Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel
We still don't know if this man is a jihadi lone wolf or not - even as his modus operandi comes straight from Daesh's playbook. And even if he's not an insta-jihadi, what's certain is that his appalling "example" will be emulated.
The Washington-Riyadh axis used terror in Afghanistan even BEFORE the 1980s jihad. Wahhabism destroyed both Afghanistan and Pakistan, installing a Kalashnikov culture. Shock and Awe in 2003 led to Washington promoting Divide and Rule as in pitting Sunnis against Shi'ites - and that brought terror to Iraq. Washington and Brussels supported jihadis in both Libya and Syria, and that was supported even by the liberal 'human rights' left. Ah, but the (bogus) enemy is Putin and "Russian aggression". Meanwhile the real enemy - Salafi-jihadis - even gets crucial "support" (and weapons). Add to it the blowback for NATO's wars - a taboo discussion in the West.
Nothing was done against the ideological matrix of jihadism: Wahhabism. So nothing will change. The Empire of Chaos WON'T withdraw from the Middle East for the pivot to Asia; it wants both. Kerry in Moscow yesterday offering a plan to Putin to fight Daesh together - that's yet more shadowplay for the galleries. Washington may put up a pretense of fighting Daesh while the CIA support for "moderate rebels" won't abate. FrankenDaesh - which was let loose to fester by a "willful" decision in Washington - is now, for all practical purposes, a Cyber-Caliphate. It does NOT need territory. It continues to project an image of success. And that's why it still manages to attract - and "inspire" - all manner of deeply alienated individuals living in the West. This infernal spiral is bound to go on and on and on.
Pepe Escobar is an analyst for RT and TomDispatch. Born in Brazil, he's been a foreign correspondent since 1985, and has lived in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Washington, Bangkok and Hong Kong.
Comment: Further reading on the uses of the slippery entity called Daesh/ISIS: