US Would Treat Islamic State as Ally if It Were Fighting Against Russia

The United States and their allies, which perceive themselves as the ultimate forces of good, are waging a war against those they deem to be forces of evil, Evan Dennings wrote in Contra Magazin. Within this framework, the West is 100-percent good and Russia is 100-percent bad; everyone else is in between and the status from friend to an enemy or vice versa could change in an instant, he argues.

The rules of the game, according to the Austrian publication, are simple: the partly bad have to do what the good want them too. Otherwise, they will become too bad and the West will have to deal with them.

"For many years Saddam Hussein was 70-percent good but then he became 90-percent bad because he refused to do what the United States (110-percent good) wanted him to," Dennings said.

It follows then that Saddam Hussein and Libya's late leader Muammar Gaddafi were killed as a result of the shifting perceptions in the West as to what camp they belong to.

Syrian President Bashar Assad, whom the West views as 90-percent evil, is next in line and extremists in the Middle East (60-percent bad) are used to overthrow him, Contra Magazin noted. Islamists are treated as allies as long as they fight the right enemies in the region. In the eyes of the US, some of them became 90-percent evil when they formed the Islamic State.

Nevertheless, the West does not view them as the ultimate evil, Dennings pointed out. This part has been assigned to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"If the Islamic State were strongly against Putin, the [Western] media would no longer call them terrorists but freedom fighters," Contra Magazin asserted.