From Dan Sanchez at antiwar.com:
Fourteen years in, and the Terror War is raging on, mass-producing exactly what it was supposed to eliminate: terrorism and chaos. Western intervention has racked up at least six jihadi-overrun failed states throughout the Greater Middle East: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen. The scope and scale of the imposed civilizational meltdown have become so great that the West itself has been increasingly inundated by its wreckage (in the form of refugees) and stung by its shrapnel (in the form of terrorist attacks).
To paraphrase Yeats, is the empire merely staggering toward Har Megiddo (Armageddon)? Or is there a Machiavellian method to the mass-murderous madness? If so, how could such a perpetually widening and intensifying catastrophe possibly serve anybody’s interest? What could possibly be the end game?
We know what the jihadis’ end game is. They plainly tell us in their official publication. ISIS, in the tradition of its forefathers Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, wants to use terrorist provocation to polarize the entire world into two irreconcilable enemy camps. By eliminating any “gray zone” between “the crusader camp” and “the camp of [Salafist] Islam,” the terrorists seek to precipitate an apocalyptic “clash of civilizations,” out of which they will arise victorious.
The US-led imperium has been so prompt and thorough in falling into this trap (to the point of exceeding the jihadis’ wildest dreams), that one must wonder if its leaders, like Br’er Rabbit, see the “snare” as a briar patch. Maybe this is exactly what they want too. In a sense the crusader and jihadi enemies are allies: like shoulder-to-shoulder linebackers pushing the rest of humanity back toward an end zone with no gray zone.
To continue reading: The Long Game for the Long War
Reblogged this on Starvin Larry.