Responses to (and roots of) Terrorism

Firstly the groups which went on to become the IS were part of the AQ imperative over Mid East radicalism, to engage the West. This is not the US's fault, this is their own decision to fight the US for their own reasons. Was that decision justified by them is an impossible question to answer, its a silly question because we cannot measure the influences effectively - but the US was really only in the Mid East because of the Cold War with the Soviet Union... the Mid East is not a colony of the US or under its control. It's relations from the Cold War are business related and so there are security arrangements and agreements. There are lots of conflicts in the MidEast and many have no Western component. The effort of the pre-IS group was to attack the US because it wanted to be part of the movement being led by AQ. This is not the fault of the US.

So was it in reaction to the occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan!? No, they formed in 1999, which was a couple before Afghanistan and about 4 years prior to Iraq.
Was it a reaction to the attack on Iraqi forces occupying Kuwait? Unlikely as Iraq was secular and Kuwait is mostly Sunni (like the IS) who were being liberated by the US.

So if you don't think they are just a bunch of islamic militants operating for their own holy way agenda, lets look at Iraq - since it gets the blame.

The whole strategy around Iraq was to focus the existing groups that would become the insurgency in Iraq, of which the pre-IS was already a part of. WMD in Iraq was most likely propaganda to hide the US strategy... which is normal in war. Don't feel bad about being lied to, it's to save the lives by not revealing strategy - and for that to work pretty much everyone has to believe it. If the US had not taken the fight to them, they were in effect letting them bring the fight to the US - which is how 9/11 was interpreted by the Pentagon IMO.

Now US success in Iraq was always going to be reliant on local support, which was not offered initially, but once the Iraqi's realized the foreign islamic insurgents were worse then the US - they switched sides and the tide turned allowing a drawdown and handover to Iraqi security. It just took way longer then expected.

Did Iraq get left in a more vulnerable position then under Saddam, yes in some measures and no in others.

So why Iraq? Was not Afghanistan enough??

No. As mentioned the liberation of Iraq or WMD were not strategic reasons the US were there - it was about that radical islam which had become rallied under AQ. While based in Afghanistan and Pakistan from the days of the Cold War invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR and its CIA supported Mujaheddin resistance, that was really only the smaller more volatile element of the actual threat. Not only was AQ & the Taliban being pushed out of its base in Afghanistan, but Pakistan is a long way from the Middle East when you've got a US controlled area between it! So the dedicated islamist terror movement became seemingly disconnected from its bigger source of young and middle aged man bored with life and would prefer the "several dozen virgins in a scented garden for eternity" life path - obviously not all of them, but its the weekend warrior Jihadi's which constitute the largest group of radical actors in the Mid East, and going to Pakistan to the fight the US in Afghanistan was not as attractive to them from their homes in the Mid East. The US had split the concept of the Islamic world by taking control of Afghanistan... but consider none of them care about Afghanistan that much either so the real problem facing the US has not been dealt with, and again... its not WMD or Saddam.

Iraq though, that is proverbially next door to the rest of the Mid East, and next to it is Iran which is Shia... something some of the Sunni's have a measure of hate towards. The IS is a Sunni group.

So the US (keeping in mind why its even in the MidEast; so that they can engage the terrorist threat on their terms and not wait to be hit at home) shifted its centre of gravity to Iraq for that reason. It also importantly allowed a greater intelligence and reaction capability in a region which was faced with an actual emerging WMD crisis as Syria and Iran were working to gather nuclear material - indeed a few years later Israel bombed a nuclear reactor the Syrian's had been quietly building in Syria. So that is the why, but what of the where... why Iraq in particular?

Because it had a secular history of governance meaning it should be less stable once the fireworks were over, it had attacked Kuwait recently meaning they were active in using the military force for their own gain and therefore rogue, they were agitating the UN in its inspections which made it attractive legally, they are located right between the two main nations of concern at the time Syria and Iran, had access to the Persian Gulf for easy fleet support, shared a border with allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and its leader was a despotic crackpot who had gassed his own citizens with nerve gas.

