{"id":308175,"date":"2017-05-14T23:40:35","date_gmt":"2017-05-14T22:40:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/mosul-thomas-friedman-and-the-globalization-of-misery\/"},"modified":"2017-05-14T23:40:35","modified_gmt":"2017-05-14T22:40:35","slug":"mosul-thomas-friedman-and-the-globalization-of-misery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/mosul-thomas-friedman-and-the-globalization-of-misery\/","title":{"rendered":"Mosul, Thomas Friedman, and the Globalization of Misery"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The closest I ever got to Mosul, Iraq\u2019s second largest city, was 1,720.7 miles<\/a> away — or so the Internet assures me.\u00a0 Although I\u2019ve had a lifelong interest in history, I know next to nothing about Mosul\u2019s, nor do I have more than a glancing sense of what it looks like, or more accurately what it looked like when all its buildings, including those in its \u201cOld City,\u201d were still standing.\u00a0 It has — or at least in better times had — a population of at least 1.8 million<\/a>, not one of whom have I ever met and significant numbers of whom are now either dead, wounded, uprooted, or in desperate straits.<\/p>\n

Consider what I never learned about Mosul my loss, a sign of my ignorance.\u00a0 Yet, in recent months, little as I know about the place, it\u2019s been on my mind — in part because what\u2019s now happening to that city will be the world\u2019s loss as well as mine.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In mid-October 2016, the U.S.-backed Iraqi army first launched an offensive to retake Mosul from the militants of the Islamic State.\u00a0 Relatively small numbers of ISIS fighters had captured<\/a> it in mid-2014 when the previous version of the Iraqi military (into which the U.S. had poured more than $25 billion<\/a>) collapsed ignominiously and fled, abandoning<\/a> weaponry and even uniforms along the way.\u00a0 It was in Mosul\u2019s Great Mosque that the existence of the Islamic State was first triumphantly proclaimed<\/a> by its \u201ccaliph,\u201d Abu Bakr al-Bagdadi.<\/p>\n

On the initial day of the offensive to recapture the city, the Pentagon was already congratulating<\/a> the Iraqi military for being \u201cahead of schedule\u201d in a campaign that was expected to \u201ctake weeks or even months.\u201d\u00a0 Little did its planners — who had been announcing<\/a> its prospective start for nearly a year — know.\u00a0 A week later, everything was still \u201cproceeding according to our plan,\u201d\u00a0claimed<\/a> then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter.\u00a0 By the end of<\/a> January 2017, after 100 days of fierce fighting, the eastern part of that city, divided by the Tigris River, was more or less back in government hands and it had, according to<\/a> New York Times<\/em> reporters on the scene, been \u201cspared the wholesale destruction inflicted on other Iraqi cities\u201d like Ramadi and Fallujah, even though those residents who hadn\u2019t fled were reportedly \u201cscratching out a primitive existence, deprived of electricity, running water and other essential city services.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that was the good news.\u00a0 More than 100 days later, Iraqi troops continue to edge their way through embattled western Mosul, with parts<\/a> of it, including the treacherous warren of streets in its Old City, still in the hands of ISIS militants amid continuing<\/a> bitter building-to-building fighting.\u00a0 The Iraqi government and its generals still insist, however, that everything will be over in mere weeks<\/a>.\u00a0 An estimated thousand or so ISIS defenders (of the original 4,000-8,000 reportedly entrenched in the city) are still holding out and will assumedly fight to the death.\u00a0 U.S. air power has repeatedly been called in big time, with civilian deaths soaring<\/a>, and hundreds of thousands<\/a> of its increasingly desperate and hungry inhabitants still living in battle-scarred Mosul as Islamic State fighters employ countless bomb-laden suicide vehicles and even small drones<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After seven months of unending battle in that single city, perhaps it shouldn\u2019t be surprising that Mosul has receded from the news here, even as civilian casualties grow, at least half a millionIraqis<\/a> have been displaced, and the Iraqi military has suffered grievous losses.<\/p>\n

