If the West had seriously helped moderate, secular Syrians in overthrowing Assad quickly, things might be rather different. For that, we have the current set of leaders.
If the West hadn't destabilized or aided and abetted destabilizing Syria, Iraq would have continued as it was. That's largely Obama. When it was decided the US *would* help, the floodgates were open for above-board help to other factions of the anti-Assad insurgents. Some of them were Islamists. Some coalesced around the ISIL.
If the West hadn't let or stood by while al-Maliki played open favorites for the purposes of currying favor with him and keeping him from being even more pro-Iranian, some of the tensions in Iraq that reduced opposition to and increased support for ISIL wouldn't have grown. That's some Bush II and well into the Obama administration.
If not for the Iraq War in 2003, there'd be a dictator able to ruthlessly crush this kind of thing before it got too big to crush easily. Removing that dictator is clearly Bush II.
If not for Hussein stoking tensions and making the Sunnis feel empowered and more important than they were, for restoring the role of conservative Islam in an Iraqi society in which it had been waning for over 20 years before the Iraq-Iran war, ISIL probably wouldn't have gotten as much support.
If not for that funny combination of fascism and socialism that we call "Ba'thism", with Soviet support for years, Saddam Hussein and the Assad family wouldn't have the power to manipulate society in ways that ultimately led to this.
Then we get back to the various roles that tradition, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Nazis and the Soviets played in the area.
We have Sykes-Picot and the divvying up of territory in bad ways.
But we also have the Ottomans that really rather liked having the ethnic borders sqiggle everywhere and tensions over territory and power fester, because then, like Saddam Hussein and other strongmen, their authority is the only thing everybody knows is keeping the lid on society and preventing war.
Where you decide to stop in order to place blame is largely a political decision, based upon what parts of the picture you want to studiously avoid seeing. Like Obama, hate Bush? It's all on the 2003 war. Don't like Saddam? His fought. Don't like Obama? His fault. Lots of people could have fixed it. None did. But in the grand scheme of things Saddam was eventually going to go the way of all flesh and perish; after him either there'd be a strongman that would have to crush his opposition and impose his will on society or there'd probably be something much like this or Jugoslaviya.
= new reply since forum marked as read
