What the mainstream is ignoring about the Mid East

Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss - It’s not quite the mainstream, but several realist and leftwing voices have been making the case in recent days that terrorist violence in Europe and the United States is an understandable and predictable response to all the western violence delivered to the Middle East. These writers tell us that bombing Syria will not achieve what we want it to, and even if we eliminate ISIS, some other force of violent resistance to the west will rise in its place. Just as ISIS replaced Al Qaeda. Sadly, it is a reflection of the enduring power of neoconservatives and liberal interventionists that these arguments are not being reflected in the mainstream, let alone by our politicians. All these writers remind us that the United States unleashed this violence when it wantonly broke Iraq apart. Steve Walt points out that we cannot assume an air of innocence when we have killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims, and Adam Shatz makes the point that the idea of fighting them there so we don’t fight them here is an illusion in today’s connected world.