The New American – by Alex Newman
The self-styled “Islamic State,” the gaggle of medieval savages and barbarians often referred to as ISIS or ISIL, is now infamous worldwide for its unrestrained brutality. The al-Qaeda offshoot exploded onto the scene in 2014 amid its gruesome and bloody effort to build an Islamic “Caliphate,” exterminate “apostates,” and overthrow the “apostate” regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. America and the West are supposedly next — at least that is what the public is being told.
Ever since ISIS emerged seemingly out of nowhere, Americans and people around the globe have been treated to a steady TV diet of beheadings, massacres, crucifixions, and other unspeakable horrors perpetrated by the group. Even young children, whose only “crime” was professing faith in Jesus Christ, have been butchered in the most grotesque ways imaginable by the terror outfit. Eventually, ISIS leaders claim, the whole world will submit to the Islamic god, Allah, and his caliph on Earth, a mystery man who goes by the name “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi” and was once detained in the U.S.-run prison Camp Bucca in Iraq.
The jihadist savagery perpetrated by ISIS is now well documented and well known, with the group’s atrocities being used as a pretext to further empower governments and the United Nations and attack liberty and national sovereignty on a global scale. What is less known, though, is how ISIS — like countless horror shows before it — represents merely the latest bitter fruit produced by U.S. foreign policy and the machinations of the globalist establishment that largely controls it.
How the Anti-ISIS Alliance Built ISIS
Indeed, without the U.S. government and Obama’s “coalition” of Sunni Islamist strongmen, the “Islamic State” would probably not exist — much less have the resources, weapons, manpower, and training needed to seize enough territory to create a “Caliphate” (Islamic Empire) of barbarism across large swaths of Iraq and Syria. This is hardly a secret to anyone who has been paying attention to anything other than the establishment media.
In fact, at least two of the administration’s top officials — Vice President Joe Biden and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey — have publicly discussed the role of Obama’s “anti-ISIS” coalition in building up the terrorist group. Speaking at Harvard, Biden also admitted another truth long accepted as fact among credible analysts: Despite all of Obama’s rhetoric, there is no such thing as a “moderate” force in Syria that the White House claims to have been supporting against Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.
“The fact is, the ability to identify a moderate middle in Syria, um, was, uh — there was no moderate middle,” Biden stated, acknowledging that history was likely to record the facts. In other words, the entire notion that Obama and the U.S. government were arming “well-vetted moderate” jihadists in Syria to battle less-moderate jihadists is a fantasy — or a fraud. It was completely discredited by the president’s own deputy in a public speech!
Biden also cited Obama’s “anti-ISIS” allies as the most important players behind the creation and empowerment of the terror group to begin with. “What my constant cry was, that our biggest problem was our allies — our allies in the region were our largest problem,” Biden continued. He specifically identified the Islamist rulers of Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia, along with unspecified others such as Qatar, as the main culprits. “They were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war,” Biden said. So, with that in mind, “What did they do?” the vice president asked before providing a partial answer. “They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad; except that the people who were being supplied were Al Nusra and Al Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world,” Biden said. He did not mention the role of the CIA and the State Department in the process, of course, but that has been well documented by countless sources, as The New American has been reporting for years.
“Now you think I’m exaggerating — take a look,” Biden continued. “Where did all of this go? So now what’s happening? All of a sudden everybody’s awakened because this outfit called ISIL, which was Al Qaeda in Iraq, which when they were essentially thrown out of Iraq, found open space in territory in eastern Syria, work with Al Nusra who we declared a terrorist group early on, and we could not convince our colleagues to stop supplying them.”
Lest Biden’s uncharacteristic truth-telling be dismissed as the ravings of Obama’s “impeachment insurance,” as the vice president has come to be known, he is hardly the only senior official to acknowledge that the “anti-ISIS” coalition was actually responsible for ISIS. In a Senate hearing last fall, for example, neocon Senator Lindsey Graham — among the most ardent warmongers in Congress — asked General Dempsey whether he knew of any “major Arab ally” that embraces ISIS.
General Dempsey responded with an answer that Graham, a longtime advocate of arming and training more jihadists, was almost certainly not expecting. “I know of major Arab allies who fund them,” Dempsey explained. Graham stepped in, perhaps trying to save face, by downplaying the explosive admission. “They fund them because the Free Syrian Army couldn’t fight Assad, they were trying to beat Assad,” the senator from South Carolina claimed. “Let’s don’t taint the Mideast unfairly.”
Obama Support for Jihadists Helped Produce ISIS, Too
Graham might have been correct that Obama’s anti-ISIS coalition was backing ISIS to overthrow Assad, Syria’s brutal dictator, who is viewed as an “apostate” among the jihadists seeking “regime change.” But Sunni Arab dictators with different views on Islam were hardly alone in that endeavor. In fact, the U.S. government and the upper echelons of the globalist foreign policy establishment at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and other strongholds of power were advocating and following precisely the same strategy long before ISIS officially emerged.
Mohamed “Ed” Husain, an “adjunct senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies” at the CFR, for example, is now pointing to the terrorist groups rampaging across Syria as a justification for “unifying” the Middle East under a European Union-style regime. In 2012, though, he was celebrating the role of al-Qaeda (elements of which went on to become ISIS) in furthering globalist aims. “The influx of jihadis brings discipline, religious fervor, battle experience from Iraq, funding from Sunni sympathizers in the Gulf, and most importantly, deadly results,” gushed Husain, a Sunni Muslim, in a piece for the CFR. “In short, the [Obama-backed Free Syrian Army] needs al-Qaeda now.” In reality, there was little to no difference between the FSA and al-Qaeda from the start, as mountains of evidence make clear.
