I was reading a report today from the learned author of War and Empire: The American Way of Life, Paul Atwood. The CounterPunch story about America's Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) making blood-money off endless wars is telling. Many of us have spotlighted the corporations that cripple any chance for world peace, but none so effectively as Atwood. This passage encapsulates his argument on our endless war stance:
"In fact, the 'permanent warfare state' has been erected on the backs of American taxpayers by fraudulent claims of threats to our national security. In the case of 'terrorists,' these adversaries were the result of our own interventions in Muslim countries. In truth, no nation is, or ever has been, or ever will be capable of invading the U.S. or otherwise subjecting us to its will."This leads me to another question, "How do you create an enemy, a terrorist?" I mean, if it is true the corporations that run Washington are behind our ceaseless conflicts, surely they used a prescription and a strategy. The broad view on this can be summed up by Danny Sjursen, who is a U.S. Army strategist and former history instructor at West Point. Sjursen identifies our policies as; "hyper-interventionist, highly militarized foreign policy (that) has defined Washington since at least the days of President Harry Truman." At the heart of this argument is the new Trump National Defense Strategy that calls for about $1.7 trillion in new subs, nukes, and tech weapons to combat America's foes, new and old.
Comment: It's certainly a question worthy of investigation. The full picture may emerge in time, but for the moment - with governments and the media largely not talking about it - we can only guess.
We know that many of the anti-govt 'rebels' in Syria, for example, were actually Pakistani. We know that many of them arrived there via Qatar - and that this is ongoing. We know that the US military base in Qatar was 'instrumental in targeting ISIS' in Syria/Iraq.
How then do the Americans not see that the tiny country they are using as a base to fight ISIS... is also key to ISIS existing at all? Best guess: part of the same base is actually run by the Americans for those who then become 'ISIS'.