Will Isis destroy Palmyra

[guy]

The ruins of Palmyra have long enchanted visitors, its famous queen Zeinobia occupying the same iconic status for Syrians as Cleopatra does for Egypt.

 

But the once-bustling Silk Road hub known in antiquity for its community of artisans and merchants of varied ethnicity and religion is now in the crosshairs of the terror group Islamic State, whose fighters have looted and destroyed historical and cultural artefacts in Iraq.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/15/isis-pulls-back-from-palmyra-but-fear-of-cultural-atrocity-remains

 

 

 

guy also known as gaius

Edited May 16, 2015 by guy

[guy]

Let's hope for the best:

 

 

 

guy also known as gaius

[Onasander]

I've been following this war very closely.... hate to say it, but at thus point this site really isn't worth the effort.

 

Most of the historic sites in Syria not firmly within Assad's core areas have already been potmarked by shovels digging left and right, and our own people- archeologists, art history and historians needing some extra money have gone around "Authenticating" artifacts.

 

I can't say deep down inside that I really care for the actual statues or walls any more than future facsimilies based off of photographic reconstructions. Sorry.... been one too many times to the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, saw the old plaster casts, know 3-D printing can pull it off.

 

My big issue is this archeologist in Syria trying to change the nature of "Just War Theory" by adding historical preservation as a collective cause of war. I've thought about it over the last few days, and as much as I appreciate the romanticism of defending a "historic site", its pretty much for bullshit reasons.

 

Assad.... he really, really screwed up. He inherited the problem in large part, but botched his international alliances. His family took Syria from being in a Arab Union with Egypt to a purely ethnic-partisan tyranny of a minority, power playing, obstructing, and committing at times genocide against a majority population kept economically and politically disenfranchised. His dynasty played the game stupid, its a trait the Ba'athist all carry. Shitty poor political outlook, with a remarkable capacity to pick fights with countries and organizations they really, really shouldn't get in fights with.

 

End result is, this.... ISIS is iconoclastic. It has access to basic construction and demolition tools, and it keeps them busy. Every time they waste their breath on blowing up a shrine or digging in a field looking for treasure is planning and operation time off the table for their genocide.

 

Furthermore, had Assad instituted permanent roaming patrols in his bases, between the outer parameter and his garrison and HQ, his forces wouldn't of lost Idlib, or experience the sharp contraction in Aleppo. They have been using unorthodox stratagems to get around the outer parameters, wiping out Assad's intelligentsia.... his military thinkers. A few guys regularly patrolling from a secondary operations center could of sniffed these infiltrations out in advance and organize a resistance.

 

Assad didn't. End result is high attrition, a dumber kind of leadership, and far, far down the list of concerns, increased damage to already damaged sites. The US will not be doing a massive air campaign to save this site, as it would be counter productive on several fronts. Our bombs have very, very high explosive yield and can take out half a block. I don't think this would do any good if the goal is to preserve said site. All we would be doing is saving Assad.

 

However, the greater ethical complication is, the genocide threat. I doubt ISIS will try to assimilate the Alawite community, at least not meaningfully. Five minutes of lip service, urging to convert.... then dead.

 

Short of introducing new tactics and ad hoc modifications to basic infantry weapons that will allow them to hold ground, fundamentally morphing the tactical synthesis between Assad and ISIS, they won't be able to hold on their own. At least not without significant air support and supplies. I'm deeply loathed for the former, as ISIS and every aspiring militant group on the planet would quickly likewise adopt the weapon mods and MOUT tactics, using it against conventional forces, or the US (and a couple of planes from a handful of European and Arab countries amounting to a rather pityful supporting force) will have to defend Assad as he tries to cover his ass and save his regime.

