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Former CIA officer says US policies helped create IS

TheDemSocialist

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American [author and former CIA officer] Graham Fuller emphasized that the West, including the United States, has now accepted that the [Bashar al-] Assad government will retain power. According to Fuller, Turkey has to do the same. Fuller, who described the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham [now the Islamic State, or IS] as "made in the USA," also made a confession of sorts about the struggle between [Turkey's Justice and Development Party] AKP and the Gulen movement by saying, “It turned out to be deeper than I thought.” But he noted that the positive approach of the Unite toward [Fethullah] Gulen has not changed.



Radikal: How do you think ISIS [IS] was born?
Fuller: I think the United States is one of the key creators of this organization. The United States did not plan the formation of ISIS, but its destructive interventions in the Middle East and the war in Iraq were the basic causes of the birth of ISIS. You will remember that that the starting point of this organization was to protest the US invasion of Iraq. In those days it was supported by many non-Islamist Sunnis as well because of their opposition to the Iraq's occupation. I think even today ISIS [now the Islamic State] is supported by many Sunnis who feel isolated by the Shiite government in Baghdad. ISIS was benefiting from the Shiite agenda of the [former Prime Minister Nouri al-] Maliki government. I hope with the departure of Maliki and his replacement by someone who will watch out for Sunni-Shiite balance, polarization in Iraq will diminish. This is the only way to get rid of ISIS, never militarily.


Radikal: How did all intelligence services fail to understand Assad’s power?
Fuller: A good question, but [there is] no complete answer. As it was the case with [former Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak and [former Libyan leader Col. Moammar] Gadhafi, Assad did not face a unified opposition. It is important to know that Assad is not a sectarian leader. Although he is a Nusayri, he favors Sunnis. He is more of an Arab nationalist than all [other] Arab leaders. He supported Palestinians for years. He did not allow Islamists in Syria to gain strength. Christians and other minorities, and even Israel, didn’t like Assad, but they found him much more acceptable than a possible Islamist Sunni government. For Israel, Assad is a predictable foe. If you make a deal with him, he will keep his word even if reaching an agreement with him is never easy. This is why many countries, including the United States, have given up supporting the Syrian opposition. Washington, even if unwillingly, has accepted that Assad will remain in power for now.


Read more @:
Former CIA officer says US policies helped create IS

Great interview, with a man that knows a lot about the region. He states that the US does have some responsibility in the creation of ISIS. It also states that Turkey and the US at some point (if not have already) are going to have to accept that Assad is going to stay in power. It also goes over how the Kurds will win some cultural, social, and political autonomy if not full autonomy in the region.
 
Sounds more like the tinfoil hat nonsence that we usualy get from Arabs.
 
Sounds more like the tinfoil hat nonsence that we usualy get from Arabs.

No; pur problems started over there in 1953 when the CIA installed the Shah. The invasion of Iraq was a waste of time, money and lives and created a boiler plate for jihadists and of course ISIS has a huge presence there now. GW Bush really blew for it for us.
 
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Read more @:
Former CIA officer says US policies helped create IS

Great interview, with a man that knows a lot about the region. He states that the US does have some responsibility in the creation of ISIS. It also states that Turkey and the US at some point (if not have already) are going to have to accept that Assad is going to stay in power. It also goes over how the Kurds will win some cultural, social, and political autonomy if not full autonomy in the region.

While I find it hard to disagree with his assessment, his choice of words belies an agenda not the least of which is some mild propaganda of his own.

I think the United States is one of the key creators of this organization. The United States did not plan the formation of ISIS, but its destructive interventions in the Middle East and the war in Iraq were the basic causes of the birth of ISIS.

By whose standard are these interventions "destructive"? Again I agree that these policies are an IN-direct causation he seems to be trying to tie the tail on the donkey with gossamer.

Did the CIA arm ISIS?

We have evidence that this has happened before, Afghanistan and Al-Qaeda, is it happening here?

