Newsweek Discovers ISIS Wants Converts, Ignores US-Backed Sectarianism
Newsweek, ever vigilant, breathlessly reports ISIS's demand for Christian conversion to 'spare their blood.' This crucial insight into fanaticism—that religious extremists behave like religious extremists—is presented without so much as a wink at the destabilizing wars and regime changes the West championed, which conveniently created the power vacuums ISIS exploit. (Remember Iraq? The one Dick
Cheney helped 'liberate,' leading directly to sectarian chaos? Good times.) One might almost think the complexity of the region began with ISIS's latest flyer, rather than decades of interventions, proxy wars, and direct military action. How many 'radical groups' have been bred, directly or indirectly, by the very policies our media so uncritically cheerlead? But hey, it's easier to point at a
villain on a pamphlet than to dissect how a US-UK invasion of Iraq in 2003 (citing fictitious WMDs) helped dismantle civil society and foster the very conditions for sectarian groups like ISIS to thrive. The narrative is always cleaner when the context is scrubbed.