Portside

Our predicament is substantially obscured by the frightening enthusiasm for war among leading pundits. As Stephen F. Cohen has observed about the Ukraine–Russia crisis, the US media are simply not telling the truth about the failure of our post–Cold War policy. They demonize the opponent and never acknowledge the rational alternatives that exist. America needs an antiwar movement of truth tellers to confront and shame the propagandists.

ISIS is something quite new. It wants to destroy all states, especially the Muslim states carved out by Western imperialists from Islamic land. With horrible savagery, elevated to a religious symbol, it sets out on its way to conquer the Muslim world, and then the globe. It expresses the Muslim longing for restoring ancient glory, their hatred of all those who have humiliated Islam, a thirst for spiritual values.