 

Though they are responsible and culpable in making the situation as it is, have very bloody hands.... I'm not so sure I can tolerate genocide. We might have to defend Assad's people, but we are unlikely to do that short of his regime outright collapsing. As for the art and history.... archeology itself will have to adapt to the circumstances, a new subfield. Using in the long term over the next few up coming decades, databases searching out background images of supposed art, seizures by national customs, and old fashion sloothing will have to arise and merge in novel ways to bring all these artifacts, these "pagan artifacts" being destroyed and sold oftentimes to even rich middle eastern buyers (ironic) in Arabia and Qatar, into a meaningful timeline. Once Syria calms down.... and one way or another it will someday, even if ISIS conquers the world, we can replicate these sites. 3, 10,100 generations from now, this will just be another chapter in the history of said sites. The pillagers undoubtedly missed a few artifacts, we will still have discoveries.

 

Just not comfortable with historic sites mattering more than people. This holds for future wars, should we keep the Swedes from blowing up the Riffle Tower, or should the Chinese stop Jamaica from razing the memorials in Washington, DC down centuries from now, minus considerations of what brought on the tragedy in the first place? Were talking about just willy nilly adding rules to international law that will cause a lot of treaty complications. I've been rather sourface with the UN Secretary General talking about war crimes and crews against humanity because some rock got drilled in, or some old empty building got blown up. If only we had this passion and disgust when children are kidnapped, communities are raped, armies clash, etc. We'll undoubtedly will have a impassioned ICC court prosecutor getting a couple of minor commanders a few decades from now making grandiose speeches about righteousness and justice. Its all a farce on our part.

 

Assad did a lot to do himself in, but so did just about everyone else. Nobody gave a damn. We really didn't take the idea of a UN seriously, use our diplomats better over the last couple of generations. We fucked around with two poorly thought out, yet impassioned ideologies, had our cold war, and the older cold war between the Shiites and the Sunni learned every demented, dirty lesson. In Europe and the US, our left got delusional and high minded, and our right narrow minded and entrenched. We took ideas seriously, but not people. Now, ideas get to die. Artifacts, monuments, communities.... ripped apart, mangled, destroyed. Collective sins, and no one anywhere is above responsibility. Its not going to happen just in Syria. Just in Iraq. This will be system wide, absurd, and tolerated, if for no other reason than it happens to only some, and only for a generation or two in any given location. A mass hysteria contained. I'm not for medicating it with more aitstrikes, just to "stem the flow" in a particular direction or front while leaving the larger mechanisms and political organisms intact.

[guy]

I've been following this war very closely.... hate to say it, but at thus point this site really isn't worth the effort.

 

Most of the historic sites in Syria not firmly within Assad's core areas have already been potmarked by shovels digging left and right, and our own people- archeologists, art history and historians needing some extra money have gone around "Authenticating" artifacts.

 

I can't say deep down inside that I really care for the actual statues or walls any more than future facsimilies based off of photographic reconstructions. Sorry.... been one too many times to the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, saw the old plaster casts, know 3-D printing can pull it off.

 

 

Wow. That's a bit harsh.

 

I, too, have been to the Carnegie Museum many times. It is nice, indeed.

 

There is nothing, however, like seeing an ancient site in situ. Visiting a museum cannot compare with seeing a site and enjoying the surrounding natural geographic contours. Books are nice. Museums can be fascinating. But there is nothing like the real thing, despite natural wear and human depredations.

 

 

guy also known as gaius.

[Onasander]

Have you seen any pictures of said sites, recently? The pillars are shot up, and the ground heavily cratered.

 

This city is important, it was a Seleucid stronghold, and produced several Stoic and Platonist philosophers.

 

I am prepared to feed what remains of it to the dust, in the same way the countless generations before us just didn't care enough to preserve it. Important Muslim thinkers came from there too. I guarantee you most historians don't bother with them, and tourist nitpick an era generally. They will have to be content with reconstructions.

 

Now if you really fell otherwise, I can reactivate the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, get some thirty to forty like minded guys to join up, link up in Kurdish Jazeera with you (and you WILL be there) and we can fight our way down to the site, and entrench. We will have very little in supplies, the sun will be hot, the water will sicken us, and if the heat doesn't kill us, ISIS raping out abdomens with bayonets in our trenches will.

