It’s a universal truth that government will do anything to maintain its power. Some of what it does is good. Some is bad. Some is nefarious. It’s the nefarious actions that happen in the shadows of the world, hidden from the general public, and, thereby, give rise to conspiracy theories. Because we don’t see these actions play out, brushing off conspiracy theories as meaningless, stupid or illogical is easy. But that doesn’t mean every theory is wrong...“You need to know — and you need to tell these people — that America is behind ISIS. We’re funding them,” he said, clearly angry and frustrated at the direction the America he once knew has begun to drift...And then two days later, I read a New York Times dispatch from Baghdad reporting that many people across the Middle East — including those high up in the U.S.-backed Iraqi government — are absolutely certain that our own CIA is the money and the muscle behind the ISIS militant group...Our government has a history of meddling covertly in the affairs of sovereign nations — always to achieve some ulterior American aim and always with consequences we might not necessarily want or expect. Our backing of Iran’s shah is the reason Iran is so militant today. We have played black-op games in Nicaragua, Cuba, El Salvador, Greece, Angola, Pakistan, Cambodia … even Australia. Our invasions and warfare in Iraq have led to instability that is destroying that country...America needs an enemy. Our government thrives on warfare; it always has. War keeps America relevant globally, and it gives government the cover it needs to curtail liberties and freedoms here at home. It gives government reason to rally the citizenry as the long-term health of the nation deteriorates. If there’s a credible terrorist threat, America gets to maintain her costly war footing. She gets to deploy troops around the world. She gets to define the global agenda and spend crazy sums of money on armaments, which is one way of propping up an economy weighed down by too much debt. She gets to impose her wishes on the world under the guise of protecting the world from evil — even if it is an evil she created just so she could tear it down...You also should know that the Saudis fashion themselves the protectors of Sunni Islam, though it’s a particularly oppressive, evangelical form of extreme Sunni’ism called Salafism, unrelenting in its desire to impose its unyielding strictures on moderate Islam. Oddly, ISIS is a Salafist sect, too, as is al-Qaida — and Boko Haram in Nigeria and al-Shabaab in Somalia and Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan and others. You should know, as well, that the Saudi government is exceedingly oppressive at home and maintains domestic peace through a heavy hand and heavy social spending. America’s intelligence community recognizes that because of this, there is an existential threat to the Saudi government’s continued existence. And it recognizes that the Saudi kingdom, either through government or business or individuals, is the pocketbook behind a lot of the Salafism violence that exists in the world. It’s so strange that America’s (supposed) friend is the ATM to many of the world’s terrorist organizations. Stranger still is that we know this and, overtly at least, do little about it. But how convenient would it be for America to covertly foment strife among Salafist Sunnis? It might ultimately destabilize Saudi Arabia and send oil prices roaring higher, to the great benefit of the American government, though like the 1970s oil embargo it would certainly hurt the American consumer in the short run. It would also give America the political and military cover it needs to wedge itself deeper into the Middle East under the premise that it must render aide to a friendly government, the Saudis. And in the end, America’s own band of lunatic extremists — the militant neoconservatives — will have accomplished their goal of remaking yet another piece of the Middle East in what they perceive as a more favorable fashion.
Posted on: Sat, 04 Oct 2014 00:18:16 +0000
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