These were more than mere tactical moves forced by hostile pressure. They simultaneously produced and were accompanied by a change in thinking and approach. The U.S. government, in practice if not in overt proclamation or ideology, ceased viewing each particular danger primarily in global terms as part of an overarching worldwide threat and instead aimed to handle each as a local, limited challenge, isolating it where possible from the putative global contest, even where and when Americans believed that the global contest was real and serious. This enabled it consciously to induce divisions among its opponents and exploit these. ~Paul Schroeder, The American Conservative

It is curious that a nation that obsesses over Survivor and 24, which are both rife with stories of dividing enemies and turning them against each other, exploiting weaknesses, and making temporary alliances only to turn on the ally in the end when it becomes necessary, should have a leadership stubbornly committed to imagining (and thus eventually creating) the “global counterinsurgency” that they insist on thinking of as a single, more or less uniform opponent that seeks the same thing (i.e., destruction of Freedom) in the same way everywhere in the world.  It is perhaps not so remarkable that people who put no store by particular places and traditions should lack a proper sense of the significant differences created by local conditions and the wide-ranging variety of mutually hostile jihadis in the world.