Who’s Responsible for ISIS?

by Aaron Bailey

Christmas day bombings targeting Christian groups in Baghdad. Car bombings in Iraq, Libya, and other nations. Suicide bombings at mosques and churches in various countries. Bombings, mass shootings, and hostages taken in various events in France. And many, many more incidents all over Europe and the Middle East primarily, with death tolls altogether in the thousands, with even more injured. Madness like this is why we have survival blogs.

Nevertheless, Obama said in a conference in Argentina earlier this year that “They’re not an existential threat to us.” Well if beheading folk and bombing crowded theaters doesn’t pose an existential threat, then I don’t know what does. This probably explains why we pulled out of Iraq so early. Why keep troops in a region where there’s no threat, right? Except that underestimating extremist groups by pulling out early is exactly what allowed ISIS to fully emerge after 2011.

Not too long after Obama’s speech, US Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James stated in an interview with Fox that “I think our number one threat is Russia.” Really? Russia is a bigger threat than terrorists?

Could our demeanor toward Russia possibly have anything to do with Vladimir Putin’s speech in a 2015 Summit, where he revealed that ISIS funding “comes from 40 countries and, there are some of the G20 members among them”?

Russia has been fighting ISIS and doing what they can to curb the Islamic State’s illegal oil trade. Meanwhile, we’ve been leaving ISIS wide open, allowing them to rally troops and financial support. Not to mention we backed Al Qaeda, who would eventually evolve into ISIS, when they were attacking Syrian president Bashir al-Assad.

Isn’t it funny how the liberal media has been attacking president Putin for outright attacking Syria, when all the while the liberals in the White House have been supporting terrorists who have been attacking Syria? Make up your minds!

All these roundabout ways we have been sponsoring terrorism only to outright lie about it, and our government and media wonder why we don’t trust either of them. Y’all can’t complain about heavily armed and funded terrorists after obviously arming and funding them!

So who is responsible for all this ISIS business anyway?

Many republicans have blamed Obama for his full withdrawal of troops in Iraq in 2011, leaving a void for ISIS to form out of a disbanded Al Qaeda. Let’s rewind the tape back more though.

ISIS started loosely forming around 2003, following our initial presence in Iraq. Once all these Sunnis in Iraq were left unemployed after Iraq’s military and civil services were disbanded by American and ally forces, Al Qaeda was then able to launch a pretty successful They took our jobs! campaign to get the disbanded Sunnis to join their cause. This ended up becoming the beginnings of the Islamic State.

So do we blame Bush? He did, after all, sign the 2008 Status of Forces agreement that promised to withdraw troops in Iraq by 2011. So Obama technically was just fulfilling what his predecessor had already signed into law. Right? Well, let’s dig deeper.

Thing is, our withdrawal from Iraq wasn’t handled all that well, on both the American and Iraqi government fronts. American Generals who were heavily involved in Iraq during the 2010 partial withdrawal noted that the Iraq military forces were becoming complacent.

As Major-General Paul E. Funk II pointed out after coming back from a training exercise in Iraq, “They really did become relatively complacent, and then flat out just didn’t train.” Iraq supplies were also being stolen and even soldiers who never showed up for duty were still being paid. Needless to say, this was very much a country to be easily reckoned with after we left.

It’s pretty clear that the Obama Administration didn’t really think the withdrawal out well enough. If you do all the work for someone, they’ll never learn to fend for themselves. This is why welfare doesn’t work as a long term solution to poverty.

If we do everything for others, they’ll become complacent, so that when we leave it up to them finally, they don’t know what to do! And this is more or less what happened when we were “training” (more like doing the job for) the Iraqi military and government.

Once we left the region to its own devices, ISIS was able to make a real statement. Well, really a lot of statements. A lot of bloody, devastating statements all over the Middle East and Europe. What were they so upset about though anyway?

Let’s keep in mind that the Sunnis and Shiites in the Middle East have been mighty hostile towards each other since damn near forever. Why we ever thought we could tame the extremists of these groups with diplomacy is beyond me.

But why have these guys been so upset anyway? Oh boy, where do I start?

We all have known that the Western world, including America, has been involved in the Middle East for as long as they’ve had resources that were useful to us. This shouldn’t be news to anyone. Especially when it comes to oil.

