The rise of
international jihad and Western ultra-nationalism
In the Management of
Savagery, Max Blumenthal excavates the real story behind America’s
dealings with the world and shows how the extremist forces that now
threaten peace across the globe are the inevitable flowering of
America’s imperial designs.
Washington’s
secret funding of the mujahedin provoked the Russian invasion of
Afghanistan in 1979. With guns and money, the United States has ever
since sustained the extremists, including Osama Bin Laden, who have
become its enemies. The Pentagon has trained and armed jihadist
elements in Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya; it has launched military
interventions to change regimes in the Middle East. In doing so, it
created fertile ground for the Islamic State and brought foreign
conflicts home to American soil.
These failed wars
abroad have made the United States more vulnerable to both terrorism
as well as native ultra-nationalism. The Trump presidency is the
inevitable consequence of neoconservative imperialism in the
post–Cold War age. Trump’s dealings in the Middle East are likely
only to exacerbate the situation.