And On To IS
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IS burned onto the scene with their graphic beheading videos and general all out cyber war. Al Qaeda were bad, but you knew they couldn’t do much from their caves in Afghanistan and Pakistan. America could hunt them down and kill them to much applause. YAY! Well done America, you managed to kill the monster you gave birth to… or did you?
From the ashes, IS rose, and this time they were bigger and stronger, and they’d learned how to use the computer and social networking to their advantage. This was a totally different game.
What kind of a petri dish could have manufactured such a grotesque creature? By now, it is unsurprising that it was probably an American designed petri dish. During the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, America dismantled Saddam Hussein’s relatively secular infrastructure and installed a predominantly Shiite administration.
Don’t get me wrong, there was execution, torture and collective punishment in Iraq under Hussein. He was no angel. What does Iraq have now though? Erm.. execution, torture and collective punishment. Brilliant.
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America said they were attacking an “evil regime” and that it was their duty to overthrow him. Nothing to do with oil? Oh, no Sir. America always uses these types of “good against evil” arguments to step into other countries, kill people, overthrow governments and install new dictators who are more willing to do their bidding. The US government advertises their actions as being good for the people so they can take the moral high ground. In reality, that’s balls.
If America really did carry out these attacks on foreign countries purely out of the goodness of their hearts, why haven’t they attacked and dethroned the Saudi monarchy? Saudi Arabia executes people on a weekly basis, Saudi’s the only country in the world where women aren’t allowed to drive, and the people in charge are non-democratically chosen despots. It is the “most extremist radical Islamic state in the world” according to Noam Chomsky. Sounds like the sort of place America would attack, right?
When you also remember that the majority of the 9/11 attackers were from Saudi Arabia you start to think, now come on America, why aren’t you using your moral compass to aim your missiles now? Well, they’re mates, aren’t they. They sell a butt tonne of guns to Saudi, why sour that sweet little deal?
So, anyway, back to Iraq in 2003. The Americans installed their Shiite administration, this, in turn, meant that Sunnis were marginalised. Thousands of Sunnis, rich and poor, suddenly lost their jobs, money and positions of power. Under Saddam, at least the religious tensions were kept under wraps. Sunnis and Shias were totally integrated.
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This mass discontent, fuelled by religious division, allowed al Qaeda to get a foothold in Iraq.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has been through a number of different names, one of which, adopted in 2004, was Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). They took this name after the then leader of ISIS – Abu Musab al-Zarqawi – swore allegiance to bin Laden.
After 2010 the group rebranded and refocused its efforts on Syria. So, IS essentially is al Qaeda. To summarise, the CIA built, trained and helped fund al Qaeda, you can quite easily see that by extension, they also created IS. But it doesn’t end there.
