How ISIS Spread in the Middle East

How ISIS Spread in the Middle East

Monograph by noted Washington Post journalist and novelist David R. Ignatius.

Simpleχity;1065203785 said:

How ISIS Spread in the Middle East

Monograph by noted Washington Post journalist and novelist David R. Ignatius.

Click to expand...

well documented. I've read about the founding of ISIS,
but not how it grew thru the awakening, and al-Maliki in Iraq.

In Syria we couldn't have possibly done a more stupid policy of weakening Assad, upping the rebels, but not to the point
they were dominate, while ISIL crept in ..add in the rest of the regional powers using their proxies, and here we are.

There is a lot to his piece, i'm not doing it justice, but I am bookmarking it fo rfuture reference. thanks

Not a bad article. I do not agree with it word for word, but many of the source ideas are correct.

We have talked many times over about the consequences of running a long-term confusing and hypocritical foreign interventionist policy. And that is compounded by the inherent problem of trying to insert western governmental and social ideologies onto a culture and belief system that has no aptitude for those ideologies.

It is well established that ISIS is a product of opportunity. In Syria the opportunity centers on a multiple way long term civil war among many factions where political consensus is unlikely, and in Iraq the opportunity centers on a weak central government over an even weaker military. But we have said time and time again that those that make up ISIS have been there a very long time, at times called something else, and every so often aligned with various others assuming a shared ideological goal.

Our failure in the Middle East transcends just ISIS (or al-Qaeda,) but it is a good example of what happens when we apply our principles in a very haphazard way to a group of people with very different principles. You could say there is competition of ideas among nations in the Middle East on exactly how to run a government and/or society, they share some common traits from a common core religion that are entirely incompatible with US (western) core governmental and social ideologies. Their brand of social conservatism is in many regards a step beyond even our brand of social conservatism in that theocracy is the method to social controls. And that speaks volumes to our multiple levels of hypocrisy.

We will overlook the human rights abuses under the basic dictatorship in Saudi Arabia, but brand al-Assad a problem because of his alliances to Russia (and Iran when it suits) as one example. We will ignore from our own history where we supported Saddam Hussein in his fight against Iran a long way back, but eventually call him a bad guy for Hussein's handling of the Kurds and invasion of Kuwait as another example.

The problem with this article is trying to pinpoint some person, some ideological start to ISIS when I would argue that doing so ignores the bigger picture that the article also illustrates well but diminishes. I would have said it slightly differently... We did not change the Middle East to our goals and ideologies near as much as the Middle East made us question our abilities to do so. It makes sense when dealing with a haze of confusing goals. The article makes a good point in that ultimately all we did was cause chaos in the region, the Middle East changed us far more than we changed them as a response to that realization.

This may be another chapter in how Bush 43 will end up as one of the worst Presidents in our history, and I suspect that history will look back at this time period with real contempt for not only what we did not really accomplish but use groups like ISIS to show how bad we did not accomplish our goals of spreading our beliefs and ideologies.