When American Foreign Policy Is Recycled Like Fashion Trends
A quick rant
Dear zoomers: When I was your age, al-Qaeda was America’s sworn enemy. This was during the freshly coined “post-9/11 era,” and I heard about our nasty new nemesis practically every damn day. I remember quite vividly being a senior in high school the day this terrorist organization attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001. After being notified, my teacher abruptly stopped class, wheeled out a clunky old TV, and students proceeded to watch the horrific events unfold briefly before being sent home for the remainder of the day.
However, for the past several years, the aforementioned network of Salafi-jihadists (rebranded as al-Nusra) has been an important U.S. ally in Syria, along with several similar jihadist factions. You see, back in 2012, the fine folks at the CIA decided to exploit the regional “Arab Spring” uprisings by intensifying the civil war (in coordination with Saudi Arabia) in attempt to overthrow the government of Bashar al-Assad.
The results, so far, have been hundreds of thousands of deaths, a massive refugee crisis, endless sectarian violence, and unspeakable atrocities. Many governments and armed factions are now involved, and, in the academic jargon of political science, the situation in Syria has become a mind-boggling clusterfuck.
