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Does it take more than one full minute of thought to see
what's going on here?
The short version:
- ISIS is the product
of years of American military intervention in Iraq, Libya, and Syria. ISIS is the creature of an imperial enterprise--a global effort to bring down
the Syrian state using jihadi proxies that included the U.S and its allies--Saudi
Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Turkey, and Israel, at least--that could only have
proceeded, "at
the bidding of," and managed by, the imperial center. It was by surfing the
American-directed "cataract"
of weaponry and funds directed against Syria that ISIS became an
international jihadi movement surpassing Al-Qaeda itself. Without that American
intervention, there would be no ISIS.
- In this regard, ISIS is only the latest in a series of
worst-ever takfiri groups that has
been cooked up in the stew of jihadi proxy fighters the U.S. and its allies
have been serving up since the its holy war in Afghanistan in 1979--the one
where Zbigniew Brzezinski told
Bin Laden's jihadis, "God is on your side." As Gilbert Mercier quipped,
"Just like al-Qaeda, ISIS is the secret love child of United States imperialism
and the kings and sheiks of the Gulf states."
- An
American ("coalition") military attack on Syria will not destroy ISIS, and will
not have the primary purpose of destroying ISIS; it will target and degrade the
Syrian military, and its primary purpose will be to destroy the Syrian state's
capacity to resist the onslaught of jihadi rebels, including ISIS--a "rebellion"
which hasn't been going so well recently. The Obama administration knows, and
says, that an American military attack will not defeat ISIS. It also knows,
and says (sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly, depending on the audience),
that its main objective will be to help the jihadi onslaught succeed. "Assad
must go" is still the prime directive; the jihadis are still the most effective
instrument for that. ISIS changes nothing, except
to help sell military intervention to the Western publics. In a number of ways,
ISIS has intervened to save the jihadi rebellion from defeat. It's the reverse
of the Vietnam rule: We have to bomb the
jihadis in order to save them.
For those who want the details, and the long version, click
here.
Former college professor, native and denizen of New York City. Blogging at www.thepolemicist.net, from a left-socialist perspective. Also publishing on Counterpunch, The Greanville Post, Medium, Dandelion Salad, and other sites around the net. (more...)