So then.... all these Mid East insurgents itching to join the 9/11 fight against the West, which this guy calls 'commandos' lol perhaps to avoid using the terrorist word - which he could have because when the insurgents got into the fight they spent a lot of their time fighting each other because the Iraqi's and Iranian are mostly Shia, and all these foreign Sunni insurgents flooding in to attack the infidel realized it was easier for them to instead attack their old foe the Shia - which is were most of the deaths in the Iraq occupation came from, not the US but foreign islamic insurgent's conducting terrorist attacks against each other.

There were lots of little islamic insurgent groups which existed/exist as a result of this mass influx of young men who wanted to fight and die for Allah, but what was left of them was the remnants of Sunni groups who had been fighting against the Shia Iraqi's and US for a few years who got pushed out of central Iraq to the border with Syria. At this point the fight is basically a civil war in Iraq, between Sunni and Shia. Not a new conflict, starting at the Battle of Siffin in 657 after the death of the prophet, but one the West considers if the islamic militants want to fight, they might as well fight each other instead of attacking us. In simple terms, strategy accomplished. The Pentagon at that time is probably measuring things up as slightly worse for Iraq, but better for everyone else.

Then the Arab Spring saw democracy try to blow through the Mid East, having good results in one or two places but generally lack luster success elsewhere. A lot of potential, but it was never going to be easy - and it was not.

The worst was in Syria where the government forces of Assad was able to use its military force to suppress the relatively lightly equipped popular uprising. Usually the world steps in when there is a big enough disproportionate imbalance of force being pitted against a side in a conflict - to avoid slaughter and mass loss of life, but because the West had botched this same reaction to Gaddafi's abuse of his military and African mercenaries in Libya against that popular uprising, the West decided not to bother with Syria at all and let it 'play out'.

Places like Saudi Arabia were supplying the Syrian uprising with weapons, and soon enough the West started providing some small measures of indirect assistance also - but basically they were left vulnerable and felt isolated. Great conditions for a powerful group to exert control and appear like a better of bad option.

IMO ideally the West in both Libya and Syria should have emplaced no fly zones, delivered medical supplies and food where able but stayed out of the ground conflict, but also used that control of the air to gather evidence of any illegal conduct etc and perhaps hold leaders to account for serious crimes - impossible without evidence. Not ideal, but the West cannot afford to be the World Police when countries like China, Russia and big regional actors are usually are happy to sit things out. So the West went too far in Libya IMO, and got burnt, and so did not go far enough in Syria (did not bother with a no-fly zone) - and now we have this mess. So one on hand I agree, the US did create the IS... but not in the way presented in thos videos, but rather through leaving the Syrian uprising to be decimated by Assad's government forces.

They even got to the point of asking for the US to help them. They were not asking so much for gun's and food, they were getting weapons from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and a few other countries already... what was crushing the movement is the depth afforded by the application of Syrian air power. When one side has airpower and the other does not it's bad enough, but when the side with air power does not have effective discrimination in its targeting - then it's basically mass murder. As you can see when it goes wrong with the recent MSF Hospital incident with the US and the Taliban! The West spends a lot of effort on making sure its targeting is carefully managed according to the laws of war, and when its ignored or fails, things become messy very quickly. The world has had enough firepower to destroy all life on the planet many times over for several decades now, and its only lawful professional conduct which separates humanity from destruction. Which is freaky but nothing can be done about it. So when a government military force turns its power onto civilian uprisings, it is a serious issue which usually gets attention.

So the militant Iraqi and foreign Sunni's up in the border region of Iraq and Syria join the fight on their own terms but are not actually aligned to the cause of the uprising, and so instead do not drive their efforts south to face the government forces - the IS instead decide to take control of Northern Syria according to their doctrine, spreading in all directions slowly and surely and basically feeding off the stream of refugee's who might be trying to leave Syria into Turkey. Until of course just recently they decide to open the floodgates and do a big trojan horse into Europe... but that is another story. But back to my story opinion, at that early stage of ISIL, a large proportion of them are Iraqi Sunni's, who want to drive a push back into Iraq. This is where the West gets dragged in, and we end up where we are now with pushing them back to their main area of operations for the last few years within Syria.