Is this how it will start?

[Mega]

Back in 1972 we had "Bloody Sunday"................Britan's "Me-lie".
No one started the day with the aim of killing 13 unarmed people, but thats how it ended.....& started 30 years of WAR with the IRA.

Is this how it will start this time around?
Mike

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Is this how it will start?

Public order control measures regarding firearms would be far different today than 1972.

The threat level from public protests would likely be far less likely to include risk of a firearms threat.

IF a protest included the risk of a "come on" where a shooter attempts to draw fire from law enforcement to create an incident, rules of engagement and specialist armed police tactics, training, and procedures would be applied to mitigate that risk....especially in the UK I would think.

No guarantee it will not happen, because the incident itself will have been replayed countless times within UK security forces to develop public order plans that mitigate that risk as much as possible.

IF police used firearms inappropriately in public order operations, I would think any/all directly involved and their superiors would be sacrificed by government.

Just my thoughts.

[Mega]

Re: Is this how it will start?

As someone whom took part in a Riot (Liverpool 1981)....Let me tell you that its a strange experance. You tend to lose your individully. You become part of the greater mass, like some sort of sub consence, a drone is a bigger collective movement. I can quite easy see the same thing happening for people in uniform........it can then run out of control....

All its going to take is a few shot dead in the back......
Rev-O-lution My friends.
Mike

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Is this how it will start?

As someone whom took part in a Riot (Liverpool 1981)....Let me tell you that its a strange experance. You tend to lose your individully. You become part of the greater mass, like some sort of sub consence, a drone is a bigger collective movement. I can quite easy see the same thing happening for people in uniform........it can then run out of control....

All its going to take is a few shot dead in the back......
Rev-O-lution My friends.
Mike

I've participated in riots/riot training from a couple angles. We've had quite realistic training that resulted in fairly serious injuries to a few and the majority turning black and blue on both sides as both "riot police" in green for training and operations as well as "rioter" in training. Our instructors included a few(3 IIRC) with considerable experience in Northern Ireland(but no one who was in service in 1972).

I would agree that the collective "team" be it rioters or riot police can seem to take on a very fast changing "personality" of it's own. A bit like rugby maybe.....where you can sense the gain or loss of momentum and energy.

One of the scariest things I've experienced is when a young child(6-10 hard to tell due to common malnutrition) in a large market holding thousands of indigenous folks consisting of two main ethnic groups was being accused of stealing food.

The place went from "no worries" island time to "28 Days Later" with the flick of a switch. Pretty scary up close and personal.

I'm not really concerned about there being another Bloody Sunday or Kent State incident in the wealthy west.

While I have believed for a number of years that before this is over we will see mass civil disturbances, I don't expect to see the police side squeezing off pistol/rifle rounds into a crowd again.

Those lessons have been learned and applied and forensic ability to apportion blame in the discharge of individual firearms is broader, deeper, and easier to determine now than 40 years ago.

I'd say it's FAR more likely to hear folks complaining about less than lethal crowd control options.

40 Years ago the "toolbox" available for crowd control was far more limited than it is today.

It's also worth mentioning that during the time of the Bloody Sunday incident UK forces were being regularly engaged by IRA active service units so the threat level faced by UK Forces on the day of the incident ran the spectrum of peaceful protestors up through and including IRA sniper cells.

Today, not only is a full range of agents available(tear gas, CS, pepper spray, etc in mostly aerosol form but also in paintball guns as well) but also bean bag rounds fired from shotguns, net guns, stun guns/tazers, and more recently sound cannons, dazzler lights, and microwave devices.

I suspect these less than lethal tools will probably come under closer public scrutiny if and when they are used commonly to control large crowds in the wealthy west....and definitely if they are used TOO commonly or inappropriately.

I would be quite surprised if someone is killed by police with a firearm without reasonable cause, but I would expect if things get quite heated and mass public disturbances occur then I think it's reasonable to think that a few people could be killed as a direct/indirect result of less than lethal tools contributing to some deaths.

People in poor health, particularly poor respiratory health.....or someone shot with a beanbag round in the head from very close range for example.

I certainly hope we are beyond seeing a 2.0 version of Kent State or Bloody Sunday in the wealthy west.

The developing world/3rd world is an entirely different story. It is quite possible, maybe even likely, we could see a terrible incident(s) involving firearms on crowds occur there if mass civil disturbances become common.

