Bargaining with the Great Satan

The chain of events to today’s troubles runs thus: seeking to avoid the spread of the revolution, Western and Arab states backed the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, in the war he launched against Iran in 1980; Western navies patrolled the Gulf to protect oil tankers; after that war ended an emboldened Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990; some of the American forces that led the alliance which removed him stayed in Saudi Arabia to contain Iran and Iraq; that presence was used as justification for al-Qaeda’s attack on September 11th 2001; George W. Bush rashly decided to finish the job that his father had supposedly left undone and invaded Iraq to get rid of Saddam in 2003; the subsequent occupation brought forth a jihadist resistance that transformed itself into today’s IS.