I get the feeling that this is precisely the kind of thing that September 11 was intended to achieve. The system gets subverted in a way that, in the long term, destroys the very things that give it resilience. At the same time the States are set in confrontation with much of the rest of the world.

A few wars and overthrown regimes and dead people, wherever they are and whoever they are, are just pieces to be sacrificed in a long drawn out game.

The goal would be an America turned in on itself, taking on a siege mentality in which much of what makes it special is undermined and eroded, and acting globally in ways that turn friends into neutrals and neutrals into enemies; winning all the battles, but gradually losing the war.