Blowback

“There are foreign policy strategists in Washington who have sought for decades to turn militant Islam into a tool of policy. This is not a flight of critical fancy: it is a well documented fact; it is not challenged as an accusation, but it is not unduly admitted either. In the beginning those strategists, or their predecessors, may have underestimated the danger of ‘blowback,’ but over the years they have bound good men to bad policy, and they have reinforced failure with gold. ‘Blowback’ is the apt metaphor: poison gas blowing back from its intended victims to choice one’s own soldiers in their trenches. The strategy of effective support for Islamic ambitions in pursuit of short-term political or military objectives of the United States has helped turn Islamic radicalism into a truly global phenomenon” (Serge Trifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet, p. 209).