“History corrects its judgment far too late. The correction does not help the victim and does not absolve the executioner” — Herbert Marcuse.The art of protest is a mere “appeasement of mind”. It neither alters fact nor reality but then, as Marcuse says, “Only in art can bourgeois society ‘tolerate its own ideals’, because what occurs in art occurs with no obligation.” While analysing the historical situation, the language of art sometimes becomes more meaningful. In satire, which is a meaningful resistance, Oscar Wilde commands the highest stature. He states, “The best way to avoid temptation is to yield to it.” Temptation contains its dialectical opposites, Eros and Thanatos: the life and death wish. For imperialism, temptation rears necessity and, hence, withholding the cudgels for long becomes unnecessary. Once the self-nourished enemy has blossomed to a desirable extent and the media has effectively transformed fiction into reality, the moment of action cannot be delayed, or else the opportunity cost is likely to become stupendous. Hence, on September 10, the US president, by opting to commence air attacks on a Frankenstein’s monster known as ISIS or Islamic State, finally gave in to temptation. Obama’s malice-ridden ingeniousness is admirable. With his abhorrent shrewdness and imperial might, he has managed to engage two birds — ISIS and Assad — to be killed with one stone.According to The New York Times, Obama stated: “If Assad’s troops fired at American planes entering Syrian airspace, I would order American forces to wipe out Syria’s air defence system.” The paper states: “Such an action by Mr Assad would lead to his overthrow.” In olden days, when the international community did not exist, such declarations were considered to be a vivid violation of the international boundaries of a sovereign state that invariably called for condemnation. However, in recent times, the norms have drastically changed. Domination has developed new aesthetics. Now we have grown accustomed to submitting ourselves “to the peaceful production of the means of destruction, to the perfection of waste, to being educated for a defence, which deforms the defenders and that which they defend” — Herbert Marcuse. The only rational voice can be heard from the spiritual head of the most irrational, totalitarian state. For once, Khamenei, the Iranian cleric, is truly succinct in his analysis when he declares the US “a country whose hands are dirty and intentions murky”, which according to him wants in Iraq what it had in Pakistan, that is, “a playground where it can enter freely and bomb at will.” This reminds one of the prophetic thought of Max Horkheimer who states, “The contradiction between what is requested of man and what can be offered to him has become so striking, the ideology so thin, the discontents in civilisation so great that they must be compensated through annihilation of those who do not conform.”To avoid the wrath of monopoly capitalism dominating the world, absolute and abject conformism and dehumanisation of reason are mandatory factors. This raises an important question: are Assad and ISIS the ones that, by any stretch of the imagination, challenge the forces of the status quo? What is the class configuration of ISIS? How has a ruthless brigade of mercenaries become so invincible that its decimation requires an all out US intervention? Leaving Assad aside on whom, akin to Saddam and Gaddafi, the war of imperialist hegemony has been imposed, ISIS is the product or consequence of this apparently senseless blood fest that, according to historian Norman Pollack, is “liberal fascism”. Since ‘Lebensraum’ is synonymous with fascism, hence, for its continuation, expansionism in the name of race or democracy automatically becomes both mandatory and imperative. A year ago, John Pilger wrote, “With al Qaeda now among its allies, and US-armed coup masters secure in Cairo, the US intends to crush the last independent states in the Middle East: Syria first, then Iran.” “This operation [in Syria],” said former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas in June, “goes way back. It was prepared, pre-conceived and planned.” Hence, Syria’s fate was already sealed.Regardless of what happens to Assad, Syria is doomed as a state and perhaps, to a considerable extent, as a civilisation. Its infrastructure has turned into rubble and even if this war comes to an end now, the reconstruction of the state will take years if not decades. But what about the psychological scars the people of these states are likely to carry with them to their graves? Who cares about national mayhem as long as it is turned and debated as an individual trauma? Capital conveniently turns the eternal struggle between Eros and Thanatos into the intra-personal conflict of an individual. Such a “neurotic individual” is placed under the supervision of psychologists. The imperialist atrocities causing traumatic scarring are disguised under the humbuggery of various personality disorders. The truth is swept under the carpet. It is recalled to life only when its subversive character and painful memory have long lost cutting edge. In this case, Adorno’s analysis certainly has the last laugh: “The spectre of man without memory…is necessarily linked with the progress in bourgeois society…the advancing bourgeois society liquidates the memory, time, recollection as irrational leftovers of the past.” To inflict successive wounds, capitalism heavily relies on this state of amnesia.But everything comes at a price. Is this not what postmodern economists have taught us? The destruction of war has created its own trophies. A brigade of atrophic reactionaries was one among many! A renowned journalist, Dhar Jamal, thinks otherwise. He states: “Funded by Arabian Gulf petrodollars from Qatar and Saudi Arabia, among other places, and for a long while supported, at least implicitly, by the Obama administration, radical Islamist fighters in Syria opposing Bashar al Assad have been expanding in strength, numbers and lethality for the last three years. This winter, they and their branches in Iraq converged, first taking Fallujah, then moving on to the spring and summer debacles across Sunni Iraq and the establishment of a ‘caliphate’ in the territories they control in both countries.” This was happening in full view of John Kerry who called these ‘bad guys’ terrific fighters. Well, does it not seem like a monster of its own making?(To be continued) The writer is based in Australia and has authored books on socialism and history. He can be reached at saulatnagi@hotmail.com