Islamic terrorism and Western foreign policy

Me: If Islamic terrorism is a response to Western foreign policy, why did they attack Jakarta?

D: Because Indonesia is a western stooge.

C: they hate indonesia's freedom, their way of life and their democracy!!!

B: Saying "blame Western foreign policy" is a platitude.

There is no singular "foreign policy" that is agreed across all Western countries, nor across different regimes within them. Go from Lisbon or Copenhagen and their policies towards various external matters will be different from the US. Even within the US, the foreign policies do change over time and across administrations.

A: That's why people like Noam Chomsky is so way off base in their analysis. In his zeal to blame everything on US imperialism, he actually is what exhibiting signs of bigotry (only white guys have the ability to screw up the world so badly!)

B: Chomsky has made a reputation for a brilliant linguist.

He should have stayed there, and out of geopolitics.

I completely agree with you A - in Chomsky's worldwide, everyone is a passive entity except the US; that the whole world would be in perpetual and sublime peace if it wasn't for the West/USA constantly poking it with a big imperialist stick.

While it's perfectly legitimate to criticise the US for what it does do/ fails to do around the world; he often forgets that there are other powerful actors which have their own, sometimes converging, sometimes contrary, interests.

Two perfect illustrations of that is how Russia has (1) basically outflanked the USA in its annexation of Ukraine, and (2) and in its support of Assad which allowed the Syrian civil war to continue, and then vetoed the UN when the US tried to have Assad referred to the ICC.

Of course, there are those on the internet that say that the CIA is behind both the annexation of Crimea (and shot down the Malaysian airline), and the Syrian civil war.

Geopolitics is super complex because there are always so many actors involved, and not many of them make their ultimate goals or intentions publicly known.

For many, it is simpler and easier to accept an omniscient and omnipotent USA as the root cause of ALL global problem because the reality is so much more complex and quite depressing.