Here is what we are expected to believe regarding coordinated bombings and mass shootings that took place on Thursday in the capital of Southeast Asia’s nation of Indonesia – an economically and geopolitically crucial state.

We are to believe that the “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” (ISIS) – named so because it allegedly exists and primarily operates in Iraq and Syria - is fighting the Syrian government, nonexistent moderates the US claims it is arming and funding to the tune of several billions of dollars a year since 2011, the Iraqi government, the Kurds, Russia, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and Iran. And also, allegedly, ISIS is fighting the combined military power of the United States, France, England, Germany, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Qatar.

Yet we are expected to believe that ISIS has the time, energy, resources, and inclination to attack Indonesia in a spectacular, large-scale bombing and mass shooting?

And why? Where does Indonesia fit into the “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria?” According to the West’s official narrative, Indonesia doesn’t fit in at all except in the most abstract, ideological way imaginable.

But if you understand that:

1. The US and its allies created ISIS on purpose to fight its proxy wars in the Middle East, North Africa, Central, East, and Southeast Asia for it;

2. The US is NOT fighting ISIS by any means, and is only using the organization’s existence in Syria and beyond to justify extraterritorial military aggression and meddling across the globe;

3. Indonesia has been defying US pressure to join Washington’s proxy conflict with China in the South China Sea and;

4. Indonesia has been fostering closer economic and military ties instead with China itself —

—then ISIS attacking Indonesia’s capital of Jakarta makes perfect sense.

It was punitive. It was also a warning to Jakarta that it has a choice; subjugation by the West, or destabilization.