The truth:
The jihadist die is cast, a point of no return for the U.S. strategy of projecting imperial power in the region through armed Islamic fundamentalist surrogates. The international jihadist network, which did not exist before the CIA, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan created it to undermine the leftist secular government of Afghanistan in mid-1979, has become a movement that can no longer be controlled.
I suppose messing with the Russians was worth it.
The slight problem:
. The jihadists are, at root, anti-imperialists – inalterably opposed to domination by the “Crusaders” of the West and Zionists.
Not so much. Jihadism by Muslims is not new to this century or last century. Jihad and the establishment of Caliphates is
definitively imperialist:
the policy of extending the rule or authority of an empire or nation over foreign countries, or of acquiring and holding colonies and dependencies.
So then the correct statement is that they are anti-western imperialism. Which I suppose if you are a victim of western imperialism doesn't seem to be much of a problem. However if one is anti-imperialist in
principle then you must ALSO be againt Islamic imperialism. I will remind the reader that the Trans Atlantic slave trade was preceded by the Trans Sahara slave trade across and within the Maghreb (north Africa). Islamic imperialism has not been any more kind to the African than that of the Western kind.