The Obama administration, meanwhile, prefers to excel at sanctioning Russia. If they were really serious at targeting The Caliph, they'd be following the money, deploying local intel to track where the money actually is (certainly not in a bank). Instead, all the rhetoric in the Beltway is about more bombing of -- another historical irony -- made in USA hardware left behind by the Iraq army; more drones; and eventually, more "boots on the ground."
The "known known" -- to quote Donald "Rummy" Rumsfeld -- in the Beltway "debate" is that for the CIA and the Pentagon, fighting The Caliph is the absolutely perfect excuse to eventually impose regime change in both Iraq and Syria.
Washington has already got regime change-lite in Baghdad. The CIA and the Pentagon are thinking in terms of We bomb The Caliph/Caliph fights Assad/Hezbollah gets involved/Divide and Rule and More Chaos/We bomb a little to the side/Assad falls.
It won't work, though. Washington thought -- until the capture of Mosul -- that The Caliph was under control. But he has a mind of his own -- and a lot of cash still flowing from powerful Saudi and Kuwaiti backers, apart from the oil smuggling. The Caliph dreams of being intimately involved in the House of Saud's succession, and even making a play for power himself.
The Islamic State is a product of gruesome Tawhid & Jihad ("Monotheism and Holy War"), led by Jordanian serial killer Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, incinerated by a US missile in 2006. Zarqawi had pledged allegiance to Osama in 2004, and renamed his outfit Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). After he died, AQI turned into Islamic State in Iraq (ISI).
It took years for his successor, Ibrahim al-Badri, a.k.a. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a.k.a. Caliph Ibrahim to turn ISI into ISIS (adding the Levant) and trying to absorb Al-Qaeda's Syrian franchise, Jabhat Al-Nusra.
Al-Zawahiri, for his part, didn't like these shenanigans one bit. He insisted Jabhat al-Nusra was the real jihadi deal. Al-Baghdadi got a dressing down; fight in Iraq, not Syria. Bad move -- al-Baghdadi ended up telling al-Zawahiri to stuff it.
And al-Zawahiri finally "excommunicated" ISIS.
Thus the myth was born that ISIS/IS is way more hardcore than Al-Qaeda -- a sterling PR move by The Caliph to bolster his and his outfit's charisma. For the multinational Google Jihad generation, if the grand mufti of Egypt, the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) all dismiss ISIS/IS, that's because it's the real deal. And it's wealthy, armed to the teeth and rules over a vast territory. It is reducing the Sykes-Picot agreement to dust.
So yes, The Caliph is indeed implementing Osama's trap -- in his own way. Zarqawi tried to implement it. And Zarqawi is the predecessor of al-Baghdadi. But that's only part of the story.
The real juice is how The Caliph has now legitimized the Global War on Terror (GWOT) for "decades," in British Prime Minister David Cameron's words. The indefatigable "senior US military officials" have gone on red alert, warning that ISIS/IS will soon "threaten" the US and Europe. The Caliph is the new Osama.
And this only just a year after Obama -- armed with his self-imposed red line -- was about to bomb Syria because "Assad must go" had "gassed his own people." And the ones who actually talked Obama out of this insanity were none other than Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov -- now demonized with a vengeance by the Empire of Chaos.
Hollywood couldn't come up with a more far-fetched script. Deep in the bowels of a palatial abode in "Syraq," one can distinctly hear the sound of The Caliph laughing.
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