I think he needs to include America's enemies in his assessment. While I hold the US responsible for much unrest in the region, all Americans have to know there are other, "destructive" forces at work in the region.
 
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Read more @:
Former CIA officer says US policies helped create IS

Great interview, with a man that knows a lot about the region. He states that the US does have some responsibility in the creation of ISIS. It also states that Turkey and the US at some point (if not have already) are going to have to accept that Assad is going to stay in power. It also goes over how the Kurds will win some cultural, social, and political autonomy if not full autonomy in the region.

Heya TDS. :2wave: Here is something from April of 2013. Which was always why there was always a problem with the Syrian Rebels from the beginning. Which was backed by the MB and the Protests all coming from their influence.



Islamist Rebels Create Dilemma on Syria Policy.....

In Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, rebels aligned with Al Qaeda control the power plant, run the bakeries and head a court that applies Islamic law. Elsewhere, they have seized government oil fields, put employees back to work and now profit from the crude they produce. Across Syria, rebel-held areas are dotted with Islamic courts staffed by lawyers and clerics, and by fighting brigades led by extremists. Even the Supreme Military Council, the umbrella rebel organization whose formation the West had hoped would sideline radical groups, is stocked with commanders who want to infuse Islamic law into a future Syrian government. Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of. More than two years of violence have radicalized the armed opposition fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad, leaving few groups that both share the political vision of the United States and have the military might to push it forward.

The religious agenda of the combatants sets them apart from many civilian activists, protesters and aid workers who had hoped the uprising would create a civil, democratic Syria. When the armed rebellion began, defectors from the government’s staunchly secular army formed the vanguard. The rebel movement has since grown to include fighters with a wide range of views, including Qaeda-aligned jihadis seeking to establish an Islamic emirate, political Islamists inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood and others who want an Islamic-influenced legal code like that found in many Arab states. Another prominent group, Ahrar al-Sham, shares much of Nusra’s extremist ideology but is made up mostly of Syrians.....snip~

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/w...eate-dilemma-for-us.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&
 
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Read more @:
Former CIA officer says US policies helped create IS

Great interview, with a man that knows a lot about the region. He states that the US does have some responsibility in the creation of ISIS. It also states that Turkey and the US at some point (if not have already) are going to have to accept that Assad is going to stay in power. It also goes over how the Kurds will win some cultural, social, and political autonomy if not full autonomy in the region.

Wouldn't doubt it, most of our interventionism backfires on us.
 
While I find it hard to disagree with his assessment, his choice of words belies an agenda not the least of which is some mild propaganda of his own.



By whose standard are these interventions "destructive"? Again I agree that these policies are an IN-direct causation he seems to be trying to tie the tail on the donkey with gossamer.

Did the CIA arm ISIS?

We have evidence that this has happened before, Afghanistan and Al-Qaeda, is it happening here?

I think he needs to include America's enemies in his assessment. While I hold the US responsible for much unrest in the region, all Americans have to know there are other, "destructive" forces at work in the region.


Heya F&L. :2wave: Here is some old History on much of it from the beginning. We had this up last year.


In the past, United States officials saw the Islamist groups’ abundant resources as the main draw for recruits, said Steven Heydemann, a senior adviser at the United States Institute of Peace, which works with the State Department.

“The strategy is based on the current assessment that popular appeal of these groups is transactional, not ideological, and that opportunities exist to peel people away by providing alternative support and resources,” he said. Mr. Heydemann acknowledged, however, that the current momentum toward radicalism could be hard to reverse.....snip~

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/w...eate-dilemma-for-us.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

http://www.debatepolitics.com/middle-east/171776-honor-syrian-rebels-w-90-a-2.html
 
Good thread.

Likely that ISIS is "blowback" from US policy and actions. Unintended consequences of poor decisions.
 
