Are you confused by what is going on in the Middle East? Let me explain.
We (The West) support the Iraqi government in their fight against ISIS. We don’t like ISIS, but ISIS is supported by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, whom we do like because we love our oil nice and cheap.
The Iraqi government is getting help from Iran to fight ISIS but we don’t like Iran, because they don’t like listening to us.
Now coming to Syria: We don’t like Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, who’s a big baddie because he is friends with other big baddies like Russia and Iran. So we support the fight against Assad by arming, training and funding ‘moderate rebels’ because overthrowing Assad means we can put a goodie, i.e. someone who will listen to us, in his place.
So we do not co-operate with the baddies (Assad, Iran and Russia), who btw are also at war with ISIS, to collectively defeat ISIS (even though defeating ISIS is supposedly our number one priority in ME?!) because the baddies are also attacking our ‘moderate rebels’ without whom our regime change plan would fail.
So, some of our friends are supporting some of our enemies and some of our enemies are kind of like our friends(?!) cos they’re fighting against our other enemies- whom we want to lose- but we also don’t want our enemies who are fighting our other enemies to win because they’re also our enemies!
So right now we don’t know which one of our enemies we want to win and which one of them we want for to lose..and while we make up our mind the war rages on and wars need more and more weapons to go on and since we are the biggest weapons exporter in the world more war=more money so I guess perpetual warfare is just what the doctor ordered?!
And let’s not forget this whole mess was started in the first place by our ILLEGALLY invading a country in search of WMDs that NEVER existed, to drive out terrorists who only cropped up AFTER we went in to drive them out. Do you understand now?
-Paraphrased by Taqbir Huda from ‘Clear as Mud’ by Aubrey Bailey