Their level of training, their institutional knowledge, and their toolbox is, on average, much more limited.

[Mega]

Re: Is this how it will start?

Yes, but the IRA are not the "Want-2-Bee BMW owners club".
Mike

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Is this how it will start?

Yes, but the IRA are not the "Want-2-Bee BMW owners club".
Mike

Not sure what you mean by this?

[Mega]

Re: Is this how it will start?

Am saying the Baader-Menoff were a bunch of lazy middleclass kids, as were the Manson crew as were the lot who got Patty Hurst.....am saying that they are looking for an (excuse) Cause to kick off. Now all we need is a bit of heavy handed stuff & all HELL could cut loose....

BTW There was a saying in Germany in the 70's.....BMW = Baader Menoff wagon, because they always used BMW's.
Mike

[Starving Steve]

Re: Is this how it will start?

I participated in some of the "Down with the Shah" demonstrations at UC Berkeley in the late 1960s. And I certainly do know what you mean by a crowd consciousness or group-think.

After seeing what that new bunch in Iran were like in the decades later, I can say that I was completely brainwashed by the Down with the Shah bunch in those years at UC. When I met the speakers of the Down with the Shah rallies, they seemed very rational and very moderate, even very Western, pro-American and democratic. Well dressed, white shirts, suits and ties, I never suspected that these were hoodlums and were planning to take Iran and the rest of the Middle East back to the Dark Ages and seventh century.

There were other little Hitlers and little Hitlarian groups that brainwashed crowds and depended upon a group-think to emerge. One of those groups was the People's Park bunch who wanted a park in Berkeley for bums, criminals, alcoholics and druggies. Another bunch of little-Hitlers were the emerging environmentalist groups: the Sierra Club of course, but also the Save the Redwoods bunch, the anti-nuclear power bunch, the Save Lake Tahoe bunch ( who in the years later would go on to become corrupt and arrogant regional planners in the Tahoe Basin ), Greenpeace who would later go on to try to make all coastal development impossible in California, the Save the Whales bunch who would go on to try to make all fishing (of anything) at sea impossible, and a host of other similar groups that had the entire university buffaloed and brainwashed by volumes of mis-information and propaganda designed exactly for crowd-control and group-think at the university.... Sad to say, in those years, even I was a bit brainwashed by these groups, and these were shameful groups, especially the Down with the Shah bunch.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Is this how it will start?

Am saying the Baader-Menoff were a bunch of lazy middleclass kids, as were the Manson crew as were the lot who got Patty Hurst.....am saying that they are looking for an (excuse) Cause to kick off. Now all we need is a bit of heavy handed stuff & all HELL could cut loose....

BTW There was a saying in Germany in the 70's.....BMW = Baader Menoff wagon, because they always used BMW's.
Mike

It's interesting that you bring up Baader Meinhoff/Red Army Faction.

While some would categorize them as a bunch of disaffected students, the truth is a bit different...they killed dozens(even though for a time they enjoyed public sympathetic support from Germans).

They received considerable financial, training, weapons, intelligence support from the Warsaw Pact(primarily East Germany) as well as governments and non-state actors in the Middle East(Lebanon, Yemen, et al).

The assassination of Alfred Herrhausen Chairman of Deutsche Bank was quite sophisticated and far beyond the capability of a bunch of Cappuccino Communist Commandos.

While it's possible(and maybe even likely) for a similar student group to mutate from civil disobedience to more serious crimes of politically motivated violence, I think the opportunities are fewer and the challenges greater now than the 70's to make that transition.

I don't expect to see a direct repeat of the 70's/80's that we saw with IRA/Baader Meinhoff/RAF/Action Directe/Nov 17/ETA/Weather Underground/SLA/Anti-nuke rallies.

Just as we aren't likely to see a direct repeat of the 1930's.

I can definitely see mass civil disturbances becoming more frequent. And the student debt/youth unemployment issues, if not aggressively mitigated, will likely fester into higher crime statistics and anti-social/"revolutionary" behavior.

As you mentioned, the 1970's-1980's were pretty crazy.....but we survived it.

We will survive this as well......

I'm waiting to see if the violence-free/high profile/media savvy civil disobedience and public opinion hearts/minds campaigns that Greenpeace waged over the years might be an indicator of what we might expect.

