War

How US aggression created the Nairobi, Kenya mall terrorists.

"And here’s a reality that you won’t see on your TV screen 24/7: if al-Shabab is a nightmare, history has joined it to Washington at the hip. The particular kind of destabilization that gripped Somalia in the post-9/11 years, including a U.S.-inspired Ethiopian invasion and years later a Kenyan version of the same, has now spread to Kenya itself. As Nick Turse has argued at this site, this sort of destabilization is now happening across the African continent. The U.S. military, along with the CIA and U.S. intelligence, is moving more deeply into Africa, and in the process, from Libya to the Central African Republic, it is helping to turn the continent into Terror Central."

Great.

"Those scores of FBI agents combing the ruins in Nairobi (as well as the beefed up CIA contingent now dealing with the situation) aren’t the answer to a sudden crisis. They are signs of a long-term problem; they are the chicken to the terrorist egg – and which came first almost doesn’t matter anymore. If you decide that anyone, anywhere, on Earth can be an imminent “danger” to the homeland and you’ve already transformed the very idea of “national” defense into international defense, and nowhere is too far to go to “defend” yourself, then you are always going to be stirring things up in distant places in ways you don’t understand and with a hatful of unintended consequences."

And eventually they will come here and attack Americans.

"The Pentagon has spent the last two decades plowing hundreds of millions of tax dollars into military bases in Italy, turning the country into an increasingly important center for U.S. military power. Especially since the start of the Global War on Terror in 2001, the military has been shifting its European center of gravity south from Germany, where the overwhelming majority of U.S. forces in the region have been stationed since the end of World War II. In the process, the Pentagon has turned the Italian peninsula into a launching pad for future wars in Africa, the Middle East, and beyond.
At bases in Naples, Aviano, Sicily, Pisa, and Vicenza, among others, the military has spent more than $2 billion on construction alone since the end of the Cold War – and that figure doesn’t include billions more on classified construction projects and everyday operating and personnel costs."

Wonderful.

"Most tourists think of Italy as the land of Renaissance art, Roman antiquities, and of course great pizza, pasta, and wine. Few think of it as a land of U.S. bases. But Italy’s 59 Pentagon-identified “base sites” top that of any country except Germany (179), Japan (103), Afghanistan (100 and declining), and South Korea (89)."

We're the stupidest people to ever live.

Analysis of what happened to cause the US to suddenly back off bombing Syria and begin talking with Iran.

"Obama may want Assad out, but more than that he doesn’t want the jihadists in, which helps explain Washington’s reluctance to seriously intervene until it can create a united Syrian front subordinate to US interests that can handle the political and military aspects of regime change in Damascus, including a successor to Assad."

I doubt that stopped Obama. I think the American people did.