A chain of very bad decisions has led to this era, and there's no indication that anyone has learned from their mistakes. Starting in Afghanistan in the 1980's, the United States and its vassals backed with weapons and resources the so-called mujahideen in their fight against the Soviets and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan through Pakistan's ISI. Once their enemies were defeated, these US-armed fighters completely destroyed Afghanistan and divided into warring statelets, fostering the conditions to allow for the rise of the Taliban and providing a safe haven for al Qaeda. That's to say nothing of the point that it is very likely that CIA money funded the 'Afghan Arab' fighters who later spawned the global jihadist movement, including al Qaeda, given that the CIA had little discretion over how the ISI channeled these funds.
Moving forward, the United States illegally invaded and occupied Iraq. Even the fallout of this disastrous decision could perhaps have been mitigated had the US not insisted on a process of de-Baathification, yet in doing so the occupiers ensured the marginalization of Iraq's Sunni Arab population and sparked the ethnic conflict that soon ensued. Even among policy-makers in the US it is now acknowledged this laid the groundwork for the rise of ISIS, yet given the opportunity to rectify its mistakes, the US has continued to follow the same strategy in Libya and Syria. Despite the Free Syrian Army fighting side by side with al Qaeda (al Nusra) and other radical Islamist groups (Ahrah ash-Sham, Jaysh al-Islam, etc.) and while the American Syrian Civil War expert scholar Dr. Joshua Landis estimates 90% of all aid to the FSA ends up in the hands of radical jihadists, the CIA continues to back these fighters in an attempt to remove Assad from power. Sound familiar?
I understand the French desire to retaliate and I would say I even support the bombing of Raqqa. But bombing an enemy like ISIS does absolutely nothing if you do not have soldiers on the ground to attack and take ground. Even more crucially, however, we have to demand that our leaders stop pursuing policies that allow for the rise of these jihadist movements. We have to demand accountability of the Saudis and their sadistic Wahhabism-Salafism they spread with their petrodollars and we have to stop a policy of regime changed aimed at neutralizing nations that might stand up to Israel or in some other way stand in the way of the West's geopolitical designs. Otherwise it is inevitable that states will continue to collapse, refugees will continue to flee, and terror will continue to spread.
That's just my opinion. Kthxbye
