University of California at Santa Barbara Professors: ISIS Isn't That Bad, We Just Need To "Contextualize" Them . . .

weaselzippers;

Via College Fix:

Two University of California-Santa Barbara history professors, Sherene Seikaly and Adam Sabra, held a discussion titled “ISIS: A Historical Perspective” back on May 20.

Assistant Professor Sherene Seikaly’s portion of the talk “focused on the formation of ISIS as influenced by a combination of Arab authoritarianism and United States intervention.”

However, the former’s allotment basically was composed of pointing out that Saddam Hussein was a bad guy. Regarding the latter … well, that appears to have taken up the bulk of the chat.

The Bottom Line reports:

Seikaly began her portion of the talk by pointing to the U.S. use of depleted uranium in the battle of Fallujah, which she noted caused high [sic] rates of cancers, like leukemia, and birth defects than were found in a post-nuclear Nagasaki.

“Fallujah was effectively emptied of its population and destroyed,” said Sabra, also noting that the U.S. began recruiting many Sunnis successfully during their occupation of the city.

Seikaly also noted the high rates of mass incarceration, torture, and long-term detention of Iraqis by U.S. forces. Those that would become leaders of ISIS and similar groups, Seikaly stated, were able to build alliances in these prisons.

“This group [ISIS] does not emerge out of a sudden Islamic tendency for beheading,” Seikaly said, before elaborating on the role of authoritarian regimes in the region. Seikaly noted a deep kind of sectarianism in the region—some of which was organic, some of which was incited by the U.S. as well as Iranian and Saudi Arabian governments. “These different interests benefit from a lack of unity,” she said, pointing to the ways in which tensions between Sunni and Shiite groups have been aggravated.

“Sectarianism didn’t just happen,” said Sabra. “People didn’t automatically go for a gun and start shooting people of a different ethnicity or religion.”

Seikaly gave a brief overview of the 1991 war in Iraq, a US reaction to invasion of Kuwait by the regime of Saddam Hussein. After the war, the US imposed heavy sanctions on Iraq.

“The outcome of this war was devastating on the Iraqi people,” said Seikaly. “They were subject to one of the harshest sanction regimes in recent history. Those who paid the price for these sanctions weren’t those in the regime, but the people of Iraq.

And who is the President of UC?

Why, it's none other than the former Democrat head of the Federal Dept. of Homeland Security.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Napolitano

The same prosperous looking little party apparatchik who signed off on your being breast and genital groped at airports by the TSA.

You remember the TSA, don't you? Homeland, Security, and all that related bullshit?

Undercover Agents Snuck Fake Explosives, Weapons Past TSA 96% of The Time.

Janet, your legacy remains.

Nice to know you're now riding herd on ISIS "Contextualizers". 

Same UC System in SF with their ghost Psych Gulags.

Thank You College Fix and Zip.