Though there\u2019s been remarkably little writing about it, here\u2019s what now seems obvious: when the fighting is finally over and the Islamic State defeated, the losses will be so much more widespread than that.\u00a0 Despite initial claims<\/a> that the Iraqi military (and the U.S. Air Force) were taking great care to avoid as much destruction as possible in an urban landscape filled with civilians, the rules of engagement have since changed<\/a> and it\u2019s clear that, in the end, significant swathes of Iraq\u2019s second largest city will be left in ruins<\/a>. In this, it will resemble so many other cities and towns in Iraq and Syria, from Fallujah<\/a> to Ramadi<\/a>, Homs<\/a> to Aleppo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Disappearance of Mosul<\/strong><\/p>\n

At a moment when Donald Trump makes headlines daily with almost any random thing he says, the fate of Mosul doesn’t even qualify as a major news story.\u00a0 What happens in that city, however, will be no minor thing. It will<\/em> matter on this increasingly small planet of ours.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s to come is also, unfortunately, reasonably predictable.\u00a0 Eight, nine, or more months after this offensive was launched, the grim Islamic State in Mosul will undoubtedly be destroyed, but so will much of the city in a region that continues to be — to invent a word — rubblized.<\/p>\n

When Mosul is officially retaken, if not \u201cahead of schedule,\u201d then at least \u201caccording to plan,\u201d the proud announcements of \u201cvictory\u201d in the war against ISIS will make headlines.\u00a0 Soon after, however, Mosul will once again disappear from our American world and worries. Yet that will undoubtedly only be the beginning of the story in a world in crisis.\u00a0 Fourteen years have passed since the U.S. invaded Iraq and punched a hole<\/a> in the oil heartlands of the Middle East.\u00a0 In the wake of that invasion, states have been crumbling or simply imploding<\/a> and terror movements growing and spreading, while wars, ethnic slaughter, and all manner of atrocities have engulfed an ever-widening region. \u00a0Millions of Iraqis, Syrians, Afghans, Yemenis, Libyans, and others have been uprooted, sent into exile in their own countries, or fled across borders to become refugees.\u00a0 In Mosul alone, untold numbers of people whose fathers, mothers, grandparents, children, friends, and relatives were slaughtered in the Iraqi Army\u2019s offensive or simply murdered by ISIS will be left homeless, often without possessions, jobs, or communities in the midst of once familiar places that have been transformed into rubble.<\/p>\n

Mosul now lacks an airport, a railroad station, and a university — all destroyed in the recent fighting. Initial estimates suggest<\/a> that its rebuilding will cost billions of dollars over many years. And it\u2019s just one of many cities in such a state. The question is: Where exactly will the money to rebuild come from? After all, the price of oil is at present below $50<\/a> a barrel, the Iraqi and Syrian governments lack resources of every sort, and who can imagine a new Marshall Plan for the region coming from Donald Trump\u2019s America or, for that matter, anywhere else?<\/p>\n

In other words, the Iraqis, the Syrians, the Yemenis, the Libyans, the Afghans, and others are likely, in the end, to find themselves alone in the ruins of their worlds with remarkably little recourse.\u00a0 With that in mind and given the record of those last 14 years, how exactly do you imagine that things will turn out for the inhabitants of Mosul, or Ramadi, or Fallujah, or cities yet to be destroyed? What new movements, ethnic struggles, and terror outfits will emerge from such a nightmare?<\/p>\n

To put it another way, if you think that such a disaster will remain the possession of the Iraqis (Syrians, Yemenis, Libyans, and Afghans), then you haven\u2019t been paying much attention to the history of the twenty-first century. You evidently haven\u2019t noticed that Donald J. Trump won the last presidential election in the United States, in part by playing on fears of a deluge of refugees from the Middle East and of Islamic terrorism; that the British voted to leave the European Union in part based on similar fears; and that across Europe pressures over refugees and terror attacks have helped to alter the political landscape.<\/p>\n