It's sure to get interesting, but I'm reasonably confident we will not see a Bloody Sunday/Kent State incident in the West, I'm less confident we will completely avoid another round of politically motivated violence from groups that fester or mutate during this challenging period we are in.

Young educated people + poor financial/employment/life prospects + disaffected/idle hands = the devils workshop for a few.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Is this how it will start?

I participated in some of the "Down with the Shah" demonstrations at UC Berkeley in the late 1960s. And I certainly do know what you mean by a crowd consciousness or group-think.

After seeing what that new bunch in Iran were like in the decades later, I can say that I was completely brainwashed by the Down with the Shah bunch in those years at UC. When I met the speakers of the Down with the Shah rallies, they seemed very rational and very moderate, even very Western, pro-American and democratic. Well dressed, white shirts, suits and ties, I never suspected that these were hoodlums and were planning to take Iran and the rest of the Middle East back to the Dark Ages and seventh century.

There were other little Hitlers and little Hitlarian groups that brainwashed crowds and depended upon a group-think to emerge. One of those groups was the People's Park bunch who wanted a park in Berkeley for bums, criminals, alcoholics and druggies. Another bunch of little-Hitlers were the emerging environmentalist groups: the Sierra Club of course, but also the Save the Redwoods bunch, the anti-nuclear power bunch, the Save Lake Tahoe bunch ( who in the years later would go on to become corrupt and arrogant regional planners in the Tahoe Basin ), Greenpeace who would later go on to try to make all coastal development impossible in California, the Save the Whales bunch who would go on to try to make all fishing (of anything) at sea impossible, and a host of other similar groups that had the entire university buffaloed and brainwashed by volumes of mis-information and propaganda designed exactly for crowd-control and group-think at the university.... Sad to say, in those years, even I was a bit brainwashed by these groups, and these were shameful groups, especially the Down with the Shah bunch.

Interesting perspective.

As I understand it, California has a pretty substantial number of ethnic Persian/Iranian folks.

I've heard Berkeley was quite active in opposing the Shah a decade+ before his overthrow...but haven't been able to find much about the effort or its core leadership.

[shiny!]

Re: Is this how it will start?

Police used to be trained to Serve and Protect. Now their training is more military in nature. It changes they way they respond to crowds. It's a well-documented fact that law enforcement personnel armed with so-called "non-lethal" weaponery are quicker to fire into crowds than if they're armed live ammo.

Funny story:

Back in the early seventies I was in Austin at the Capitol building, where I met a woman who was a Communist. We got to talking about some of the recent, very large anti-war demonstrations. He husband was a cop. He would drop her off where her friends were gathering to protest, then drive two more blocks to where the police were gathering, put on his riot gear and do his job. Apparently they had a happy marriage.

[Dave Stratman]

Re: Is this how it will start?

I participated in some of the "Down with the Shah" demonstrations at UC Berkeley in the late 1960s. And I certainly do know what you mean by a crowd consciousness or group-think.

After seeing what that new bunch in Iran were like in the decades later, I can say that I was completely brainwashed by the Down with the Shah bunch in those years at UC. When I met the speakers of the Down with the Shah rallies, they seemed very rational and very moderate, even very Western, pro-American and democratic. Well dressed, white shirts, suits and ties, I never suspected that these were hoodlums and were planning to take Iran and the rest of the Middle East back to the Dark Ages and seventh century.

Starvin' Steve--I think you did the right thing, supporting the Down with the Shah movement, and I doubt that the Iranian student activists you admired then had any intention of taking Iran back to the Dark Ages.

The Iranian Revolution was a vast affair with powerful contending forces. On the one hand were Iranian workers, especially oil workers, and high school and university students, who together formed a powerful democratic, anti-capitalist movement. On the other were the Ayatollah Khomeini and the mullahs: the reactionary forces of political Islam.

The U.S. had a huge stake in preventing democratic revolutionary forces from succeeding. Far better that the reactionary mullahs and their medieval concepts dominate the movement and snuff out the threat of democracy. The U.S. threw in its lot with political Islam and TIME's Man of the Year for 1979, the Ayatollah Khomeini. (Note that the U.S. had a long-standing relationship with political Islam in Saudi Arabia, and that in 1979 the CIA had already begun arming and training mujahadeen just over the border in Afghanistan, as Zbigniew Brzezhinski attests.