 

Or.... you can learn to appreciate 3-D printed recreation of ruins. I really don't care to die for Assad. If westerners show up to protect a site of roman idolatry, I assure you, ISIS will throw everything against it without care to the consequences of their long term strategy or even effective tactics, we could kill them a thousand to one, and they would still come.... as we would represent everything they despise.

 

We can thank movie producers, and sci-fi television shows for pioneering realistic sets. At least we know we can rebuild them. And my guts get to stay on the inside in the process. I and hopefully no one else is dying for that crap.

[Onasander]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflexivity_%28social_theory%29

 

If you know anything about MBTI, the NT/SF axis expresses "reflectivity". I'm a very complex INTJ (conscious control over both Supplimentry Motor Areas, not just one). This effect stands out very sharply to me, as I process not just raw empirical data, but also social data, from organizations and hierarchies.

 

ISIS takes it purely from a extroverted level, from Hierarchy and from firmly rooted axiomatic principles and structures, and use a system of presidents known as Hadiths, which are similar to presidents in common law, but are much more zealous in the use.

 

By attacking the ruins, they are making a very economic use, under low threat conditions, of destroying sites, and thus affirming via propaganda that they are fulfilling their mission, no matter how incompetent they get in actual combat. This matters a lot to the kinds of people they recruit. An INTJ like myself will nitpick this relentlessly (see my Greek and Roman Book price thread) until every variable in cause and effect is known and I control it. Its central to my personality. Not for these guys, only aspects that encourage social inclusion are.

 

When we in the west get in a hissy fit and start weeping over the sites being destroyed, it only encourages them, as the feed off our pain and bitching, it satisfies them, gives them a Serotonin boost, and conditions them to a superiority complex, gives them a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction, and exasperates the situation.

 

It has become newsworthy to report relics and sites being destroyed. Oftentimes emphasizing old Jewish and christian churches. These guys want to feel superior over such people, that serotonin surge. They live in a world where Muslims feel inferior, but their religion claims superiority.

 

So.... We need to merely collapse the market value of said sites in the eyes of ISIS. If they blow up a site, we don't bitch and whine, and act like its precious. We announce plans to rebuild.... a international call for images to allow reconstruction in the future. We remain self assured, and we heavily denounce buying artifacts, even if just to "save them". The old churches, such as the Greek and Armenian churches, have long denounced buying old crosses and murals, and other keepsakes during the 20th century, as it likely came through such destructive violence.

 

Its something Augustus started. The emperor would collect novelties, such as books, expensive historical items, even supposedly dinosaur bones (the bones of giants) for display in his crappy little house. He reinvented what luxury was. Thomas Jefferson built on this with his private library/museum. Were now at a point where we need to examine the underlining memes underlining the psychological motivations to continue in this fashion, as Iconoclasm is adapting and is seeking out a militant destruction to it. Are we merely adapting the old mechanisms for "sacred space" in old religions and placing it on museums and archeological sites? Are we aping medieval pilgrimages and hoping for the same results in self identity and self affirmation? What is really going on in our heads? We need to figure this out quick, as ISIS already has a "Theory of Mind" developed about us. They have a admitted fascination with history, and even Rome, and given this site high Google rankings, likely came here a few times. They have a pretty good sense of us, and actively feed off our psychology. I say, its time to learn of them in the same manner, and reexamine ourselves, and process our behavior under a aggressive axis that undermines their assumptions, and seeks to trivalize and derail.

 

Phones with holographic displays are expected to hit market next year. In academia, there is a call for papers. We should have a call of photos, and make it freely available for processing in panoramic displays. Boost the details of how we collate and process historic sites so we can better recreate them. Emphasize 3-D printing, and the principles Carnegie had of making replicas of monuments as just as valid to display as the original. Finally.... and this is the hard part, find what is still human, still valid in ISIS, and forgive them, and do outreach so they can't feel so separated and filled with hatred and inferiority. They are still human, and are acting very human in their monstrosity. A lot of young guys acting foolish. I don't recommend hanging them all. We gotta live in the same world as they do, well into old age. Their viewpoint will have to be digested and understood, even under absolute victory on our part, much like we had to absord the Nazis after the war and intellectually comprehend them.

