Friendly reminder: the US basically created ISIS through it's hamfisted invasion of Iraq. Cheerleading tbis sort of effort is like congratulating a child when they decide to eat their peas.
ISIS was actually there, founded by Zarqawi like any other group, but its main differentiator was its swift rise to power and popularity after 2011 benefiting from the unbearable oppression of Sunnis in Iraq by Iran and its proxy, which made them align with whoever could be their savior and get rid of the Iranian influence. You can see this clearly when ISIS stormed the prisons where thousands of Sunnis were sentenced to death, and made them into the second wave of recruits.
US did enable ISIS, Zarqawi and co created it, Iran gave people a reason to join it in mass, and international agenda, most importantly the US object to get its enemies (Iran and ISIS) bleed each other, and the Kurdish leftists to ask for its help to the degree to become its proxies, left a space for it to be the monster it was.
Can't also ignore the Turkish and Kurdistani indifference (before ISIS started attacking them, there were ISIS/Kurdistani checkpoints side by side drinking tea together), and the Syrian allowance of fighters flood to Iraq through its the eastern borders since the invasion.
Blaming only the US (although it's the initial culprit) doesn't address the complexity of this problem.
He got to manage a country that just got invaded, that used to have a huge military and where the occupiers are still fighting the remnants of rebel forces in some part of the country.
In that context, he decided that the former officers from Saddam Hussein's regime would be barred from the new Iraq military and that they should not receive pension either.
He, put yourself in their shoes: when your job is to organize a military, that the only lawful employer refused your services and denies your pension, are you going to go homeless and beg in the streets or are you going to join a rebellious startup?
The ISIS of the origin was organized just like the Baath army was, because that's the framework the officers knew. There were some documents captured (that involved less "hacking" than physical invasion of command structures but of course we never know the amount of covert ops going on) and what they revealed was that one budget line was the biggest of the whole organization: pensions. Suicide bombing is not the career path everybody chose there.
ISIS is not a US creation: that would imply GWB's administration capacity to plan such a thing. But it came from crucial mistakes the US did despite being warned about these years prior.
The apocalyptic aspect (literally), for instance, is essential to understand ISIS, and it's early split from Al-Qaeda, for example.
The US turned a blind eye because ISIS was fighting a regime they wanted to change. They could have pressured Turkey and Qatar to stop; and they would oblige. But everything has a cost I guess.
Stopping the help provided by outside countries may have weakened the movement, but not prevented it.
The US finances many terrorist groups ourselves, so I'm not sure what your point is—nations are happy to take advantage of new powers regardless of how it conflicts with their propaganda. I don't know how you could look at the invasion of Iraq and come away with the conclusion that ISIS is either surprising or could have formed without our help.
(for a different blue-on-blue scenario: what might the cyber equivalent of leaving a grenade pin on an officer's pillow be?)
The invasion wasn't the hamfisted part - the problem was being reckless after the invasion and not really thinking properly about how to manage the country.
Note how the USSR dissolved without intervention.
Dropping bombs is like taking antibiotics, sometimes necessary but always creates resistance.
Does taking antibiotics always result in antibiotic resistant bacteria?
I wasn't aware of that, and at first glance it seems implausible as otherwise all antibiotics would have been ineffective before we even discovered them?
Your wider point still stands though, various parts of nature have been putting chemical warfare against each other for a very long time.
We'd best be careful we don't suddenly find ourselves on the wrong side of that battle.
Not really. Antibiotic treatment selects for existing variation within bacteria.
Some bacteria may already be weakly tolerant. Using antibiotics will likely lead to that trait being selected for, and the tolerance becomes stronger.
What have you been studying to get to PhD level as per your prolife info?
You obviously know what you're talking about, and I only have a fairly lay level understand :)
And who supplied those weapons of mass destruction to saddam? I wonder...
I won't go so far as to say that the whole fiasco could have been avoided with a functioning economy and some new civil service/protection branch to absorb the officers, but the US's strategy was one of the biggest contributors to ISIS's growth.