Neoliberalism and the destruction of nation states

Again, consider Syria. The expansion of the free market in a country where there was neither democratic accountability nor the rule of law meant one thing above all: plutocrats linked to the nation’s ruling family took anything that seemed potentially profitable. In the process, they grew staggeringly wealthy, while the denizens of Syria’s impoverished villages, country towns, and city slums, who had once looked to the state for jobs and cheap food, suffered. It should have surprised no one that those places became the strongholds of the Syrian uprising after 2011. In the capital, Damascus, as the reign of neoliberalism spread, even the lesser members of the mukhabarat, or secret police, found themselves living on only $200 to $300 a month, while the state became a machine for thievery.
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Neoliberalism was once believed to be the path to secular democracy and free-market economies. In practice, it has been anything but. Instead, in conjunction with the resource curse, as well as repeated military interventions by Washington and its allies, free-market economics has profoundly destabilized the Greater Middle East. Encouraged by Washington and Brussels, twenty-first-century neoliberalism has made unequal societies ever more unequal and helped transform already corrupt regimes into looting machines. This is also, of course, a formula for the success of the Islamic State or any other radical alternative to the status quo. Such movements are bound to find support in impoverished or neglected regions like eastern Syria or eastern Libya.

What if all lives were equal?

There were four Americans killed in Benghazi whose deaths can on some level be considered a failure by our government; there have been some 4,500 American service members killed in Iraq for whose deaths our government was perhaps even more responsible.
So, calculating proportionally and assuming that those lives cut short in Iraq are worth as much attention as the lives cut short in Benghazi, House Republicans would have launched 6,750 investigations of the Iraq war to have been conducted over the course of 4,500 years. Wouldn't that have been absurd?

The "liberation" of Falujah

Al-Issawi said that “Many buildings in the city of Fallujah have been razed to the ground or damaged beyond repair. Other facilities such as the sports stadium were badly damaged and dozens of homes were burned down”. He pointed out that the damage caused was extensive and that reconstruction will take a long time. He also added that militias continue to loot homes and public facilities, commit acts of arson and carry out bombings.

In related news

Some residents of the Iraqi Sunni city of Fallujah who recently fled the bombardment and intense fighting between the Islamic State (ISIS) and government forces have expressed fear of returning home for fear of revenge by members of the Shiite militia known as Hashd al-Shaabi.
“My work is in Fallujah and if I get the chance I will eventually go back alone and leave my family in Kurdistan for fear of execution and revenge acts,” Abdullah Al-Jamelyi, a refugee who is now sheltered in the Kurdistan Region told Rudaw.

CIA supplying arms for black market

Weapons shipped into Jordan by the Central Intelligence Agency and Saudi Arabia intended for Syrian rebels have been systematically stolen by Jordanian intelligence operatives and sold to arms merchants on the black market, according to American and Jordanian officials.
Some of the stolen weapons were used in a shooting in November that killed two Americans and three others at a police training facility in Amman, F.B.I. officials believe after months of investigating the attack, according to people familiar with the investigation.