Perhaps it required a politically independent entity like the United Nations to release a report stating what has been obvious to anyone who has followed international news for the past several years; i.e. global jihad has been growing at an accelerating rate since the 09.11.2001 terrorist attacks in the US. The recent UN report also contained information that even surprised me; i.e. more than half of all countries in the world are now exporting Islamic radicals who are committed to jihad in support of their Islamic sect and against Western Civilization.
A summary of the recent United Nations report can be read on the Financial Times web site at URL: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/bddfe15c-0466-11e5-95ad-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=intl#axzz3bQHn23m4
The United States and its NATO allies have been fighting Islamic radicals in SW Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and Sub Saharan Africa continuously since the 09.11.2001 terrorist attacks. The cost to the US alone has been more than $4T in direct and indirect financial costs and more than 100,000 dead and permanently maimed soldiers.
What have been the net results of the US – NATO military misadventures in SW Asia, the Middle East and Africa? The Taliban, al Qaeda and ISIS operate openly in rural Afghanistan and the Taliban are actually providing the most effective administrative services in most rural areas in Afghanistan. Since the US invaded Iraq and deposed Saddam Hussein in 2003, Iraq has devolved into a multi-front Sunni – Shiite civil war and humanitarian catastrophe of historical proportions. The Sunni controlled area in Iraq is being administered as a Caliphate under the control of ISIS. Libya no longer exists as a unified country and Libya has now been partitioned into numerous Caliphates by various Islamic militias.
ISIS and al Qaeda (al Nusra Front) now control more than fifty percent of the land area in Syria and they are administering areas under their control in what was once known as Syria as Caliphates.
Yemen has been partitioned in the past year into several different autonomous regions under the control of the Shiite Houthis, the Sunni AQAP, the Sunni ISIS and the pro Saudi Sunni regime that once controlled Sanaa.
Somalia has also been partitioned into several regions under the control of various Islamic warlords and secular warlords.
Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Mali are all under attack by Boko Harem and other Islamic militias that continue to control large areas where they have displaced the national government military and the national government administrative services.
It is shocking to me that the US has spent several trillion dollars and has lost more than 100,000 KIA and permanently maimed soldiers fighting Islamic radicals since the 09.11.2001 terrorist attacks and the net results have been an unmitigated geopolitical disaster. The US invasion and occupation of Iraq facilitated the Iranian hegemonic integration of Iraq into Iran’s Shiite sphere of influence. The Afghan “democratic” government centered in Kabul continues to survive as a result of the US financial and logistic support of the Afghan army and of the Afghan national police force. Libya is an open haven for radical Islamists and ISIS recently established another Sunni Caliphate in eastern Libya.
More and more pro American international political economists, like Ian Bremmer in his recent book titled “Superpower”, are promoting the strategy that the US should merely attempt to contain the fallout of radical Islam and that the US should abandon the effort to install liberal capitalist constitutional democracy in the Islamic world. Of course Samuel P. Huntington, in “The Clash of Civilizations”, published in 1994, warned that the US and Western Europe would fail miserably if they ever attempted to transplant Western Civilization into non Western societies. Henry Kissinger, in his recent book titled “World Order”, also obliquely commented on the expensive and ultimately failed efforts by the US to impose democratic capitalism on the Islamic world.
It will be difficult for the US government to step back from its interventions in the Islamic world and merely attempt to contain the threat from radical Islam. It is easier for US political leaders to beat war drums in the interest of US national security than it is for US political leaders to attempt to explain to American voters that the US efforts of the past fifteen years to defeat radical Islam have, in spite of the enormous expenditure of American blood and treasure, been tragic failures that have only motivated tens of thousands of additional young Muslims to join the jihad against Western Civilization.
Richard Nixon confronted a similar political conundrum when he attempted to end the US involvement in the thirty year long US – Vietnam War. Nixon and Kissinger kept repeating the mantra “Peace With Honor” as they negotiated the end of the US – Vietnam War, knowing that the North Vietnamese would overrun South Vietnam as soon as the US military stopped propping up the puppet South Vietnamese government.
It remains to be seen whether a Nixon stature American political leader will be willing and able to honestly explain to the American people the limits of American power when the US is confronting the dangers of the radical Islam that is festering throughout the Islamic world.