Comment by arlk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by arlk | Hacker News Reader

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Yes and no. US did also invade Afghanistan, but that didn't create a phenomenon like ISIS.

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.

The invasion was not enough to create ISIS. To do that, US had to name an idiot as Iraq's governor. Enters Paul Bremer. A single decision of his made ISIS possible.

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.

I recommend the book "The ISIS apocalypse: The history, strategy, and doomsday vision of the Islamic State", if anything else it makes for fascinating reading.

The apocalyptic aspect (literally), for instance, is essential to understand ISIS, and it's early split from Al-Qaeda, for example.

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