 

Right now, are we even seeing this? We don't have a end game in sight. Most important thing is examining ourselves, and why we are as we are. Its the one thing capable to preserving our history in the long term.

[C. Fabius Lupus]

Reconstructions are no substitute for the originals. Later generations of historians could claim that all these reconstructed artefacts were just 21st century forgeries of things and buildings that never existed. Only the original is an evidence. The Islamic State is erasing human history.

 

Archaelogical sites are far more important than human beings. They cannot be replaced once they are destroyed, humans can.

Edited May 18, 2015 by C. Fabius Lupus

[Onasander]

I really don't care if in 500,000 years from now historians intreperate our era like the end of the movie Idiocracy, when the UN (pronounced Un, not U N) lead a army of dinosaurs to defeat Charlie Chaplain and his Nazis empire.

 

We can leave micro encodings on the rebuilt monuments, listing they were replicas of images post war, date of manufacture, location, etc in them. Large monolithic structures can just have it openly printed on a pillar, small items acid etched.

 

I assure you, a 3-D copy is better than dropping a group of paratroopers on site to blow half the site to hell with devastating air support to hold back ISIS shock troops. It may hurt a feeling of authenticity, but that is of a incredibly minor matter in comparison to more human life being lost. Our technology is incidently posed to recreation of sites. What's the first thing we do when a conflict breaks out? We send high resolution satellites overhead. And before that, if a site is worth preserving, there was already some billion tourist selfies. Like, right now, Cambodia keeps arresting tourists who bare their butts in front of the Angor Wat temples.... They can't grasp why that is happening. There are a million pictures floating out there of it. If we ever lost them, we could rebuild them if we desired to have them once ayain., and it would on many levels be fairly accurate. Knowing this, I would be hesitant to agree to have you drafted and sent with a rifle and helmet to stand outside of one of the temples to hold off a pissed off Chinese battle group that thought for whatever hypothetical reason blowing up the temples were a swell idea.

 

This is a issue that will become perennial to archeology, historians, and tourism for now one, as long as war exists. I don't want people dying because of a horribly misplaced belief in the sanctity of historical site, that somehow blowing up a Buddha or even the Washington monument is crimes against humanity, like genocide is.... Its very shit headed, but its definitely isn't comparable, and we certainly have a plethora of options now available that will allow us to recover to the point that the rebuilt sites will look identical to the former. People matter more. I'm not dying for a decayed pillar, and I'll be damned if I'm going to consent to some kid dying in my place for some bad idea.

[C. Fabius Lupus]

The destruction of the ancient sites is about rewriting history. The Mohammedans call the time before their prophet jahilia (= ignorance). In 100 years they will claim that there was no civilization before Islam. And since there will be no proof to the opposite left, humans will have no choice but believing it. Nobody will take some micro encoding by some "infidels" from he 21st century as an evidence.

 

Almost all the people there are only Mohammedans anyway. So the "human lives" that you are so worried about, when barbarians kill each other in their usual infightings, are really the last of our concerns. It becomes our concern however, when they threaten world heritage sites.

The Islamic State should have been stopped long ago, before they came close to any archaeological site.

[Onasander]

I agree, this particular manifestation of a concept, that of a caliphate could of ended back in 2004-2005 when Bush got the NATO-European defensive border zones.... Spain, Ukraine, Georgia, Romania/Bulgaria, and Italy (and Poland, they felt/feel like a border to Russia) in Iraq. Spain and Italy hid inside their barracks, and their left made every excuse to wound themselves.

