How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump

How America’s failed wars abroad – Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria – has resulted in increased threat at home, and the rise of Trump.

Since the 1970s, Washington has been secretly funding some of the worst terrorists in the Middle East. America has supported extremists with money and hardware, including enemies such as Bin Laden. The Pentagon’s willingness to make alliances abroad have seen the war coming home with inevitable consequences: by funding, training, and arming jihadist elements in Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya since the Cold War and waging wars of regime change and interventions that gave birth to the Islamic State. Such action has lead to a blow back effect at home: a security crisis that has seen the catastrophe of 9/11 and other terrorist threats as well as the rise of an islamophobic ethnonationialism.