In summer, 1979, I was at a cocktail party in Washington, DC with Hodding Carter III, who was the State Department spokesperson at the time for the Jimmy Carter administration. It was a few months after the Iranian revolution of Feb. '79. I said to Carter, "It's pretty lucky for the US that the Iranian revolution is in the hands of religious fanatics, huh?" Carter just got a big grin on his face and said, "You might say that."

The point of my remark was this: A critical struggle over the direction of the Iranian revolution had just concluded. Would the revolution and post-Shah Iran be egalitarian, anti-capitalist, and democratic, or would it be religious fundamentalist and authoritarian? The Iranian revolution involved millions of working people—oil workers and other industrial workers and other working people, as well as radical students—and also the religious parties vying for power. By early summer, the Ayatollah Khomeini and his clerical party of fundamentalist Moslems had defeated the worker and student organizations and won control of the society. A year later, in June and July of 1980, thousands of student and workers active in the revolutionary movement were executed by the Khomeini regime.

It isn't clear when the U.S. began its working relationship with Khomeini, but it certainly had one. Representatives of the Reagan campaign met with Khomeini in October, 1980 while Americans were being held hostage in the Embassy, to make sure that the Iranians kept them hostage until Jan 20, 1981–after Reagan had been safely elected. (If the hostages had been freed before the election, Carter would likely have won.) Later the Reagan Administration and Israel worked secretly through the Islamic fundamentalist government of Iran to illegally arm the Contras (the U.S. government's favorite terrorists at the time) in Nicaragua in the "Iran/Contra Affair."

You weren't wrong to support the students trying to overthrow the Shah. The tragedy was that they lost the battle not with the Shah but with Khomeini. Many of them paid for that loss with their lives, and the hopes of millions for a liberating revolution were turned to dust.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Is this how it will start?

Police used to be trained to Serve and Protect.

They still do!

Now their training is more military in nature.

Incidents like Columbine, even though they are uncommon outliers, they are front of mind in public perception, which can shape training objectives and outcomes.

For example, one tactic that was always used was for the police to cordon and contain a crisis and await for specialist support(SWAT/AOS/Hostage Rescue/Negotiator).

Now there's a strong shift towards the immediate response when facing an "active shooter" like what happened in Mumbai. We didn't have much in the way of aircraft hijackings, even though security was rubbish for decades, until the day they came into vogue.

10 active shooters turned Mumbai, a city of 20+ million into a chaotic warzone approx. 3.5 years ago.

Specialist police officers cannot be everywhere at once.....and the old doctrine of cordon/contain could be a death sentence for everyone left alive inside the cordon.

So now, it's a question of 1-2 police officers first on scene to grab their rifles, move to contact, and find, fix, finish the bad guys or at least anchor them down until the cavalry arrives....which is pretty much as you described a military/paramilitary response.

it's not the majority of their job, not by a long shot.....but it is another potential threat they are responsible for countering.


It changes they way they respond to crowds. It's a well-documented fact that law enforcement personnel armed with so-called "non-lethal" weaponery are quicker to fire into crowds than if they're armed live ammo.

Of course they are more likely to use less than lethal tools than firearms......by their very nature they are more likely to be used.

Returning to a world of just batons and firearms would be far more hazardous for bystanders and offenders since police options would be stop them with their hands, cave their skull in with a baton, shoot them dead.

I think it's fantastic they have additional tools available, tools that also have their own rules of engagement, tools that, if used, also require justification, tools that if used inappropriately can easily result in disciplinary action through public complaints to internal affairs departments of law enforcement organizations. Tools that allow the police to work in a relatively safe environment as best possible, just like other careers/workers.

I know quite a few police, and I know police who have been stood down from active duty into support roles for a day or more pending investigation for complaints such as not showing enough sympathy for a victim of a car theft who left her car running.



Funny story:

Back in the early seventies I was in Austin at the Capitol building, where I met a woman who was a Communist. We got to talking about some of the recent, very large anti-war demonstrations. He husband was a cop. He would drop her off where her friends were gathering to protest, then drive two more blocks to where the police were gathering, put on his riot gear and do his job. Apparently they had a happy marriage.

I am VERY conservative on many issues, but quite liberal on some of the social stuff......I love a good protest......better people making a peaceful public statement exercising their rights than to sit brainwashed in front of the television.....but if the protest results in malignant and malicious protest activity......then they deserve to pepper sprayed, zip tied, and processed as safely as possible.

A final note about all of the additional tools available to law enforcement officers today.

