German journalist embedded with ISIL: Since 2001-"We Have "Created Terrorists & Increased Terrorism"

[DirkGently]

27. We keep ignoring the forest for the trees.

Increasingly, it seems like a part of the diametric division we have in our culture is deciding whether problems -- like "terrorism" -- are due to individual bad people or a situational dynamic. That dictates how we address the problem, and so far we're not doing well.

At heart, all of this "stuff" is just another resource / territory contest, isn't it? The West interferes with the Middle East for strategic reasons -- largely oil but also control of certain ports in that part of the world. The response in that part of the world has been the rise of radical Islam -- take away all the Western interference, and what support does it have?

But once things get nasty, everything gets characterized on the basis of whatever horrendous thing happened last. Sure, we annihilated hundreds of thousands of innocents in Iraq, but then those guys cut that man's head off, so let's go back and do it again. And again ...

What's more, all of this has become a business for the combatants on both sides. McCain / Cheney et al. apparently get paid by the bullet or by the American body bag, so they will beat the drums of war at every opportunity.

But Al Quaeda and Isis are in "business" too. They're the Coke and Pepsi of jihadism at this point. They recruit on the Internet; advertise on social media. Hold prisoners for large cash ransoms. We are being manipulated into a cycle of war because it's making people on all sides MONEY.

We have built this beast, and we're not going to take it down by whack-a-mole-ing every group that arises to take advantage of the cash and the chaos to be had.

We're certainly not going to stop the cycle with drone strikes or another war in the desert or with more rhetoric over whose version of a 2,000 year-old religion is better.