 

The coalition experienced a partial collapse, and the large fluxuation from the Arab spring, which though hardly solely dependent upon their crumbling morale and self righteous defication, most definitely was part and parcle to the EU border issues, immigration, and current terrorism. This is a creature very much of their own msking , but it has its ideological roots in an earlier era that had nothing to do with the US or Islam. Look up the French Four Corporals during world war one. Its a cultural sickness of the mind unique to Europe. Our left in america merely aped the European movements. This war could of been ended a lot earlier.

 

But it wasn't. We in fact have a billion Muslims out there, many of whom, in the case of this forum, deep interest in Roman history. I believe in a progressive navigation of conflict, where we create a war calculus of ideas and military strategy, of diplomacy and science, technology, trade..... to systematically undercut the impulse to war. They are indeed worshippers of Mohammad's adaptation of a pagan moon goddess named Allah into a male named Allah, they believe Muhammed caught a genie of all things, and their innate superiority and justifications to do terrible things. But they are human in doing so, as you are in declaring their backwards inferiority, and willingness to dispense their lives for their aliveness. I'm not too quick to punish men without insight to a endgame. I don't do things merely due to the impulse to do so, or because I'm quick to emotion or anger. Justice is not a feeling, but the rationalization process that leads us to appreciate, at my best, and my worst, That I Am, and Thus You Are. Societies may come to hold innate advantages over another at times, but they are still all men. We change, and we stay the same. Sirach and Ecclesiastes. Athens and Jerusalem. I can accept these dichotomies. God gave us freewill, and I'm not about to turn my back on God by turning my back on man, disrespecting his creation.

 

Your wrong, the monuments can clearly be recreated. What can't be recreated are the lives lost on either side in preserving stone.

 

I recommend a reading of Ibn Khaldun, his Muqadimmah is a eye opener.

[Onasander]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32820857

 

Because of the absurd international focus on the historical sITE, and not the civilian plight of non-combatants, we can be fairly certain that ISIS will focus extra hard over the next month to destroy the very little that is left.

 

Argument about protecting the site is thus over.

 

Call for tourist pictures for future reconstructions at the site once its liberated (be it Assad, The Euphrates Volcano Coalition, or The Free Syrian Army.... or even perhaps another country) is appropriate now. I can't see much we can do via aerial bombardment to "save" the site, but we can certainly demoralize ISIS with the futility of destroying the site and others like it if they see the international community is dead set on recreating every destroyed ruin, every destroyed site.

[C. Fabius Lupus]

This cultural relativism under your motto "They are all still men" is the root of today's problems.

It is a pointless argument. Bacteria are also still living beings. Does this mean anything?

They are barbarians and we are civlized people. This is what counts, not biological similarities.

 

And what do you mean with lives cannot be recreated? The barbarians breed faster than they can be killed. And even if 90% of them were killed, it would only take one or two generations and the former numbers would be back under favorable breeding conditions. Destroyed buildings do not rebuild themselves, killed populations easily grow back.

[guy]

Watch the included video:

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/concerns-grow-for-fate-of-palmyra-one-of-the-middle-easts-most-renowned-sites/2015/05/21/45e47ec2-ff8b-11e4-805c-c3f407e5a9e9_story.html

 

 

guy also known as gaius

[Onasander]

They fundamental difference between humans and bacteria is a view billion years of shared selective breeding and ancestors (on the human side). Plus, human to human relations rank much higher on the categorical imperative scale than bacteria when your human, almost all the time. I might save a bacterium over say, Hitler if the bacterium is rare and can cure something, it's the closest exception hypothetically I can think of, and it's a isolated extreme with little middle ground. Obviously humans over bacteria.

 

Your mindset is barbaric. You confuse the civilized man with the artifacts of his environment. Civilization is a realization, a state of passing becoming, when we can look back at our former confusion and know in our awareness we've moved passed the former state. Most men who live in so called "civilizations" are rarely civilized, merely domesticated. They only know one mindset, it were indoctrinated in it at birth. Our youth associations with their rites of progression, or our universities with fraternities and diplomas rarely achieve any success here, it's a charade in the inverse of Plato banning actors who can play any part, or Swedenborg's higher angels unable and unwilling to play the parts of characters from a lower walk of life. We find it unconscionable to be the other, we take the safe path. Many aren't even aware there are alternatives to being than what they have been taught and valued as commonsense and sure.