Where Is Globalization Now That We Need It?<\/strong><\/p>\n

To frame things slightly differently, let me ask another question entirely: In these last years, haven\u2019t you wondered what ever happened to \u201cglobalization\u201d and the endless media attention that was once paid to it? Not so very long ago we were being assured that this planet was binding itself into a remarkably tight knot of interconnectedness that was going to amaze us all.\u00a0 As Thomas Friedman of the New York Times<\/em> put it<\/a> in 1996, we were seeing \u201cthe integration of free markets, nation-states, and information technologies to a degree never before witnessed, in a way that is enabling individuals, corporations, and countries to reach around the world farther, faster, deeper, and cheaper than ever.\u201d\u00a0 All of this was to be fed and led by the United States, the last superpower standing, and as a result, the global \u201cplaying field\u201d would miraculously \u201cbe leveled<\/a>\u201d on a planet becoming a mosaic of Pizza Huts, iMacs<\/a>, and Lexuses.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Who of a certain age doesn\u2019t remember those years after the Soviet Union imploded when we all suddenly found ourselves in a single superpower world?\u00a0 It was a moment when, thanks to vaunted technological advances, it seemed blindingly clear to the cognoscenti that this was going to be a single-everything planet.\u00a0 We were all about to be<\/a> absorbed into a \u201csingle market for goods, capital, and commercial services\u201d from which, despite the worries of naysayers, \u201calmost everyone\u201d stood \u201cto gain.\u201d\u00a0 In a world not of multiple superpowers but of multiple \u201csupermarkets,\u201d we were likely to become both more democratic and more capitalistic by the year as an interlocking set of transnational corporate players, nations, and peoples, unified by a singularly interwoven set of communication systems (representing nothing short of an information revolution), triumphed, while poverty, that eternal plague of humanity, stood to lose out<\/a> big time.\u00a0 Everything would be connected on what was, for the first time, to be a single, \u201cflattened\u201d planet.<\/p>\n

It won\u2019t surprise you, I\u2019m sure, to be told that that\u2019s not exactly the planet we\u2019re now on.\u00a0 Instead, whatever processes were at work, the result has been record numbers<\/a> of billionaires, record levels<\/a> of inequality, and refugees in numbers<\/a> not seen since much of the world was in a state of collapse after World War II.<\/p>\n

Still, don\u2019t you ever wonder where, conceptually speaking, globalization is now that we need it? I mean, did it really turn out that we weren\u2019t living together on a single shrinking planet? Were the globalists of that moment inhabiting another planet entirely in another solar system? Or could it be that globalization is still the ruling paradigm here, but that what\u2019s globalizing isn\u2019t (or isn\u2019t just) Pizza Huts, iMacs, and Lexuses, but pressure points for the fracturing of our world?<\/p>\n

The globalization of misery doesn\u2019t have the cachet of the globalization of plenty. It doesn\u2019t make for the same uplifting reading, nor does skyrocketing global economic inequality seem quite as thrilling as a leveling playing field (unless, of course, you happen to be a billionaire). And thanks significantly to the military efforts of the last superpower standing, the disintegration of significant regions of the planet doesn\u2019t quite add up to what the globalists had in mind for the twenty-first century. Failed states, spreading terror movements, all too many Mosuls, and the conditions for so much more of the same weren\u2019t what globalization was supposed to be all about.<\/p>\n

Perhaps, however, it\u2019s time to begin reminding ourselves that we’re still on a globalizing planet, even if one experiencing pressures of an unexpected sort, including from the disastrous never-ending American war on terror. It\u2019s so much more convenient, of course, to throw the idea of globalization overboard and imagine that Mosul is thousands of miles away in a universe that bears next to no relation to our own.<\/p>\n

