The United States should take a deep breath, and stop killing Muslims. Killing Muslims is especially unproductive, as the US recent history shows

This is in response to this article:  Trump Pushes Dark View of Islam to Center of U.S. Policy-Making - The New York Times

A friend, son of a theologian, read the entire Quran and came to the same conclusion, that it is inherently war-like and expansionist. A reading of the whole Bible would likely lead one to the same conclusion.  Surely the Crusaders thought that. 

Saudi, in their Wahhabist beliefs, share that view and have spent billions on Madrases throughout Southern Asia and Salafi jihadists in Syria to propagate the view that Sharia is inherently at odds with all other beliefs, and all others are apostate or worse and should be converted, by force of arms if necessary.  

Saudi Arabia, with vast oil money and the corruption that brings, has weakened that view and now cooperates with the West. 

The Islamic State’s main objective is to capture Mecca  and establish Wahhabism as it was originally practiced by Saudi Arabia.  The Islamic State correctly regards Saudi Arabia as lapsed and apostate and a proper object for invasion.  Not incidentally, if the Islamic State were to control Mecca, its claim to be the Caliphate would be greatly strengthened.  See The Kingdom and the Caliphate: Duel of the Islamic States - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 

The United States is at war with the Islamic State to protect Saudi Arabia, since none of its Islamic neighbors has agreed to lend a hand.  The United States has had a cooperative agreement with Saudi Arabia on oil, from the end of WWII.  Up until the First Gulf War, the  Saudi gave the United States a 20% break on the price of oil, which helped propel the United States into global military superiority.

The Islamic State' war on the West (and the rest of the world) is secondary to the war on Saudi Arabia, in the view of the Islamic State; or was until the United States  began bombing the shit out of ‘em.  The United States has now made another longstanding enemy in the Middle East. 

Each member of the Bushco-Obama-Trumpist cabal has had as a core foreign policy to kill Muslims, no matter how the foreign policy is expressed.   Trumpists are the most open about their eagerness to kill Muslims no matter the Muslims' actual beliefs and so the Trumpists are the most likely to unbalance the precarious and existentially necessary peace that has now lasted since the end of WWII, with local exceptions (Vietnam, e.g.). Necessary because of the Bomb.

(for younguns who may not remember

. . . "that man is endowed with a mushroom-shaped Cloud". . . .)

Iran’s religion, for example, is not expansionist, or wasn’t until recently.  See Nasr, The Shia Revival. Expansionism is not an integral part of Shia beliefs, but a reaction to external threats.  Peace with Iran is possible.  Peace with the obesely-rich Saudi is probably possible because it needs the West to buy its oil, but we must stop killing Yemeni and must pay to rebuild that unhappy land. 

Letting the only two Wahhabist states in the world — Saudi Arabia and the  Islamic State -- settle their own differences is a better course of action than trying to protect Saudi Arabia by  killing more Muslims. Killing Muslims has not worked out well for Bushco or Obama, and will not work out well for the Trumpists either.  

Bad for all the world. Sad but, I think, true.  Hope still springs eternal, but not as spritely as it used to do.