Published on 15 September 2014, by M. Tomazy.
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| NBC News' Brian Williams offered up some ISIS-related fearmongering as part of his commemoration of the September 11 attacks (Fair.org). |
Since the 9/11 attack, a new era has begun in favor of the American neoconservative elites.
Bush's administration declared war against al-Qaeda, and promised the American people to punish every person involved in 9/11 catastrophe.
Bush accused the former Iraqi regime of supporting al-Qaeda prior Iraq's invasion, and he also accused saddam's regime of reserving weapons of massive destruction. However, these accusations are now well-known to be deceptions. In fact, Saddam's regime was secular totalitarian regime which fought religious-based militias and assassinated many religious figures inside Iraq.
Oil is the keyword
George W. Bush is, by far, the most ignorant American president. For example, he had visited Austria and made reference to the non-existent "Austrian language". And he had been so Spanish illiterate as to refer to "Cinco de Cuatro (#4)" in front of the Mexican ambassador when it was the 5th of May (Cinco de Mayo), and continued to flub it when he tried again.
However, wealthy Bush's dynasty has been investing in oil industry, and it was not a coincidence to choose CEO of Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Company (i.e, Dick Cheney) as vice-president. And appointing Paul Wolfowitz, ( one of neoconservative hawks, and the theorist of what has been known as Wolfowitz doctrine) as Deputy Secretary of Defense (2001-2005).
Who revived ISIS and other al-Qaeda affiliated groups
Excluding two regimes, the world sigh deeply for Western-Iranian negotiations as sign of no-war status in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and Israel have strongly opposed presumed American-Iranian 'rapprochement' and they held private and public meetings to exert pressure on the US administration against negotiations. Meanwhile, Syrian regime restored initiative against opponent militias with Iranian and Hezbollah help. The US allies realized that they must care of their interests by 'themselves' since the Americans disappointed them by undesired 'diplomatic' negotiations.
While the Western and pro-Western Arab governments decided to topple down Bashar Al-Assad regardless of costs, they found themselves dealing with terrorist groups such as An-Nusra Front and ISIS against Syrian regime, meanwhile, the same terrorists -- they are also classified as terrorist organizations in the EU and US-- are not allowed to attack American-designed Iraqi regime to maintain oil flow toward Western companies, especially after the American troops withdrew from Iraq. So the Western governments indirectly supported ISIS in Syria, hopefully, they will not move to neighboring Iraq.
Syria is the target
Throughout the past year, hawkish critics of the White House and many pundits have insisted that the Obama administration should have intervened long ago. To many pundits, if the US had only attacked Syria sooner, none of this would have happened. As ABC's Cokie Roberts (08/10/14) said:
We're not acting like a superpower, that's the problem.... I agree with Hillary Clinton, as you quoted her earlier, saying, well, if we had gotten into Syria when the rebels were begging us to come in, and saying, here we are, trying to secure our freedom, where is America, then you wouldn't have had this group filling the vacuum.
Other media accounts (Washington Post, 8/11/14) argue that more US support for the armed opposition in Syria would not have been decisive in either removing Bashar al-Assad from power or preventing the rise of the Islamic State.
And some of these arguments rest on the assumption that US policy towards Syria can be characterized as one of nonintervention. As the New York Times(9/10/14) reported:
Mr. Obama has resisted military engagement in Syria for more than three years, out of fear early on that arming the rebels who oppose Mr. Assad would fail to alter the balance in the civil war while more direct military intervention could have spillover effects in the volatile region.
This is seriously misleading--and contradicted by the Times' own reporting. Under the headline "CIA Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition" (6/21/12), the paper reported that the US government was playing a very active role in supporting the armed revolt, with CIA officers in Turkey helping to deliver weapons to particular opposition groups. Days earlier, the Wall Street Journal (6/13/12) was reporting that the CIA was working with opposition groups to "develop logistical routes for moving supplies into Syria and providing communications training."
As Patrick Cockburn reports in his new book The Jihadis Return, the arms that the CIA was "steering" to Syrian rebels were instrumental in enabling ISIS to expand the territory it held in Iraq:
An intelligence officer from a Middle Eastern country neighboring Syria told me that ISIS members “say they are always pleased when sophisticated weapons are sent to anti-Assad groups of any kind because they can always get the arms off them by threats of force or cash payments."... Arms supplied by US allies such as Qatar and Turkey to anti-Assad forces in Syria are now being captured regularly in Iraq.
ISIS came into being as a result of the US invasion of Iraq (CounterSpin,8/15/14), and was greatly strengthened by the US-backed destabilization of Syria. Since it is US intervention that has gotten us where we are today, the false assumption that the White House has failed to do anything at all makes any serious analysis of what to do now impossible. (The idea that doing something effective about the real threat ISIS poses to its neighbors means a military attack was challenged by IPS's Phyllis Bennis in a column for The Progressive--9/10/14; the reverse, she argues, is actually the case.)
What seems abundantly clear is that the media's coverage of the threat posed by the Islamic State--and the group's savvy dissemination of appalling propaganda--have produced some shift in public opinion. As journalist Glenn Greenwald (Intercept, 9/8/14) remarked:
It's as though ISIS and the US media and political class worked in perfect unison to achieve the same goal here when it comes to American public opinion: fully terrorize them.
