A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
Forces set in motion more than three decades ago by President Jimmy Carter’s CIA will force the United States out of much of the Middle East and North Africa. “The West has once again empowered fundamentalist forces that will inevitably turn against Washington, the Greatest Infidel of all.” The U.S. cannot possibly control the jihadis it has armed and unleashed upon the world.
The Mother of All Blowbacks is Coming
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
“If the Arab and Muslim “street” came to power, the United States would be run out of that whole section of the planet – and Washington knows it.”
The United States and its allies have set the stage for the Mother of All Blowbacks: a long period of convulsions in the Muslim and Arab world that will ultimately lead to America’s expulsion from much of the region. The reason it is so easy to read the handwriting on the wall, is that we have been watching the scenario unfold for three decades, ever since the last years of the Jimmy Carter administration, when the United States, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan spent billions to create a worldwide Muslim jihadi army and unleashed it on the Soviets and their allies in Afghanistan, plunging that country into endless war.
When these Muslim warriors turned on the United States – or, depending on your vantage point, when the United States turned on them – we experienced the first blowback. The American public, shocked and traumatized, gave first, a Republican, and then a Democratic president all the guns and money and extra-Constitutional powers they demanded to push back against the Muslims who had not long ago been U.S. allies. The war planners in Washington figured they could live with the way events had turned out. After all, al-Qaida and its Salafist brethren were in no position to challenge U.S. dominance in the world – not anyplace that really counted – and their mere existence provided the U.S. war machine with a purpose in life, an excuse to subvert and wage low-level war against those nations that refused to tow the U.S. line.
And then came the so-called Arab Spring, and with it the terrifying prospect that Muslims in North Africa and the Middle East might take control of their own destinies – and the oil and natural gas that goes with it. Democracy means death to U.S. imperialism. Pew Research pollsters report that, on average, only 15 percent
“On average, only 15 percent of Egyptians, Jordanians, Lebanese, Pakistanis and Turks have a favorable view of the United States.”
When Tunisia and Egypt erupted, the U.S. and Europe played the only cards they had: they brought in massive air power and called out the jihadi dogs of war in an unprovoked attack on Libya. Almost simultaneously, the Euro-Americans and the royal criminals of the Persian Gulf armed and financed a jihadi assault against Syria, as Washington and Israel stepped up their low-level war against Iran.
As Temple University’s professor Tony Monteiro has pointed out, the whole rationale for the U.S. war on terror is a lie – the facts turned backwards. Washington claims it is engaged in a long, twilight war against non-state actors, terrorists, who seek to subvert and overthrow existing governments. In reality, it is the Americans who deploy non-state, jihadi actors to overthrow governments that Washington doesn’t like. However, in doing so, the West has once again empowered fundamentalist forces that will inevitably turn against Washington, the Greatest Infidel of all. Last week’s protests are only a small foretaste of what is to come: a blowback of such intensity that the foundations of Empire will crack, and crumble. For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com .
The following is part of the first installment of our “Captive Maternal Roundtable” on Joy James’ new book, In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love: Precarity, Power, Communities.
The following is part of the first installment of our “Captive Maternal Roundtable” on Joy James’ new book, In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love: Precarity, Power, Communities.
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