No; pur problems started over there in 1953 when the CIA installed the Shah.

images
 
Islamist Rebels Create Dilemma on Syria Policy.....

In Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, rebels aligned with Al Qaeda control the power plant, run the bakeries and head a court that applies Islamic law. Elsewhere, they have seized government oil fields, put employees back to work and now profit from the crude they produce. Across Syria, rebel-held areas are dotted with Islamic courts staffed by lawyers and clerics, and by fighting brigades led by extremists. Even the Supreme Military Council, the umbrella rebel organization whose formation the West had hoped would sideline radical groups, is stocked with commanders who want to infuse Islamic law into a future Syrian government. Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of. More than two years of violence have radicalized the armed opposition fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad, leaving few groups that both share the political vision of the United States and have the military might to push it forward.

The Times is trying to paper over the Administration's failures. Two years of conflict didn't radicalize the opposition - among the disparate opposition movements, we refused to adequately support the non-Islamists, with the result that they shrank under pressure from both Islamist and Regime forces, who at least worked in tandem to turn the fight into one between the two of them.
 
And so what's wrong with my post?

Hm...

1. Modern Sunni Islamism dates from the establishment of the Muslim Brotherhood, and was first best expressed in the writings of Sayyid Qutb, circa 1920s.
2. The US did not install the Shah. The Pahlavi dynasty took over Iran in 1925.
3. Shia extremism did not start in Iran as a result of the defeat of the 1953 coup by Mossadegh, but rather later took advantage of it.
4. ISIS as an organization owes precisely.... nothing in its founding to the Islamic Republic of Iran, or the preceding monarchy.


So... your post is wrong on multiple levels.
 
Hm...

1. Modern Sunni Islamism dates from the establishment of the Muslim Brotherhood, and was first best expressed in the writings of Sayyid Qutb, circa 1920s.
2. The US did not install the Shah. The Pahlavi dynasty took over Iran in 1925.
3. Shia extremism did not start in Iran as a result of the defeat of the 1953 coup by Mossadegh, but rather later took advantage of it.
4. ISIS as an organization owes precisely.... nothing in its founding to the Islamic Republic of Iran, or the preceding monarchy.


So... your post is wrong on multiple levels.

No, my post is right: start with this level:

CIA admits role in 1953 Iranian coup | World news | The Guardian

CIA admits role in 1953 Iranian coup

Declassified documents describe in detail how US – with British help – engineered coup against Mohammad Mosaddeq

From the CIA itself:

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-...s/csi-studies/studies/vol48no2/article10.html

At an NSC meeting in early 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower said "it was a matter of great distress to him that we seemed unable to get some of these down-trodden countries to like us instead of hating us."1 The problem has likewise distressed all administrations since, and is emerging as the core conundrum of American policy in Iraq. In All the Shah's Men, Stephen Kinzer of the New York Times suggests that the explanation may lie next door in Iran, where the CIA carried out its first successful regime-change operation over half a century ago. The target was not an oppressive Soviet puppet but a democratically elected government whose populist ideology and nationalist fervor threatened Western economic and geopolitical interests. The CIA's covert intervention—codenamed TPAJAX—preserved the Shah's power and protected Western control of a hugely lucrative oil infrastructure. It also transformed a turbulent constitutional monarchy into an absolutist kingship and induced a succession of unintended consequences at least as far ahead as the Islamic revolution of 1979—and, Kinzer argues in his breezily written, well-researched popular history, perhaps to today.

The CIA's immediate target was Mossadeq, whom the Shah had picked to run the government just before the parliament voted to nationalize the AIOC.

The US created a frankenstein in the ME and the chickens have come home to roost as they say. The destabilziation of the region with GW Bush invading Iraq opned up the hole for groups like ISIS. The Chinese have also made inroads due to the destabilization of the region.

You ought to read up.
 
