Ten years ago there was no ISIS. What was done incorrectly that helped give rise to them?
What is the purpose of western powers being in Syria, Iraq, Afgnanistan, etc? What's the end game of all the military interventions? What are we hoping to accomplish and how are our actions contributing to that end game?
We (the west and others) have been dropping bombs and shooting there for a few decades now (not to say a century). How are those places better now? How are we safer? Who benefits from it all?
I never hear these question asked, and they seem important to me. Last night I watched some of the CBC reportage about the Paris attacks. There was interview after interview with experts and ex-CSIS operatives, all the usual questions, and there was lots of the usual security blather that you always hear. It was a news program, of course, not an analysis program, but all the interviews sounded to me like an informercial for the security industry, private and public. Not one reporter or anchor asked why, after pouring lots of cash into the security apparatus for at least since 9/11, we seemingly aren't any safer now? What is it that we're doing wrong? Shouldn't we try to figure that out?
I can't help but notice the similarities of the middle-east "situation" to the so-called war on drugs. Been going on for a while now, the drug gangs are bigger, richer and more vicious, and there has never been even a hint of a decrease in drug trafficking. I'm not seeing any progress in either sphere, and my gut tells me that continuing to behave as we have been doing will not work any better in the future than in the past.
