The Conspiracy is Capitalism's Reviews > The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump

Foreign policy 101: “symbiosis” of Western imperialism, xenophobia, and jihadism...

Highlights:
--If we take a step back, imperialism requires divide-and-rule to administer such large geographies/populations. This involves (1) bribing dictators (because who else would so readily sell out their own peoples?) and (2) funding reactionary zealots (to sabotage alternatives). It's a cruel joke that once the spread of reactionary forces (funded by Western imperialism) finally reaches the attention of the Western public via “blow-back”, the Western media can twist the origins to something foreign like “Islam”. We'll unpack the full scope of imperialism funding reactionaries at the end of this review.

--Blumenthal's fast-paced journalistic writing-style piles on many names and events, so it’s prudent to take a step back and review the frameworks:

1) “Symbiosis” of terror:
i) Origins: US’s imperialist genocide in Vietnam was costly and embarrassing, as Vietnamese guerilla forces proved much more resilient against the most intensive aerial bombardment in human history and eventually the US public turned against the aggression, with lasting effects (“Vietnam Syndrome”).
ii) US imperialism wanted to inflict a Vietnam-like trap on its rival, the USSR:
--Brzezinski (Jimmy Carter’s NSC Advisor) came up with the “Afghan Trap”: covertly arm and train fringe mujahideen “freedom fighters” to terrorize Afghanistan's socialist state and lure USSR into a costly intervention.
--This became Reagan’s Operation Cyclone. This also involved supporting Pakistan’s Islamic dictator Zia-ul-Haq and Saudi monarchy/Wahhabism (including Bin Laden).
--On a broader level, this is Western imperialism (which the Liberal “Center” is very much part of, in this case the Carter administration) using the divide-and-rule strategy by supporting fringe extremist proxies and despots to do the dirty work of imperial administration.
--Liberal Centrists like Hillary Clinton have no problem supporting “moderate rebel” jihadists to co-opt protests and attempt regime-change (Libya, Syria), if it supports imperial ambitions.
iii) Extremists become volatile “disposal problems” and cause blow-back, which fuel Western xenophobia and the rise of the Far Right. Thus, the symbiosis, where terror from one side feeds on and legitimizes the terror from the other:
--al-Qaeda’s “Management of Savagery” strategy takes advantage of this symbiosis by provoking superpower interventions, where subsequent destruction promotes the recruitment of more jihadists. Thus, after the fall of the USSR, Bin Laden wanted to reverse the “Afghan Trap” against the US.
--ISIS’s “eliminating the grayzone” strategy is to provoke polarization and xenophobia in the West to push Muslims there out of the “grayzone” of coexistence.
--Zionist Likud/Netanyahu’s “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” strategy is to topple regional regimes that are against Zionist expansionism (Saddam’s Iraq, then Syria which was allied with Iran/Hezbollah), thus requiring direct US intervention.
--Post 9/11, Bush neocons “War on Terror” mirrored Netanyahu’s strategy of regime-change.

2) Media propaganda:
--Long before Trump seized on “fake news”, those paying attention recognized the propaganda model of mainstream corporate media, with current foreign policy being the murkiest of topics (“fog of war”).
--How do we engage with the general public in the cacophony of mainstream stenography and “alternative” hysteria?
i) Frameworks in history/political economy (as described above, and a few detailed below)...the challenge is to make these accessible.
ii) Dependable (independent) news outlets: journalism and sourcing is a lot of work, so we all need shortcuts to synthesize all the info. I was troubled by popular Progressive outlets like “Democracy Now!” and “The Intercept” in their use of “White Helmets” content in their coverage of the Syrian conflict. I wish I saved the article by The Intercept regarding the White Helmets (I can’t find it anymore) where concerns over their funding and motives were nonchalantly dismissed. I sure hope it wasn’t Jeremy Scahill who wrote such drivel. Of course, outlets like “MintPress News” have long questioned The Intercept’s funding (billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar).

--Recommendations?
a) The author is part of “The Grayzone” news outlet, as well as “The Moderate Rebels” podcast.
-Here is an episode introducing this book: https://youtu.be/3ActAKgwVMU
-April 2020 update: on the erosion of US "Progressive" media (in particular, how the Democrats used Russiagate to divert attention of much more tangible collusion they are equally guilty of, i.e. legalized bribery with tax-dodging multinational corporations/Wall Street, Saudi Arabia petrodollar/Wahhabism, Israeli apartheid, etc.): https://youtu.be/8676Q93GW1k?t=6957
-More on US media, especially "democratic socialism" like Jacobin: https://youtu.be/B3I5MgbOvFo
b) The fabulous Vijay Prashad (Tricontinential: Institute for Social Research): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...
-“ideological censorship”: https://youtu.be/6jKcsHv3c74
c) Abby Martin (Empire Files): https://youtu.be/rezvemRMelQ

The Missing:
1) Let's unpack the layers of imperialism-funding-reactionaries:
i) Afghanistan as the proxy battleground vs. USSR, with connections to Saudi Arabia/Pakistan, which this book covers.
ii) The broader scope in West Asia (“Middle East”)/North Africa, where US allies with monarchs/dictators/zealots to prevent any type of challenge (i.e. nationalist self-determination, including ironically secular nationalism!), not just socialist/communist (ex. Nasser's Egypt, Mosaddegh's Iran, Qasim's Iraq, Gaddafi's Libya, Assad's Syria). Prashad has fantastic lectures on this: https://youtu.be/LVzso1Tydoc
iii) The entire Global South anti-colonial movement:
-The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World
-Washington Bullets
-The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World
-Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II
iv) US “allies”, i.e. Western Europe (ex. France), post-WWII satellites Japan/South Korea etc:
-“Killing Hope” covers some (France).
-South Korea: https://youtu.be/3-TzxY50Spk
-Japan: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/...
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...
v) The US itself:
-ex. the fascist plot (“Business Plot”) against sitting president FDR: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busines...
-The Plot to Seize the White House: The Shocking True Story of the Conspiracy to Overthrow FDR

2) Another invaluable contextual framework to incorporate: the political economy (i.e. capitalism) of US imperialism:
-The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions
--Prashad provides a brief intro ("The Foreign Policy of the 1%": https://youtu.be/DiHtfeof15s?t=51). The anti-war pamphlet War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier is useful especially for "support our troops" types.
--The best summary of the symbiosis of US Military Industrial Complex spending + US's dollar-debt imperialism is in the later section of Hudson's The Bubble and Beyond, based on Hudson's original breakthrough dive into the topic: Super Imperialism - New Edition: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance); interview: https://youtu.be/paUgY6SGlgY
...lecture (including "de-dollarization" alternative): https://youtu.be/h45Bovld7Vk
...Hudson + Prashad! https://youtu.be/p7ERe-_YpKs