Look at the minimum standards of fitness of police today and the change in their makeup in recent decades.

With the introduction of females into front line policing and their average smaller stature, lower weight, and lower physical performance on average they NEED the tools to perform their job to even a mediocre standard when facing a violent offender.

Women bring a lot of positive benefits to the job of policing, but physical presence/deterrence/capability isn't one of them.

That is the downside to equality and political correctness.

I could guarantee you that if only women served in front line policing and less than lethal options were not available a whole lot more offenders would be getting shot.

My concerns about the militarization of policing revolve around two things:

1.) No knock warrants...the standard should be high enough to prevent mistakes, and there have been a few in recent years...that is unacceptable.

2.) Intentionally intimidating and excessively aggressive police posture

*I witnessed specialist NYPD police tooled up around NYC on a number of occasions post 9/11. By "tooled up" I mean body armor, vest webbing, rifle, kevlar helmet, dark sunglasses. BY intimidating and excessively aggressive I mean helmet remains ON, instead of attached to vest webbing and wear a soft ball cap instead; by keeping their sunglasses ON instead of taking them off when interacting with the public so the public can see your eyes, by keeping their rifles slung and held to the front as a barrier between the public and themselves.

ALL completely unnecessary and counterproductive...especially since they were not involved in high risk operations....they were simply maintaining high profile presence in areas some naughty people might wish to target.

It is simple as breathing to sling the rifle to the side, attach the helmet to vest webbing on the other side, and have the courtesy to let those paying your wages to see your eyes when speaking with them.

It's not like they were patrolling in Fallujah 2006.

All unacceptable behavior in my opinion. I have helped take people through pre deployment training to threat environments greater than mid town Manhattan at happy hour and if they did the same thing they'd get binned from deployment if they didn't sort themselves out.

My perspective and opinion is that the consistency of their behavior meant that it was policy....which is disappointing...all they are doing is scaring and intimidating the public.....the deterrence against a serious asymmetric threat is in them being there...NOT how they are intimidating the people they are meant to protect.

I was extremely diappointed.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Is this how it will start?

Starvin' Steve--I think you did the right thing, supporting the Down with the Shah movement, and I doubt that the Iranian student activists you admired then had any intention of taking Iran back to the Dark Ages.

The Iranian Revolution was a vast affair with powerful contending forces. On the one hand were Iranian workers, especially oil workers, and high school and university students, who together formed a powerful democratic, anti-capitalist movement. On the other were the Ayatollah Khomeini and the mullahs: the reactionary forces of political Islam.

The U.S. had a huge stake in preventing democratic revolutionary forces from succeeding. Far better that the reactionary mullahs and their medieval concepts dominate the movement and snuff out the threat of democracy. The U.S. threw in its lot with political Islam and TIME's Man of the Year for 1979, the Ayatollah Khomeini. (Note that the U.S. had a long-standing relationship with political Islam in Saudi Arabia, and that in 1979 the CIA had already begun arming and training mujahadeen just over the border in Afghanistan, as Zbigniew Brzezhinski attests.

In summer, 1979, I was at a cocktail party in Washington, DC with Hodding Carter III, who was the State Department spokesperson at the time for the Jimmy Carter administration. It was a few months after the Iranian revolution of Feb. '79. I said to Carter, "It's pretty lucky for the US that the Iranian revolution is in the hands of religious fanatics, huh?" Carter just got a big grin on his face and said, "You might say that."

The point of my remark was this: A critical struggle over the direction of the Iranian revolution had just concluded. Would the revolution and post-Shah Iran be egalitarian, anti-capitalist, and democratic, or would it be religious fundamentalist and authoritarian? The Iranian revolution involved millions of working people—oil workers and other industrial workers and other working people, as well as radical students—and also the religious parties vying for power. By early summer, the Ayatollah Khomeini and his clerical party of fundamentalist Moslems had defeated the worker and student organizations and won control of the society. A year later, in June and July of 1980, thousands of student and workers active in the revolutionary movement were executed by the Khomeini regime.

It isn't clear when the U.S. began its working relationship with Khomeini, but it certainly had one. Representatives of the Reagan campaign met with Khomeini in October, 1980 while Americans were being held hostage in the Embassy, to make sure that the Iranians kept them hostage until Jan 20, 1981–after Reagan had been safely elected. (If the hostages had been freed before the election, Carter would likely have won.) Later the Reagan Administration and Israel worked secretly through the Islamic fundamentalist government of Iran to illegally arm the Contras (the U.S. government's favorite terrorists at the time) in Nicaragua in the "Iran/Contra Affair."