What It Really Means to Be on a \u201cFlattening\u201d Planet<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that in France last week extremist presidential candidate Marine Le Pen was defeated by a young, little known former investment banker and government minister, Emmanuel Macron, and the European Union preserved.\u00a0 As with an earlier election in Holland in which a similar right-wing candidate lost, this is being presented as potentially the high-water mark<\/a> of what\u2019s now commonly called \u201cpopulism\u201d in Europe (or the Brexit-style fragmentation of that continent).\u00a0 But I\u2019d take such reassurances with a grain of salt, given the pressures likely to come. After all, in both Holland and France, two extreme nationalist parties garnered<\/a> record votes<\/a> based on anti-Islamic, anti-refugee sentiment and will, after the coming parliamentary elections in France, both be represented, again in record numbers<\/a>, in their legislatures.<\/p>\n

The rise of such \u201cpopulism\u201d — think of it as the authoritarian fragmentation of the planet — is already a global trend<\/a>.\u00a0 So just imagine the situation four or potentially even eight years from now after Donald Trump\u2019s generals, already in the saddle, do their damnedest in the Greater Middle East and Africa.\u00a0 There\u2019s no reason to believe that, under their direction, the smashing of key regions of the planet won\u2019t continue.\u00a0 There\u2019s no reason to doubt that, in an expanding world of Mosuls — the Syrian \u201ccapital\u201d of the Islamic State, Raqqa, is undoubtedly the next city<\/a> in line for such treatment — \u201cvictories\u201d won\u2019t produce a planet of greater ethnic savagery, religious extremism, military destruction, and chaos.\u00a0 This, in turn, ensures a further spread of terror groups and an even more staggering uprooting of peoples.\u00a0 (It\u2019s worth noting, for instance, that since the death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of U.S. Special Operations forces, al-Qaeda has grown<\/a>, not shrunk, gaining yet more traction across the Greater Middle East.) \u00a0So far, America\u2019s permanent \u201cwar on terror\u201d has helped produce a planet of fear, refugees<\/a> on an almost unimaginable scale, and ever more terror.\u00a0 What else would you imagine could arise from the rubble of so many Mosuls?<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t think that this is an ever-more connected planet still being \u201cflattened\u201d (even if in quite a different way than expected), and that sooner or later the destruction of Mosul will reverberate in our world, too, then you don\u2019t get our world. It\u2019s obvious, for instance, that future Mosuls will only produce more refugees, and you already know where that\u2019s led, from Brexit to Donald Trump. Destroy enough Mosuls and, even in the heartland of the planet\u2019s sole superpower, the fears of those who already feel they\u2019ve been left in a ditch will only rise (and be fed further by demagogues ready to use that global flow of refugees for their own purposes).<\/p>\n

Given the transformations of recent years, just think what it will mean to uproot ever vaster populations, to set the homeless, the desperate, the angry, the hurt, and the vengeful — millions of adults and children<\/a> whose lives have been devastated or destroyed — in motion.\u00a0 Imagine, for instance, what those pressures will mean when it comes to Europe and its future politics.<\/p>\n

Think about what\u2019s to come on this small planet of ours — and that\u2019s without even mentioning the force that has yet to fully reveal itself in all its fragmenting and<\/em> globalizing and<\/em> leveling power.\u00a0 We now call it, mildly enough, \u201cclimate change\u201d or \u201cglobal warming.\u201d\u00a0 Just wait until, in the decades to come, rising sea levels and extreme weather events put human beings in motion in startling ways (particularly given that the planet\u2019s sole superpower is now run by men in violent denial of the very existence of such a force or the human sources of its power).<\/p>\n

You want a shrinking planet? You want terror? You want globalization? Think about that. And do you wonder why, these days, I have Mosul on my mind?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Via Common Dreams<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The closest I ever got to Mosul, Iraq\u2019s second largest city, was 1,720.7 miles away — or so the Internet assures me.\u00a0 Although I\u2019ve had a lifelong interest in history, I know next to nothing about Mosul\u2019s, nor do I have more than a glancing sense of what it looks like, or more accurately what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-308175","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308175\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}