The American Response to ISIS: They’re Patterns, Not Coincidences
The wide wake that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is leaving across the Levant is mysterious in a number of ways. How they have so easily overwhelmed a third of Syria and a quarter of Iraq is one. But perhaps most mysterious is the American response to the rise of the Islamic State. Though the ascendancy in the region of the very force the war on terror is supposed to eliminate from the region would seemingly be blipping away on the American radar, America was silent as ISIS advanced. And the only thing more mysterious than the American silence was the sudden explosion of that silence by the recent airstrikes on Iraq. Why was America so strangely silent as ISIS established the Islamic State, and why has America so suddenly changed its policy?
America does whatever it wants. So, if they did not oppose ISIS, it’s because they did not want to oppose ISIS. And, if they did not want to oppose ISIS, it’s because, somehow, the ISIS advance was consistent with American interests in the region.
What those interests might be can best be answered by looking at where that advance was. ISIS has poured through Syria, Iraq and is now trickling into Lebanon. Iraq, Syria and Lebanon are precisely Iran’s three great allies in the region. The pattern is not a coincidence. ISIS’s interests coincide perfectly with America’s. America has long been bent on removing Assad from Syria in order to isolate Iran. But Syria is no longer Iran’s greatest ally in the region: Nouri al-Maliki’s Iraq is. And America has for some time now been seeking a change of his regime as well. And Lebanon is home of Iran’s ally Hezbollah. Notice that if the pattern breaks and ISIS attacks Jordan, then Israel, and perhaps the States, would come to Jordan’s aid. Perhaps America has not stopped ISIS from doing its work because ISIS is simultaneously doing America’s work: regime change and weakening of Iran’s allies.
http://original.antiwar.com/Ted_Snider/2014/08/13/the-american-response-to-isis-theyrepatterns-notcoincidences/
Interesting article. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and sometimes it's not. (cross post from GD)