Whenever conflicts and civil wars have happened in the Middle East, we like to arm and provide training to the rebels – or to the governments, whichever is more convenient at the time to better safeguard our interests.

The Bush family has been doing business in the Middle East since the early 1900’s. Hell, Salem bin Laden, Osama’s older brother, was a key investor for George W. Bush’s Texas based Arbusto Energy oil company. James Bath, who was a financial backer for Arbusto Energy and a business representative for Salem’s Houston, Texas affairs, ended up being found in a 1992 legal battle with his former real estate partner, Bill White, to be managing millions of dollars for a Sheik Khalid bin Mahfouz, a Saudi banker and stockholder for the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, which was found to have been laundering money to dictators, drug cartels, and Saddam Hussein, to name a few.

Don’t think the democrats are off the hook. Just prior to the rise of ISIS and our full withdrawal from Iraq, the Obama administration was funding the rebels in Syria (all while denying giving any assistance for the longest time). Many of these rebels were former Al Qaeda members who ended up becoming ISIS. Then Obama pulled all our troops out, leaving a defense vacuum and a bunch of armed rebels.

Of course we can always go deeper. We could go deeper for days on this! We also funded Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war from 1980-1988. We funded Afghanistan starting in 1979 to keep the Soviets out.

Point is – if there is a point to this – it shouldn’t be any surprise to anyone when intervening in others’ affairs pisses one group or the other off.

We also shouldn’t be surprised when the weapons we give to one group ends up being stolen by the other – or when the group we just armed and trained end up turning their sights toward us.

We didn’t just leave any ordinary void when we withdrew our troops. We left a void filled with really pissed off people. And we left them with the greatest victim card ever to pull to financial backers like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and many, many others.

We pissed already angry folks off and led other countries and donors to take sympathy on them.

Guess what? – None of this would ever have happened if we would mind our own business.

We could have just drilled for oil on our own shores, but the democrats would prefer to drill in other people’s countries where we’re forced into shady deals and getting ourselves into trouble rather than drilling on our own land. And of course we can’t have alternative energy like nuclear power either, because the power companies keep lobbying congress to keep any competition – I mean, alternative energy sources – out.

So who’s responsible for ISIS? Pretty much everyone. The Obama Administration for pulling out too early without giving any real guidance, the Bush Administration for engaging in shady deals, liberals in general for protesting oil drilling legislation that would let us drill on our own land and shores where no government level money laundering and aiding rebels is necessary, the oil companies for lobbying congress against potential alternative energy sources (like nuclear power) that would allow us to power our grid more independently, the different Middle Eastern and northern European donors for keeping ISIS funded, and the list could easily go on and on.

But primarily, I would say it’s on our crony government for backdoor sponsoring of terrorism, only to outright lie about it and blame everyone else for funding and arming them except for ourselves.

Let me ask: what would our founding fathers say if they could witness what we’ve done to our country? Our officials, old and new, have successfully corrupted our country in ways I’m not sure we can ever come back from. Arming other countries’ rebels!? Backdoor funding extremist groups with tax dollars!? Basically creating terrorism, one might say.

Quite frankly, our founding fathers waged war with Britain over much less. At what point do we decide to take a page from their book? Do you suppose we could get funding too?

Works Consulted:

BBC. “Arming Syrian Rebels.” http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33997408

CIA Library. “AFGHANISTAN: ETHNIC DIVERSITY AND DISSIDENCE.” https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000515454.pdf

Daily Caller. “Obama on ISIS.” http://dailycaller.com/2016/03/23/obama-on-isis-ive-got-a-lot-on-my-plate-theyre-not-an-existential-threat-video/

Global Research. “America Created Al-Qaeda and the ISIS Terror Group.” http://www.globalresearch.ca/america-created-al-qaeda-and-the-isis-terror-group/5402881

History Commons. “Profile: Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).” http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=bank_of_credit_and_commerce_international

NPR. “Did Obama Withdraw From Iraq Too Soon.” http://www.npr.org/2015/12/19/459850716/fact-check-did-obama-withdraw-from-iraq-too-soon-allowing-isis-to-grow

Russian Times. “Putin: ISIS Financed by 40 Countries.” https://www.rt.com/news/322305-isis-financed-40-countries/

Wheat, Andrew. “The Bush Bin Laden Connection.” The Texas Observer. https://www.texasobserver.org/480-andrew-wheat-the-bush-bin-laden-connection