As for the idea that Islamic extremism is a response to western aggression, there just isn't much to support that. Let me use one of my favorite people, Thaddeus Russell, to illustrate. It's a situation in which I think he's wrong.

On his latest JRE appearance, he discussed how western aggression in the Middle East causes blowback aggression upon the West from many in the Middle East. This is okay so far. But then he said that this is why it is wrong for the West to be aggressive in the Middle East. He said we need to remove ourselves from the Middle East then see what happens. This is where he gets mistaken.

This is because the reason we're in the Middle East in the first place is national and global security against violent extremism. A secondary reason is the human rights violations. Thaddeus' solution ignores this, and it would inadvertently let people who are hurting innocents to continue to do so.

So, it doesn't matter if there is blowback, because the blowback is coming from people who need to be stopped regardless of whether or not they conduct blowback. If a guy runs into a shopping market and starts shooting people, you don't say it's wrong for somebody to stop him since that will create blowback on that person by way of the gunman shooting that person. You say he needs to be stopped regardless of his response to being stopped.