Why does the U.S. love helping Islamist radicals?

[Beet]

In addition to what BRTD said, couple points.

1) the US hearts Saudi Arabia. In Afghanistan and Iraq 1 we were definitely allied with them. In Syria we are. In Libya they backed us too. Their biggest strategic competitor in the region is Iran. The Saudis tend to back religious, Sunni, and anti Ba'ath forces. The reason for the US Saudi alliance is simply oil. We are their market, they are our supplier.

2) The secular forces in the region often tend to be more violent. All the Ba'ath dictatorships were heavily anti democratic. The secular Turks kept using the military to fight the Islamists. The Afghanistan cluster was initiated by a communist coup then invasion. The seculars in Algeria suppressed the Islamic election victory bloodily. Gadhafi was a violent autocrat. Assad is hard steel. The Egyptian military is more violent than the Muslim brotherhood. All of pre 1977 Arab Israeli wars were started by left wing governments, whether from the Israeli or Arab side. Oh yes let's not forget the bloody Iran Iraq war started by Iraq. How many we're killed in that one?

Our whole view of this is warped by 9/11. Overall, religious fundamentalists haven't killed all that many people in conparison; I mean, if this were a competition the would be like the 2009 Detriot Lions. Assad is already responsible for more deaths than al Qaeda in its whole history. The supposed demonic Iran and its Hezbollah ally have hardly killed anyone in comparison.

Why are the secularists so violent? Well for some reason secular ideology in the middle east tends to attract the military officers and the power hungry. Even in the Iranian revolution the military was the last institution in the country that was holding out against Khomeini until mid February 1979. Heck even the Shah had already fled the country and the military was still holding out!

The Islamists in the other hand you see their main presence is in the mosques and madrassas and charities. The civilian institutions. They ate not as much about obtaining power- even Khomeini had to do a major revolution in thinking from the ayatollahs traditional abeyance.

[Beet]

I mean, the dilemma of the Egyptian liberals was instructive. Obviously they were very anti regime, anti violence. But they had nowhere to turn to- nothing institutional of their own. They had to choose between the Brotherhood and the military, it makes sense from that angle why they failed. It's too fragile a balance. It would be nice if the left could co opt religion and build civilian institutions through Islam with tolerant and democratic values that still remain Islamic and are not some import from the West...