How to bake an ISIS cake: recipe for success.

Bakin success.

Bakin a cake ain’t much different from roasting your enemy. Assemble the right ingredients, throw them all together, toss em in the oven for a time and wallah (والله), out comes the perfect finished product, except for one thing: the wrong ingredients.

Mr. Twain didn’t say that, but he did say this:  “Two or three centuries from now it will be recognized that all the competent killers are Christians; then the pagan world will go to the Christian school—not to acquire his religion, but his guns.” Oh, and for the readers edification, “wallah/والله ” is an Arabic expression meaning I promise by Allah, and is used to express great credibility. It’s considered a sin among Muslims to use this phrase and follow it up with a lie. And we told a heap of em. In the words of our satirist: “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” And as far traveling was concerned, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime,” and we seem a bit short on those attributes as well.

It’s doubtful that before 9/11 many modern Americans knew anything about Sunnis or Shiites, and even less about the importance of the Muslim religion in the Middle East. But what we did, and do, know about are guns and allegedly being Christian. We’ve become a nation of the combination of both. We wear the badge but fall short of the brotherhood part. “If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be—a Christian.” Gandhi had a similar take. He said, “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

But back to the “small steps” and ingredients for the cake. After 9/11 we had the wind of the civilized world in our sails. The destruction of the Twin Towers was the Pearl Harbor of our time and al-Qaeda was the “evil axis,”—the term George W. Bush used extensively throughout his term to describe governments that he accused of helping terrorism and seeking weapons of mass destruction. That was the first lie: the pretext that justified our invasion and the destruction of the infrastructure of Iraq and every reasonable means for the population for surviving. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq nor were there many members of al-Qaeda (at least at first), but going after the “evil axis” became the battle cry that justified the destruction. So if there were no weapons of mass destruction or al-Qaeda, what was our motive? Certainly getting Saddam and his cronies, but was it reasonable to destroy the entire nation toward that end? Perhaps there was another reason (beyond Oil), and to explore that mystery we’ll follow the money. 

Our war machine is awesome. There is some disagreement concerning the magnitude of our destructive power but best guess says, just counting bombs dropped alone, more tonnage was dropped on Iraq than in WWII altogether. From a distance this is a meaningless statistic but I assure you, having fought two years in Vietnam, it’s not meaningless to people where a war destroys your culture and means of existence. 

But our practice, as discussed in the post The mouse that was forbidden from roaring, has been to rebuild what we destroy and that costs a lot of cash. Last estimate for that rebuilding project: $138 billion. That sounds like a bunch, but is chump change compared to what we tax payers spent to rebuild Western Europe and Japan following WWII. That figure amounted to 11% of our GDP in 1945—$1.652 trillion in today’s money. Eleven percent of our GDP today, to rebuild Iraq, would be $15.92 trillion! Nevertheless the $138 billion that was spent, was spent poorly and Iraq today remains a rubble, unable to provide for even basic necessities. The big issue—follow the money—who got the contracts to rebuild? The answer: Dick Cheney’s Halliburton, #1 with $39.5 billion. Might that be sufficient motivation, beyond oil? Oh, let’s not forget the oil.

In 2005, George Bush received more PAC money from the oil and gas industry than any other politician. The result? GW signed an energy bill from the Republican-controlled Congress that gave $14.5 billion in tax breaks for oil, gas, nuclear power and coal companies. The Energy Policy Act of 2005, which was based on recommendations by Cheney’s energy task force, also rolled back regulations the oil industry considered burdensome, including exemptions from some clean water laws. All of this transpired only one year after Congress passed a bill that included a tax cut for domestic manufacturing that was expected to save energy companies at least $3.6 billion over a decade. It must not go unmentioned that both Bush and Cheney were former oil executives and during the Bush/Cheney administration the oil and gas industry spent $393.2 million on lobbying the federal government.

This was just the first, in the series of small steps ingredients that led to the inevitable ISIS cake. More will come in subsequent posts.