We've been played

A recent HuffPo read -You Can't Understand ISIS If You Don't Know the History of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia - is a bit of a slog, but an essential one, taking our post- Paris 11/13/15 eyes to an almost ignored, willfully overlooked Middle Eastern/global power brokers.  Aka the Saudi royal house.  

The US government & our media outlets made the calculated decision to NOT give any sort of balanced picture of our "valued" allies.  That's always chilled me to the bone.  The Saudis sat back & let America fight for IT's issues, while they remained safely behind the scenes, decidedly not part of the big picture.  Well, not visibly.  But they were always there.  

And the radical form of Islam currently encroaching on Europe & the world is right at home with the Saudis.  

It took the most tragic of circumstances, but FINALLY someone is writing what I've wondered for many years.  To quote from the article (the first part of a 2-part piece):


In the collaborative management of the region by the Saudis and the West in pursuit of the many western projects (countering socialism, Ba'athism, Nasserism, Soviet and Iranian influence), western politicians have highlighted their chosen reading of Saudi Arabia (wealth, modernization and influence), but they chose to ignore the Wahhabist impulse.

After all, the more radical Islamist movements were perceived by Western intelligence services as being more effective in toppling the USSR in Afghanistan -- and in combatting out-of-favor Middle Eastern leaders and states.

Why should we be surprised then, that from Prince Bandar's Saudi-Western mandate to manage the insurgency in Syria against President Assad should have emerged a neo-Ikhwan type of violent, fear-inducing vanguard movement: ISIS? And why should we be surprised -- knowing a little about Wahhabism -- that "moderate" insurgents in Syria would become rarer than a mythical unicorn? Why should we have imagined that radical Wahhabism would create moderates? Or why could we imagine that a doctrine of "One leader, One authority, One mosque: submit to it, or be killed" could ever ultimately lead to moderation or tolerance?

Or, perhaps, we never imagined.


Finally, the media ostrich raised its head out of the sand & was alarmed by what it saw! Alas, I fear - too little, too late.  

My fellow Americans - we have been played.