6y ago
Star Trek gets a pass because there's only so much complexity that can be crammed into 40 minutes of television. And because it's a science fiction themed moral play which, unlike GoT, doesn't pretend to be realistic.
- nanis 6y ago
  Star Trek gets a pass. Politicians and their supporters who conduct foreign policy, start or stoke civil wars, abandon former friends etc because they view the world through the Star Trek perspective do not. I may not have been clear in why I brought up the Star Trek example ... FYI, there is no "The Kurds", for example.
BlueTemplar 6y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't Iraq and Turkey specifically created by the British Empire in order to NOT have these countries follow ethnico-cultural lines, thus making them weaker, with the Kurd situation being probably the worst example?
- nanis 6y ago
  Ah-em ... Iraq was specifically created by the British when they split the lands they had captured from the Ottoman Empire. The Republic of Turkey was created by Turks fighting, among others, the British, following the war fought over the imposed Sevres[1] partitioning of Anatolia. The Lausanne treaty[2] where one of my great grandfathers was in the Turkish delegation defined most of the borders of the Republic of Turkey. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_S%C3%A8vres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_S%C3%A8vres [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Lausanne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Lausanne
dragonwriter 6y ago
> From there, it is a hop, skip, and a jump to Biden proposing Iraq be divided into three separate zones among the Kurds, the Shia, and the Sunnis ... completely neglecting the actual ethnic, religious, and power dynamics on the ground. I don't think that suggestion was made ignoring those dynamics but taking them into account fairly deeply. It may have been problematic, but it's not like there was no non-problematic answer to the problems at the time. That position became unpopular after the short-term success of the following troop surge in Iraq (and the continuation of the de facto but less complete 2-way partition into a Kurdish entity and the rest of Iraq) resolved the immediate issues it was proposed in response to, but given the subsequent internal instability with regional involvement (the 2014-2017 civil war and the current internal instability and Iran-US proxy war in the country) driven largely by the internal conflict between Shia and Sunni groups outside of the Kurdish region and external intervention in that conflict, I don't think the short-term success of the surge really vindicated it and the situation is sought to make concrete as the correct way forward.

by nanis 6y ago

aardvarkr 6y ago

That went zero to a hundred real quick, without so much as a logical step in between. This sounds more like an AI generated comment because it’s so nonsensical.

BlueTemplar 6y ago

Star Trek gets a pass because there's only so much complexity that can be crammed into 40 minutes of television. And because it's a science fiction themed moral play which, unlike GoT, doesn't pretend to be realistic.

nanis 6y ago
Star Trek gets a pass. Politicians and their supporters who conduct foreign policy, start or stoke civil wars, abandon former friends etc because they view the world through the Star Trek perspective do not. I may not have been clear in why I brought up the Star Trek example ... FYI, there is no "The Kurds", for example.

BlueTemplar 6y ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't Iraq and Turkey specifically created by the British Empire in order to NOT have these countries follow ethnico-cultural lines, thus making them weaker, with the Kurd situation being probably the worst example?

nanis 6y ago
Ah-em ... Iraq was specifically created by the British when they split the lands they had captured from the Ottoman Empire. The Republic of Turkey was created by Turks fighting, among others, the British, following the war fought over the imposed Sevres[1] partitioning of Anatolia. The Lausanne treaty[2] where one of my great grandfathers was in the Turkish delegation defined most of the borders of the Republic of Turkey. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_S%C3%A8vres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_S%C3%A8vres [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Lausanne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Lausanne

dragonwriter 6y ago

> From there, it is a hop, skip, and a jump to Biden proposing Iraq be divided into three separate zones among the Kurds, the Shia, and the Sunnis ... completely neglecting the actual ethnic, religious, and power dynamics on the ground. I don't think that suggestion was made ignoring those dynamics but taking them into account fairly deeply. It may have been problematic, but it's not like there was no non-problematic answer to the problems at the time. That position became unpopular after the short-term success of the following troop surge in Iraq (and the continuation of the de facto but less complete 2-way partition into a Kurdish entity and the rest of Iraq) resolved the immediate issues it was proposed in response to, but given the subsequent internal instability with regional involvement (the 2014-2017 civil war and the current internal instability and Iran-US proxy war in the country) driven largely by the internal conflict between Shia and Sunni groups outside of the Kurdish region and external intervention in that conflict, I don't think the short-term success of the surge really vindicated it and the situation is sought to make concrete as the correct way forward.