http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ivan-eland/turmoil-in-the-middle-eas_b_7637314.html

Ivan Eland Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty, The Independent Institute

Turmoil in the Middle East Seems Constant, and U.S. Military Intervention Only Makes It Worse

Posted: 06/22/2015

Recently, the U.S. government has been dealt setbacks in five of the seven developing, Islamic countries in which its military recently has attacked or invaded since 9/11 -- Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Yemen. In the other two countries, Pakistan and Somalia, the situation remains extremely unstable.
In Syria and Iraq, the brutal ISIS group, which is mainly a threat to the nearby Middle East region, captured the cities of Ramadi in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria. In Afghanistan, the Taliban attacked the parliament building in Kabul, the capital, overran two northern districts, and threatened the major city of Kunduz. Such Taliban gains in the north are unusual, because their traditional strength in Afghanistan has been in Pashtun tribal areas in the south and east. In Libya, the U.S.-led overthrow of the Gaddafi regime, using air attacks, has resulted in a split country with war between tribal factions using Gaddafi's plentiful arms stockpiles, radical jihadist bases being set up, and ISIS taking over the coastal city of Sirte. In Yemen, despite U.S. airstrikes and drone attacks over the years, and Saudi Arabian air strikes more recently, the Iran-friendly Shi'ite Houthi rebels have overran much of the country and put the U.S. and Saudi-backed Hadi regime into exile. Also Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula, an affiliate of the main group, has taken advantage of the anarchy in Yemen to expand its territory.
The American media report on all of this turmoil with great hype, as if most of these faraway conflicts impinge greatly on U.S. security. Most of them don't. Of course, this nationalist media coverage always makes it seem natural that the U.S military should be intervening in all of these countries to "do something" about their problems to prevent jihadist groups from arising or expanding. Yet the evidence seems to show that U.S. military interventions create more jihadists (for example, as documented by journalists in Yemen) or new and worse groups (the U.S. invasion created al Qaeda in Iraq, which morphed into ISIS).