“As you sow, so shall you reap.”

A primary driver of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is now revenge. Bin Laden said the 9/11 attacks were in retaliation for the building of U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War after Iraq’s takeover of Kuwait. A survivor of the mass killing in Orlando by Omar Mateen was quoted by the L.A. Times as saying, “Through the conversation with 9/11, he said that the reason why he was doing this was he wanted America to stop bombing his country. So the motive was very clear to us who were saying in our blood and other people’s blood who were injured, who were shot, that we knew what his motive was.”

Nobody among my acquaintances can tell me why we’re in Afghanistan.

Years before her assassination, Benazir Bhutto told George H.W. Bush that he was “creating Frankenstein” by his financing and arming of the mujahideen to fight the Russians during their invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. They were then called “freedom fighters,” and they included Osama bin Laden, who came with his own money and materiel.

In fairness to the Bushes, CIA support for the mujahideen as proxies against the Russians goes back to the Carter administration and expanded through the Reagan terms. It was considered a victory for the United States when the Russians left, but the mujahideen soon turned on the sugar daddies of the West as the focus of the holy war.

The first Iraq war started over control of oil. This is not necessary now that there are abundant oil supplies everywhere. Once started, the wars drew on a seemingly bottomless international pool of fighters so that attrition doesn’t limit hostilities. There’s plenty of outside oil money and weaponry, often procured on the world market from U.S. suppliers. The original oil war is now perceived as a religious war. The Frankenstein warned of by Bhutto has spawned the cruel and fanatical ISIS.

Our national intelligence chief reports nearly 500 drone strikes in the last six years in Yemen, Somalia, Libya and nuclear-armed Pakistan. In classic newspeak, these are called countries where we have “no active hostilities.” It doesn’t count Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The Defense Department claims 2,500 killed in these four countries with no active hostilities, along with civilians — without benefit of due process, it goes without saying.

We won’t be able to kill enough people to make a difference, and they’re not going to run out of money. As you sow, so shall you reap; and the drones have sown in more and more countries like a drip torch. We have all the energy we need. Let’s not start any more fires, except maybe a backfire (Mann Gulch).

Carter writes from Libby.