Was ISIS George and Dick's 'Gift' to the World?

Had George and Dick not decided on their "cakewalk" in Iraq, ISIS would have been an unlikely possibility, no matter the ethnic and religious tensions in the region. They essentially launched the drive that broke state power there and created the kind of vacuum that a movement like ISIS was so horrifically well-suited to fill.
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WASHINGTON - JANUARY 29: (AFP OUT) President George W. Bush (R) and Vice President Dick Cheney attend a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and combat commanders in the Cabinet Room of the White House January 29, 2008 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Dennis Brack-Pool/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON - JANUARY 29: (AFP OUT) President George W. Bush (R) and Vice President Dick Cheney attend a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and combat commanders in the Cabinet Room of the White House January 29, 2008 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Dennis Brack-Pool/Getty Images)

Think of the new "caliphate" of the Islamic State, formerly the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney's gift to the world (with a helping hand from the Saudis and other financiers of extremism in the Persian Gulf). How strange that they get so little credit for its rise, for the fact that the outlines of the Middle East, as set up by Europe's colonial powers in the wake of World War I, are being swept aside in a tide of blood.

Had George and Dick not decided on their "cakewalk" in Iraq, had they not raised the specter of nuclear destruction and claimed that Saddam Hussein's regime was somehow linked to al-Qaeda and so to the 9/11 attacks, had they not sent tens of thousands of American troops into a burning, looted Baghdad ("stuff happens"), disbanded the Iraqi army, built military bases all over that country, and generally indulged their geopolitical fantasies about dominating the oil heartlands of the planet for eternity, ISIS would have been an unlikely possibility, no matter the ethnic and religious tensions in the region. They essentially launched the drive that broke state power there and created the kind of vacuum that a movement like ISIS was so horrifically well-suited to fill.

All in all, it's a remarkable accomplishment to look back on. In September 2001, when George and Dick launched their "Global War on Terror" to wipe out -- so they then claimed -- "terrorist networks" in up to 60 countries, or as they preferred to put it, "drain the swamp," there were scattered bands of jihadis globally, while al-Qaeda had a couple of camps in Afghanistan and a sprinkling of supporters elsewhere. Today, in the wake of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and an air power intervention in Libya, after years of drone (and non-drone) bombing campaigns across the Greater Middle East, jihadist groups are thriving in Yemen and Pakistan, spreading through Africa (along with the U.S. military), and ISIS has taken significant parts of Iraq and Syria right up to the Lebanese border for its own bailiwick and is still expanding murderously, despite a renewed American bombing campaign that may only strengthen that movement in the long run.

Has anyone covered this nightmare better than the world's least embedded reporter, Patrick Cockburn of the British Independent? Not for my money. He's had the canniest, clearest-eyed view of developments in the region for years now. As it happens, when he publishes a new book on the Middle East (the last time was 2008), he makes one of his rare appearances at TomDispatch. This month, his latest must-read work, The Jihadis Return: ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising, is out. Today, TomDispatch has an excerpt, "Why Washington's War on Terror Failed" (and why, if Washington was insistent on invading someplace, it probably should have chosen Saudi Arabia).

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