larry johnson knows more than i do and so i read or watch much of what he presents; 

 

For a quarter century the United States has told the world, and itself, a simple story about its role in the Middle East. On September 11, 2001, it was attacked by Sunni jihadists, and it answered with a generational war against Sunni Islamic extremism — al-Qaeda first, the Islamic State later. Trillions of dollars, two invasions, a global drone and surveillance apparatus, and a lengthening list of designated terrorist organizations were all justified by that threat. This was the declared war, and it was real in its public form.

But there was a second policy running underneath it, and the two pointed in opposite directions. Driven by an overriding obsession with Iran and the specter of a “Shia crescent,” Washington repeatedly funded, armed, and shielded the very Sunni jihadist movements it claimed to be fighting — for one reason: those movements were killing Iranians and Iran’s allies. The radical Sunnis were attacking Iran the entire time, and in Washington’s calculus that was not a disqualification. It was the qualification. Every time the war on Sunni terror collided with the war on Iran, the war on Iran won. Which means the celebrated “Global War on Terror” was, at the operational level, subordinate to something the public was never asked to approve: a war on Iran waged, in part, through the terrorists. And even that was not new. The same weapon had already been turned on other American adversaries — the Soviets, then post-Soviet Russia — before the War on Terror was ever declared.

The War Washington advertised

The declared war needs no rehearsal. Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were the enemy; then, after 2014, the Islamic State inherited the role. American presidents of both parties vowed to defeat radical Islamic terrorism, dismantle its networks, and deny it sanctuary. The instruments were invasions, special-operations raids, drone campaigns across half a dozen countries, and the Foreign Terrorist Organization list. In this war, a Sunni jihadist who attacked American targets was hunted to the ends of the earth............more.........