And none of them would have come to the fore like this had it not been for the US’s incessant meddling in the region. You ignore that as late as 1970, almost the entire Middle East was allied with the US. Then it all went to hades in 1973 and picked up speed with the Russian invasion. Pretend that these are all discrete happenings all you wish, but in the grand sweep of history, they are very much related. Yes, there have been tensions in the region for arguably thousands of years, but one would have to be blind not to see that it took the US shoving its way centre stage into the geopolitical landscape, by pushing that religious nationalism to the fore and then providing armament by the trainload to anyone who had the ready cash, to really ramp it all up, all in the name of protecting its own interests and leveraging any and all to do the dirty work.

    Sean Stephane Martin

    Written by

    Cartoonist, "Doc and Raider" (docandraider.com); illustrator; Canadian, @doc_and_raider