No Apology: Islam And ISIS, A Contradiction

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After 9/11, and the purported responsibility of Islam as the event’s driving ideology, it could have been predicted that there would be anti-Muslim sentiments. However, one could have never guessed that 13 years later Muslims would be viewed far worse than in those first few months.

In fact, Islamophobia has seen a drastic increase in correlation to other global events — ironically, even when Muslims themselves are the victims. A recent example is the hanging of Reyhanah Jebbari in Iran and the convoluted reaction against Muslims that resulted.

Yet such reactions have extended past verbal abuse and now encompass an institutionalised practice of sweeping generalisations in favour of vilifying Muslims and Islam and an absurd lack of regard to individualism within human nature. It’s reminiscent of justifications used for previous disasters and an ironic reflection of what “terror” groups themselves teach, and forces Muslim-response campaigns which under any absence of such embarrassing double standards would not be necessary.

ISIS: The Boogeymen of Our Times, Justifying Empire & Imperialism

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When faced with the prospect of analyzing the current rise of ISIS, or the misinformed albeit widely accepted threat of Russia, or that of Iran, it is imperative that we keep in mind a few key points.

One of these is the US foreign policy strategy of containment, or more aptly, the strategy of limiting the power of anyone who challenges the United States’ hegemony on the global chessboard. The memo depicting this strategy was penned under the supervision of influential neo-conservative statesmen Paul Wolfowitz in 1992, thus dubbed the “Wolfowitz doctrine,” and was not intended for public release. I would argue strongly that the evidence of the past decades suggests that this is still the dominant foreign policy doctrine that has been followed under both the Bush and Obama administrations.

The preeminent strategy outlined therein is to “establish and protect a new order,” that accounts for “the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order.” The goal is to protect a world order in which the United States is the supreme power, and to stop any nation who seeks to challenge this dominance and overturn America’s preeminent position.

America’s Perpetual Protection Racket in Iraq (Part 1)

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At my most cynical, it’s hard not to feel like we’re subject and victim to a perpetual protection racket where our nation’s past military misadventures in the Mideast and Asia are primed and positioned to spark and erupt into sectarian violence in concert with each other, just to keep the U.S. military in the protection business. The United States stirs up trouble then promises to protect hapless folks in the way of our reckless, opportunistic aggression from the effects and consequences of our own blundering militarism.

We saw an example of that lingering, reflexive paternalism earlier this summer when President Obama used the refusal of a sizable number of the Iraqi army to defend the government against an advancing ISIS force as a pretense for U.S. military response.

The political cards had been deliberately laid out in Iraq by his predecessor in a way that both compelled our government to respond as both an ally and an adversary of Iraqis. The government in Iraq had fallen. All that remained was the appearance of democracy, much like Saddam’s own rule; complete with a paper Parliament left to squabble over whatever scraps of their country that haven’t been sullied, stepped on, and stolen by their arrogant invading overlords.

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