The Times is trying to paper over the Administration's failures. Two years of conflict didn't radicalize the opposition - among the disparate opposition movements, we refused to adequately support the non-Islamists, with the result that they shrank under pressure from both Islamist and Regime forces, who at least worked in tandem to turn the fight into one between the two of them.

Mornin' CPW. :2wave: Yeah that's why I went searching for this piece. As I knew the Times would come back and be talking the exact opposite of what they reported on last year. From the onset and even going back to the beginning wherein the MB incited and influenced the protests to rise up on Assad. Even though at the time he was being called a reformer by several Demos here in the US.

The MB backed rebels always had Military people that wanted to infuse Islamic Law in Syria.....plus, as you know the MB did want some payback on Assad for what his father had done to them in Syria.
 
"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. If the--if he--if 'is' means is and never has been, that is not--that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement....Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true." -- Bill Clinton

I guess Clinton was ahead of his time; he already knew what IS stood for. He and Lewinsky were on a secret mission to figure out exactly what IS was all about.


:lol:
 
No, my post is right: start with this level:

CIA admits role in 1953 Iranian coup | World news | The Guardian

From the CIA itself:

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-...s/csi-studies/studies/vol48no2/article10.html

The US created a frankenstein in the ME and the chickens have come home to roost as they say. The destabilziation of the region with GW Bush invading Iraq opned up the hole for groups like ISIS. The Chinese have also made inroads due to the destabilization of the region.

:) I like how I listed 4 major problems, and you can only respond to one.

That being the case, the CIA and the Brits did indeed have a role in the events of 1953 - we came in at the behest of the Brits. I like how you cite All the Shah's Men - I spent a couple of months of my life, at one point, going through that tome and comparing it to other sources. Kinzer was a reliable transmitter of what his Iranian sources (who were themselves reliable transmitters of their media) told him. Certainly it is what the average Iranian believes today.

However, the Shah had the power under the Constitution of Iran to dismiss the Prime Minister from his post, and did so. He feared that Mossadegh would instead attempt to raise a series of street mobs against him, which he might have, and the US played a small role in linking him to loyal members of his military, who pledged to back him. Mossadegh was given multiple off-ramp options that involved not wrecking the Iranian economy, and chose to refuse them all. Kirbys' role was, well, let us be kind to the man and say that he very much wanted to live up to the standards of his family name, and may have stretched his importance a bit hoping to do so.

However, the thinness of your analysis breaks down on a few key points - This is Iran. Not Saudi Arabia. Not Egypt. Iran. Saudi's could not care less (except perhaps for the very small Shia minority) whether or not we interfered in Iranian politics, and to the extent that we enabled the Shah, they probably preferred it. The Sunni are not pissed off at us because of the 1953 counter-coup; Sunni Islamist extremism predates that event. Additionally, the straight line from 1953 to 1979 is a false one that ignores far larger drivers of that revolution. I would highly encourage you (or anyone, actually, who is interested in this topic) to read "The Unthinkable Revolution" by Charles Kurzman.

You ought to read up.

:lol: okay. :)
 
Mornin' CPW. :2wave: Yeah that's why I went searching for this piece. As I knew the Times would come back and be talking the exact opposite of what they reported on last year. From the onset and even going back to the beginning wherein the MB incited and influenced the protests to rise up on Assad. Even though at the time he was being called a reformer by several Demos here in the US.

The MB backed rebels always had Military people that wanted to infuse Islamic Law in Syria.....plus, as you know the MB did want some payback on Assad for what his father had done to them in Syria.

:lamo remember when Pelosi went to Syria and declared that The Path To Peace Runs Through Damascus? :lamo
 
Diane Feinstein states that ISIS is out to get us, and she is scared.
 
remember when Pelosi went to Syria and declared that The Path To Peace Runs Through Damascus?



April 4th 2007.....oh and to top it off. She wore a very short skirt, in her one on one with Assad.


th
1_23_040407_pelosi_assad.jpg


05blog-pelosi533.jpg


pelosi-assad-ad-rjc.jpg
 
April 4th 2007.....oh and to top it off. She wore a very short skirt, in her one on one with Assad.

