Instability Is the Policy
Let’s get something straight: the United States doesn’t stumble into chaos overseas, it administers it.
For decades, Washington has treated instability in the Middle East not as a failure of policy but as a carefully maintained asset. A stable, independent region would trade on its own terms, control its own oil, and stop buying American weapons.
That would be disastrous for Wall Street, for the Pentagon, and for the whole corporate-imperial apparatus that feeds off permanent crisis.
From the Carter Doctrine onward, U.S. law and doctrine have made domination of the Persian Gulf a “vital interest.” That means any government that tries to chart an independent path - nationalize resources, ally with non-Western powers, or simply stay out of Washington’s orbit - can expect sanctions, subversion, or invasion.
Iran 1953, Afghanistan in the 1980s, Iraq 2003, Libya 2011, Syria 2012 to today: these weren’t mistakes. They were operations. Each one destroyed a functioning state and replaced it with rubble, warlords, and foreign dependency. And that’s the point.
The arms merchants get rich, the dollar stays glued to global energy markets, and the American public is told it’s all to keep them “safe.” The real safety being protected is the safety of U.S. capital.
Enter ISIS and Al-Qaeda, the perfect villains. They perform the same function the Soviet Union once did: a permanent excuse for military budgets, foreign bases, and endless war.
These groups almost never attack Israel, but their mere existence keeps the region on a boil and the money flowing.
They are the necessary demons in a morality play that sells occupation as security and empire as benevolence.
If Washington didn’t need them, the media would treat them for what they are, relatively minor insurgent movements bred by occupation and economic ruin, not civilization’s sworn enemy. But that story would force us to admit who created those conditions in the first place. So instead, the networks roll the same footage, the politicians mouth the same slogans, and the fear machine hums along.
When people finally ask, “Why are we still over there?” the answer is simple and ugly: money and racism.
The phrase “radical Islam” is one of the cleverest propaganda tricks of the last half-century. It turns political resistance into religious pathology. It says nothing about imperial occupation, CIA coups, or IMF austerity, it just whispers, “They hate us for our freedom.
When politicians tell us “they hate our way of life,” they’re not talking about the nine-to-five job, the Starbucks run, or the two kids and a dog. What’s really meant is the way of life that sends troops across oceans, drains other people’s oil fields, and topples governments that refuse to obey.
It’s not our freedom they resent, it’s our imperial footprint.
And let’s be honest: this “way of life” is hard-fought, but we don’t do the fighting. The burden is carried by the people of the nations we exploit: the workers digging our minerals, the farmers displaced by our trade policies, the civilians buried under our “precision” bombs.
Their suffering is the down payment on our comfort.
So when leaders say “they hate our way of life,” they’re right about one thing: people do hate a system that steals their future, poisons their soil, and calls it freedom. What they hate isn’t democracy, it’s the violence behind it.
Look closer and you’ll see that groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda follow the same pattern as every other desperate, violent reaction to foreign domination.
They are anti-colonial extremists, not theological aberrations. Religion is the banner; empire is the battlefield. Labeling them “radical Islam” erases that reality. It lets Western power claim moral innocence while treating Muslim identity itself as suspect.
No one calls Latin American guerrillas “radical Christianity.” No one describes European fascists as “radical Catholics.” The term exists only to racialize and de-politicize Muslim resistance, to keep the public frightened and obedient.
Fear = profit, so to dehumanize people is good for business.
If we stripped away the propaganda and looked at the record, we’d see continuity, not exception. Every empire has faced uprisings. Every uprising is called barbarism by those who rule. And every time, the language of civilization is used to mask the machinery of profit.
To confront extremism honestly, we have to confront the system that breeds it. That means abandoning the slur “radical Islam” and naming the real radicalism of our time, the radicalism of empire, the belief that no nation, no people, and no faith has the right to stand outside the reach of the West's power.
And while politicians in Washington and Ottawa posture about “condemning violence,” they sign the arms deals, fund the bombings, and applaud the sanctions that starve children.
They condemn violence only when it isn’t theirs.