How Dysfunctional Is The American Political Economic Elite?

Surely there are hundreds of thousands of Americans who read the same domestic and foreign media coverage of global politics and international finance that I read on a daily basis.  Where is the public expression of outrage, disappointment and genuine concern for the future of the United States and Western Civilization that should be precipitated by the multi-trillion dollar tragic US foreign policy debacles that we have all witnessed unfold in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen in the past thirteen years?  The same militant Islamic threats that the US has failed to effectively combat and degrade in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen in the past thirteen years are also growing daily in Nigeria, Niger, Chad , Mali, Algeria and Somalia.

This evening I read the first news article that I have seen published by a major US media outlet that actually discussed the rapid spread of radical Islam from Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Libya to more than ten countries located in Sub Saharan Africa, North Africa, the Middle East and SW Asia.  The news article that finally detailed how extensively radical Islam has spread throughout the Muslim world appeared today in The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/world/middleeast/islamic-state-sprouting-limbs-beyond-mideast.html?_r=0

As I mentioned in my previous blog post titled “Obama Administration Needs New Story Line”, which I posted one month ago in mid January, the Obama administration and the US media have almost exclusively been focusing on the US bombing and drone strike campaign in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.  In spite of the best efforts of the US air force to degrade and destroy radial Islamic military capabilities in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, the number of radical Islamic fighters has continued to grow and their military capabilities have continued to strengthen.

The US has conducted over 900 air strikes on ISIS, al Qaeda and al Nusra Front targets in Iraq and in Syria in the past six months, killing over 6,000 Islamic militants and destroying many of their heavier weapons in the process.  In spite of the death and destruction the US air force has brought to bear on ISIS’s military capabilities, ISIS and other radical Islamic groups are recruiting new members and capturing additional heavy weapons at an even faster pace than their losses.  In the past few months, ISIS and al Qaeda fighters have captured large government military bases and they have captured large government military arsenals in Libya, Yemen, Syria and in Iraq.  Hundreds of new ISIS and al Qaeda recruits continue to travel from North Africa, Western Europe, Eastern Europe and from the Middle East to Syria every month.  Additionally, several dozen independent radical Islamic militias operating in Sub Saharan Africa, North Africa, the Middle East and SW Asia have pledged allegiance to ISIS in the past few months.

Samuel Huntington in “The Clash of Civilizations” and Henry Kissinger in “World Order” both discuss the fundamental rejection by Islamic theologians of the most basic philosophical concepts that are the underlying foundation of post Medieval Western Civilization.  It is unclear (to me at least) whether the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Perle-Kagan Neo-Conservative clique that promulgated the militaristic campaign to topple the old Soviet aligned strong man regimes in Libya, Syria and Iraq were motivated by cynical hegemonic ambition or if they actually drank their own liberal capitalistic constitutional democracy kool aid.  Regardless of their true underlying motivations, the removal of the strong man regimes in North Africa and in the Middle East has created a power vacuum that enabled the growth of radical Islam in North Africa and in the Middle East.  Additionally, the removal of Saddam Hussein and the Sunni Baathists from power in Iraq has enabled Shiite Iran to expand its hegemonic influence from eastern Iran to the Lebanese coast and from northern Iran to the southern Yemenese coast.

Radical Islamic militants are now operating in a geographic area larger than Europe and larger than the continental United States.  Both Western Europe and the United States have exhausted themselves financially, militarily, politically and psychologically in the past thirteen years while they have been invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq.  After spending trillions of dollars and experiencing tens of thousands of dead and severely wounded soldiers in Afghanistan and in Iraq the past thirteen years, Western Europe and the US could not even degrade and destroy al Qaeda, the Taliban and ISIS in Afghanistan and in Iraq.  Clearly, Western Europe and the US need to fundamentally re-think their strategy and their tactics in the global war on Islamic terrorism.

Additionally, Western Europe has recently come directly under attack by small groups of radical Islamists.  Several weeks ago a small group of Islamic militants kept all of Paris under siege for several days.  As I am writing this blog post, a small group of radical Islamists has all of Copenhagen under a state of siege.  There is no reason to think that the United States will remain immune from violent attacks by small groups of radical Islamists.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration and the US media have continued to narrowly focus on the failed US efforts to degrade and destroy radical Islamist militias in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen.  There has essentially been no public discussion by the Obama administration and by the US media of how extensively radical Islam has spread throughout the Muslim world and how that spread of radical Islam will force the US to fundamentally rethink its strategy and its tactics in the global war on terror.