We indirectly created ISIS, just like we created the Taliban and the Khmer Rouge in years past.
In this powerful article, Alastair Stevens argues that ISIS, as it exists today, is the eventual development that resulted from U.S. intervention in Iraq. He compares this result to the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, after that country became the unfortunate battleground between the superpowers when the U.S. meddled to thwart Soviet ambitions there. He also compares it to the rise of the Khmer Rouge after the Vietnam War. It is very eye-opening reading.
Stevens also argues that while the methods and the atrocities committed by ISIS are disgusting and criminal, their objective of a medieval caliphate is actually no different from what already exists in Saudi Arabia today, an evil country supported and propped up by the United States.
To make matters worse, we now face the threat of U.S. made weaponry in Iraq. This shows that in a powder-key like the Middle East, you can’t rely on your allies. Allies change as the political winds shift, but assault vehicles and weapons remain functional. According to Douglas Birch:
Never mind that the vehicle is a boxy, lumbering, second-hand set of wheels with a top speed of just 60 mph. To some of the fighters of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the U.S. M1117, aka the Guardian Armored Security Vehicle, has become their favorite ride.
The question now is: Does the U.S. once again think it can just fix the world in its own image by waging an insanely expensive and largely ineffectual bombing campaign? Have we not figured out that in the last 50 years we have tried our hands at nation-building we have not succeeded one single time?
Where is Kuwait in all this craziness? I remember when we liberated Kuwait in 1991 after Iraq had invaded them. I would have sworn at the time that Kuwait would be an undying ally of the United States, with open financial and political support, not to mention cheap oil for decades to come. When have you last heard anything from Kuwait? The Kuwaiti princes, little boys at the time in 1991, are now flying their private jets to New York and pay $20,000 for hookers, buy estates in Rancho Santa Fe and live happily ever after. They wisely keep a low profile and high prices of oil. Of course, the U.S. taxpayer made it all possible when we liberated their fathers and gave them their money back. Does Obama remember? He was a 30-year-old professor teaching law at the time.
Have we not learned that these “terrorists” that come out of the woodwork in Iraq are the boys that were ten years old when we killed their daddies in the quest to unseat Saddam Hussein? Don’t you think if some foreign superpower swept through the American mainland and killed all the men, the boys would not grow up to hate that superpower and then gladly join some noble movement in the name of God?