Circle of Absurdity: Killing the Extremists We Create

- Circle of Absurdity: Killing the Extremists We Create
by Maj. Danny Sjursen, http://original.antiwar.com/
The U.S. military remains mired in countless wars in the Greater Middle East. Ironically – and tragically – it tends to combat Islamists that Washington either armed or birthed.
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We, Americans, truly are a strange lot. Our government in Washington – ostensibly representative of “We the People” – speaks of peace, but wages endless war, prattles on about “freedom,” but backs absolute monarchs and authoritarian strongmen the world over. A bipartisan array of politicians warns of the evils of radical Islamic (though Islamist is more accurate) terrorism; and yet, truthfully, the US once supported and/or funded those same extremists not too long ago. In some cases, and certain circumstances, it backs them still; until, that is, all those guns are turned on the US military, or those fighters threaten Washington’s (ever shifting) “interests.”
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Perhaps, one imagines, there are lessons here: be careful who you arm; be careful where you meddle; today’s “friends” are, all too often, tomorrow’s enemies; and, in the turbulent Middle East, sometimes less is more.
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Washington would do well to remember that before its next – and there will be a next – intervention.
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Russia, it seems, is once again center stage in the Middle East. Congressmen and Senators – usually neocons or hawkish liberal interventionists – warn that Russia is “running wild,” or will “win” Syria. In fact, they argue, the US military must stay put in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere, indefinitely one presumes, to block potential Russian gains. US troops must also back assorted proxies, even some nefarious characters, in order to deter Russian efforts in the region.
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The whole presumption, of course, is flawed and simplistic. We are led to believe geopolitics is a simple zero-sum game, whereby any “gain” for Russia (or Iran) is somehow a “loss” for the United States. Much evil, and plenty of mistakes, stem from such warped assumptions.
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The thing is, the historian in me has seen this movie before, and knows it ends badly. A generation raised on post-9/11 alarmism regarding terrorism and the (admittedly real) dangers of political Islam, might be surprised to know the US once backed many of these very same Islamist zealots in the name of countering the then Soviet Union. It was fear of the looming Russian bear – and the competition for oil – that first brought the US military into the region in a serious way.
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US Central Command (CENTCOM), which controls all US servicemen in the Greater Mideast, was only formed in the early 1980s, largely in response to the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan (1979) and the ostensible threat of a broader Soviet armored assault straight south to the Persian Gulf. Of course, no such danger ever really existed; nor was it very plausible. Nonetheless, Washington took action, which heralded just the most extreme version of the sad, recurring, tales of US support for Islamists. Fighters, who, more often than not, would later turn their guns, bombs, (and box cutters on 9/11!) on America.
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The US supported, funded, and armed (including with surface to air missiles) the Afghan mujahedeen – many of whom were Islamist zealots – throughout the 1980s. It also backed its long time frenemy, Saudi Arabia, which acted aspatron for the Arab extremists who flocked to the Afghan jihad. The variousmujahedeen, many of whom were rather extreme, morphed into warlord militias after the defeat of the Soviets. The excesses of these venal warlords in the 1990s, and the refugee crisis that landed millions of unemployed youths in various squalid camps, led directly to rise of the Taliban. Many of the Taliban’s senior leaders had previously fought the Soviets, often with US weapons or support.
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