Middle East

Submitted by Justin Raimondo via AntiWar.com,

Last night I listened to this hourlong talk, with Q&A, by Andrew Bacevich, about his new book America’s War For The Greater Middle East: A Military History. It’s worth your time. Here, in a Politico essay from earlier this month, Bacevich lays out his thesis. Excerpt:

A group of authors claim they have evidence that proves ISIS were created by NATO and then handed over to be militarily led by Turkey, in order to destabilize the Middle East and allow Western leaders to dominate the region. According to investigative journalist Wayne Madsen, ISIS began as a rebel group under the US occupation of Iraq which then grew as they ravaged Libya and Syria. Saudi Arabia and Turkey funded the group so they could fulfil the orders coming from the US to fight proxy wars, in order to acquire oil, gas, and land for the West.

Back in January, when the market was watching in shocked silence as oil prices were crashing to decade lows and as concerns emerged that Saudi Arabia may need to commence selling its vast, if unquantified, USD reserves, we wrote a post titled "Attention Finally Turns To Saudi Arabia's "Secret" US Treasury Holdings" where we noted something very surprising: whereas we do know that Saudi Arabia is the owner of the world's third largest USD reserves...

And that is why we said this was the scariest chart in the world for these reasons!

A recent poll has found that young Arabs across the Middle East reject the so-called Islamic State and believe it will not succeed in creating a caliphate. Entitled "The 2016 Arab Youth Survey", it also found several reasons why younger Arabs think people are attracted to the terrorist group. A chronic job shortage in the region is one of the primary reasons, far ahead the presence of Western troops in the Middle East.