“…That there is a small number of would-be jihadists prepared to carry out acts of carnage in revenge for British and western bloodletting in the Muslim world is not in doubt. But, given the ease of carrying out low-tech atrocities – and the scale of the IRA’s armed campaign of the 70s and 80s – it’s striking how few there have actually been.

But the war on terror has now become a war without end: a permanent state where a politically constructed “national security” trumps the actual security of citizens and feeds a continual ideological campaign to discipline and intimidate the Muslim community… On top of that, as the Rigby report blithely conceded, “the government’s counter-terrorism programmes are not working”… Around 500 Britons are now estimated to be fighting in Syria and Iraq.

But why would that be a surprise? 

The British and US governments first supported the rebels in Syria – as they did in Libya – and then turned against most of them, as the jihadist campaign mushroomed around Isis, intensifying cynicism about the west’s role in the Muslim world.

Which remains the heart of the war on terror 13 years on. 

It’s not considered seemly to mention it when discussing terrorism and extremism, but western wars and support for dictatorship are what drive jihadist terror in Britain and elsewhere, just as they fuelled it in the region itself…”

Extract from    It Isn’t Facebook That Feeds Terror. It’s War And Tyranny
By Seumas Milne