 

Many of the barbarians in ISIS are in fact foreign fighters, a great many from the most "liberal" of nations and educations in Europe. They literally come from all over, and they react negatively to us. They understand us enough to of made the choice to leave us after growing up among us. It means they are everything that we are, potentially.... as they can choose to continue to play along.... but are also more. US + Extra Insight we lack.

 

We become the barbarians when our society doesn't grasp this feedback loop that produces contradictions and otherness, especially militant otherness, in our own relations. We are unlikely to win this without self analysis, to see what mutual feedback loops are shared in our two groups that lead consistently to violence, and to examine our side of it in earnest, and mutually come to a cultural, quite conscious awareness of what we're doing, how we are feeding into the animosity, and once realized, if we care to modify it,eliminate,or carry on. Anger can be a useful mechanism in war, but it should be justified and rationally directed on a strategic level with expectations it can benefit the greater good, and that it isn't being used haphazardly. It needs to be highly efficient, painful, highly versatile, and compatible with long term needs, including sustainability.

 

Anger in warfare rarely leads to sustainable war. It makes stupid war, with shitheaded standards for what constitute for results.

 

I desire something more advanced, pure, effective, and easy to maintain in the long term. I'm not interested in spending a million dollars on a missile for every member for the opposition killed, or large firebases to support the operations of brigade and divisions to field force with skyrocketing financial costs and no end in sight.

 

I instead urge a very measured and balanced approach, one designed to keep casualties on at least our side to a minimum, and the opposite to the minimal algorithmic necessity to asymmetrical break up and ground to a halt the opposition's willingness to fight. We also need to understand their propaganda, and philosophy, so we can move in and undercut the motivational message, their memes and emotional cause to war.

 

We can only do this if we're rational enough to grasp they are every bit as human and intelligent as we are, if not more, and that the bulk of the underlining effort on our side is intellectual and emotive, acquired from right information and clear, culture wide understood objectives and possible negative repercussions, and a willingness to carry through.

 

Sad truth is, ISIS is doing just that to us. We are barbarians as we never munched care to learn the enemy, or learn about ourselves like they have. They are systematically undermining our feedback loops faster.... our alliances and coalitions are increasingly fragile and fracture prone, our diverse cultures unwilling to look within and examine how we differ, how we are similar, and what underlines our differences, and if on a psychological level our opponents at times make valid points. Instead, we stereotype them as worthless and insane, mock their racial characteristics or desert environments (sand niggers), and encourage to bomb away. We don't even question the tactical response, we more or less expect bombing, and a couple of commando raids, cause that is what is done in past wars with very different kinds of enemies.

 

We never stop to fucking think. It's always a rush to judgement.

Smarter, not dumber. Dumb got us into this situation, and the situation was very much a group think affair, with a lot of input from self righteous neutral nations. We're on one planet, if a war is going on, your more or less involved. Ignorance is the only plea we have to the crimes that occur these days.

 

I'm looking for stuff that works. Calling them barbarians and bombing them isn't likely to work in the effort to further stymie them. It just pisses them off more, and makes them more eager to repeat once they saw they struck a nerve.

Edited May 24, 2015 by Onasander

[C. Fabius Lupus]

Trying to understand the enemy, "winning their hearts and minds", questioning our own motives and means, trying to have an objective, neutral view of us and them, this false cultural relativism is what has made us weak, effeminate and demoralized. 

This despicable weakness is not an example that the barbarians would want to copy.

And this is why ISIS gets every day more followers from all over the world. Weakness is not attractive. So they reject all the achievements of our civilization along with it.

Edited May 24, 2015 by C. Fabius Lupus