You weren't wrong to support the students trying to overthrow the Shah. The tragedy was that they lost the battle not with the Shah but with Khomeini. Many of them paid for that loss with their lives, and the hopes of millions for a liberating revolution were turned to dust.

I know we're straying a bit off topic here...but I suspect the mistakes of the Iranian Revolution in 79-80 are being replayed and replayed around the Middle East much like the mistakes in the collapse of the Soviet Union was being replayed and replayed in Beijing to avoid repeating it.

Egypt and soon Syria seem to be coming under increasing influence/control of the Muslim Brotherhood...who I think would be trying to avoid the mistakes of the past in the Iranian Revolution....and trying to avoid making front page pulitzer prize winning photograph news with executions as happened during the followup to the revolution in Iran.

Along the lines of public order, protests, etc...I wonder if it will be worth reading up on the likes of Tammany Hall, Boss Tweed, political machines, and Gangs of New York.

Winning the hearts & minds...as well as the ability to squeeze the balls of a community block by block by block.

Riots/protests in some places will or will not occur depending on their value to the local working class political machine.

In places like Egypt and eventually Syria groups like the Muslim Brotherhood may be able to(and may prefer to) stay in the shadows behind the scenes after they build big enough political machines. They don't need to be in the often uncomfortable boss chair under the spotlight to be running the show.

[Dave Stratman]

Re: Is this how it will start?

I know we're straying a bit off topic here...but I suspect the mistakes of the Iranian Revolution in 79-80 are being replayed and replayed around the Middle East much like the mistakes in the collapse of the Soviet Union was being replayed and replayed in Beijing to avoid repeating it.

Egypt and soon Syria seem to be coming under increasing influence/control of the Muslim Brotherhood...who I think would be trying to avoid the mistakes of the past in the Iranian Revolution....and trying to avoid making front page pulitzer prize winning photograph news with executions as happened during the followup to the revolution in Iran.

Along the lines of public order, protests, etc...I wonder if it will be worth reading up on the likes of Tammany Hall, Boss Tweed, political machines, and Gangs of New York.

Winning the hearts & minds...as well as the ability to squeeze the balls of a community block by block by block.

Riots/protests in some places will or will not occur depending on their value to the local working class political machine.

In places like Egypt and eventually Syria groups like the Muslim Brotherhood may be able to(and may prefer to) stay in the shadows behind the scenes after they build big enough political machines. They don't need to be in the often uncomfortable boss chair under the spotlight to be running the show.

I'm not sure if "mistakes" is the right word here. Political Islam has been an instrument of British and U.S. imperial control at least since 1926, when the British Suez Company underwrote the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood, as a means of undercutting nationalist and leftist revolutionary movements. (See Robert Dreyfuss, Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam).

The Iranian Revolution succeeded in the goals set out by the mullahs and supported by the U.S. It quashed the democratic, anti-capitalist movement that truly threatened U.S. interests and replaced it with a reactionary, anti-democratic theocracy, which, in spite of all appearances, has suited the U.S. (and Israel) quite nicely. The U.S. and Iran continued to work together behind the scenes at least from 1979, through the 1980s (Iran/contra, etc.). and throughout the occupation of Iraq. (It's true, it seems possible that the U.S. might well go to war against Iran in the near future. As we know, the U.S. turning on former allies is not unknown, as Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein learned to their sorrow. But there are other forces and other stakes at play here too, now that China and a re-ascendant Russia have entered the picture.)

The U.S. appears to have a strategy of replacing secular regimes with radical Islamist regimes. (Saddam Hussein's was a secular regime, as was Mubarak's. Israel, with U.S. support, funded Hamas to establish a radical Islamist rival to the PLO.) Radical Islamist takeovers are a way of sterilizing the revolutionary ferment in the Middle East and turning it on its head. In this manner alienated young workers and farmers are caught up in movements which appear to be radical responses to Western imperialism, but are in fact covertly funded and organized by the Western powers. The alienated and impoverished classes end up trapped in a more thoroughgoing tyrrany, which no longer has the power to threaten their oppressors.

If mistakes have been made--and perhaps this was your meaning--they were made by people who were misled by the promises of radical Islam into thinking it could lead to a better life.