Yeah. I wonder if any of her supporters at least now have the decency to be embarrassed about all that.
 
Yeah. I wonder if any of her supporters at least now have the decency to be embarrassed about all that.

I think the next time she opens her mouth about Syria.....people should break this out in front of her face and around her Offices. Even have the MSM bring up what she said live.

So all can see just how she never was Right.
 
I think the next time she opens her mouth about Syria.....people should break this out in front of her face and around her Offices. Even have the MSM bring up what she said live.

Sure. Likelihood of that happening? :lol:

I mean, that would force them to accept in public that reflexively opposing whatever George Bush said or did wasn't actually a sound basis for foreign policy.
 
:) I like how I listed 4 major problems, and you can only respond to one.

That being the case, the CIA and the Brits did indeed have a role in the events of 1953 - we came in at the behest of the Brits. I like how you cite All the Shah's Men - I spent a couple of months of my life, at one point, going through that tome and comparing it to other sources. Kinzer was a reliable transmitter of what his Iranian sources (who were themselves reliable transmitters of their media) told him. Certainly it is what the average Iranian believes today.

However, the Shah had the power under the Constitution of Iran to dismiss the Prime Minister from his post, and did so. He feared that Mossadegh would instead attempt to raise a series of street mobs against him, which he might have, and the US played a small role in linking him to loyal members of his military, who pledged to back him. Mossadegh was given multiple off-ramp options that involved not wrecking the Iranian economy, and chose to refuse them all. Kirbys' role was, well, let us be kind to the man and say that he very much wanted to live up to the standards of his family name, and may have stretched his importance a bit hoping to do so.

However, the thinness of your analysis breaks down on a few key points - This is Iran. Not Saudi Arabia. Not Egypt. Iran. Saudi's could not care less (except perhaps for the very small Shia minority) whether or not we interfered in Iranian politics, and to the extent that we enabled the Shah, they probably preferred it. The Sunni are not pissed off at us because of the 1953 counter-coup; Sunni Islamist extremism predates that event. Additionally, the straight line from 1953 to 1979 is a false one that ignores far larger drivers of that revolution. I would highly encourage you (or anyone, actually, who is interested in this topic) to read "The Unthinkable Revolution" by Charles Kurzman.



:lol: okay. :)

(chuckle)

Here's what you said:
. Modern Sunni Islamism dates from the establishment of the Muslim Brotherhood, and was first best expressed in the writings of Sayyid Qutb, circa 1920s.
2. The US did not install the Shah. The Pahlavi dynasty took over Iran in 1925.
3. Shia extremism did not start in Iran as a result of the defeat of the 1953 coup by Mossadegh, but rather later took advantage of it.
4. ISIS as an organization owes precisely.... nothing in its founding to the Islamic Republic of Iran, or the preceding monarchy.



So... your post is wrong on multiple levels.

What I said was: we'll start with this level, and then I proceeded to blow your your entire argument out of the water and I used the CIA's own records; on their own site to do it.

Sorry dude, you need to read up. Get something better going and then we can talk.
 
April 4th 2007.....oh and to top it off. She wore a very short skirt, in her one on one with Assad.


th
1_23_040407_pelosi_assad.jpg


05blog-pelosi533.jpg


pelosi-assad-ad-rjc.jpg

Gee; is that like when Donald Rumsfeld was shaking hands with Saddam Hussein and then Reagan gave arms to him to defeat the Iranians?
 
Gee; is that like when Donald Rumsfeld was shaking hands with Saddam Hussein and then Reagan gave arms to him to defeat the Iranians?

No not at all, Rumsfeld was SOD and expected to travel outside the country and meet with Foreign Leaders. Did you want to say that was the Speaker of the House's Job?
 
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