Beyond the crucial support for ISIS and al-Qaeda provided by Obama’s purported allies in the alleged war against ISIS, though, the Obama administration itself has also proven essential to the emergence and strengthening of the terror group. Almost from the start of the Western-backed uprising in Syria, Obama boldly proclaimed his solidarity with the establishment-fueled “rebels.” At the time, little was known publicly about the character of the rebellion, with the “mainstream” press falsely presenting it as a “pro-democracy” uprising against tyranny, rather than a complex Western-backed Muslim Brotherhood operation.
Soon, though, the truth about the rebels began creeping out — this was a brutal Sunni-jihadist “revolution,” with powerful backers aiming to impose a sharia-run dictatorship in Syria after Assad was gone. Even the supposedly “moderate” rebels backed openly by Western powers — operating under the banner of the “Free Syrian Army” — were exposed as Islamists perpetrating war crimes and cannibalism, exterminating Christians, advocating ethnic cleansing, cooperating with al-Qaeda, and more.
The war drums in the United States were already beating, though, and Obama was issuing secret and open proclamations purporting to authorize U.S. support — including arms shipments — for the jihadist rebels in Syria. Despite official claims that the arms were going to “moderates” (remember, Biden recently admitted to the world that there were no “moderates” among the Syrian rebels), even the establishment mouthpiece New York Times reported as early as October of 2012 that “most” of the U.S. weapons being showered on the Syrian rebels were going to “hard-line Islamic jihadists.” The rest were presumably going to regular Islamic jihadists.
A Syrian fighter defending locals in his area spoke with The New American last September. He was even more blunt than the Timesor Biden. “Everyone who can hold a gun here, be sure [he] is with the [Syrian] Army or he will be with ISIS,” explained the man, whose identity is being withheld for safety reasons.
Worse still, perhaps, is that Obama was reportedly training actual ISIS fighters in Jordan under the guise of helping “moderate” rebels overthrow Assad, according to Jordanian security officials cited by WND journalist Aaron Klein. “The officials said dozens of future ISIS members were trained at the time as part of covert aid to the insurgents targeting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria,” Klein reported. “The Jordanian officials said all ISIS members who received U.S. training to fight in Syria were first vetted for any links to extremist groups like al-Qaida.”
Even among those Obama-backed rebel forces that were not “technically” ISIS or al-Qaeda to begin with, the line between them was virtually non-existent. For example, the international press has been packed with interviews by both “moderate” rebels and ISIS/al-Qaeda leaders boasting of their cooperation with each other in the fight against Assad to create an Islamic dictatorship.
“We are buying weapons from the FSA,” ISIS fighter Abu Atheer was quoted as saying by Al Jazeera, referring to the Obama-backed “Free Syrian Army” jihadists. “We bought 200 anti-aircraft missiles and Koncourse anti-tank weapons. We have good relations with our brothers in the FSA. For us, the infidels are those who cooperate with the West to fight Islam.”
Separately, FSA commander Bassel Idriss told Lebanon’s Daily Star newspaper that his group is “collaborating with the Islamic State and the Nusra Front [al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria] by attacking the Syrian Army’s gatherings.” Countless other examples of Obama’s “moderates” and the non-moderate ISIS/al-Qaeda terrorists celebrating their cooperation and friendliness with each other can be found in media outlets around the globe.
Another FSA commander, Abdel Basset Al-Tawil, told Al Jazeera in June of 2013 (before ISIS emerged) that his Obama-backed rebels were working with al-Qaeda to build a state in Syria based on sharia law. “It is no secret that we have ties with everybody, even the brothers in the Nusra Front, and we cooperate in many places,” he boasted, calling for even more cooperation. Tawil then threatened that if Western powers did not promptly send even more weapons within a month, “we will reveal all the evidence we have” about the chemical weapons attack Obama unsuccessfully sought to blame on Assad as a pretext for launching direct military strikes. More weapons shipments began promptly — this time, even more openly.
In November, an FSA operative by the name of “Mahmoud” was quoted in media reports admitting that he now works with ISIS and Nusra to funnel fighters and supplies to the terror groups — and that he is not alone. “Many of my friends are doing the same now,” he told the U.K. Telegraph, adding that Obama should have sent even more weapons to rebels to stop them from joining ISIS and Nusra. “ISIL is the only solution for us…. The most important thing now though is to remove the regime and ISIL is the strongest group. I will do whatever it takes.”
Meanwhile, as if to drive the point home, multiple reports from human rights groups and news agencies suggested that ISIS and many of Obama’s “moderates” signed a non-aggression pact brokered by the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra. According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), the French news agency, the deal states that “the two parties will respect a truce until a final solution is found and they promise not to attack each other because they consider the principal enemy to be the Nussayri regime.” The term “Nussayri” is a slur used to describe the Islamic Shia denomination to which Assad and many Syrians belong — a sect that a spokesman for the Obama-backed FSA vowed on TV to exterminate, along with all other Shias in Syria.
More recently still, last November, two of the key Obama-backed “moderate rebel” groups, the Harakat Hazm and the Syrian Revolutionary Front (SRF), both affiliated with the FSA, also defected to ISIS and al-Qaeda. Unsurprisingly, they took their U.S.-supplied weapons with them — including Grad rockets and Tow anti-tank missiles. Before that, an entire “moderate” brigade of 1,000 Syrian rebels known as Dawud, part of the Islamic Front’s “Sham Army,” also defected to ISIS, taking its tanks and weapons with it.
Much of the expensive military hardware showered on Iraq’s U.S.-installed regime has also “mysteriously” ended up in ISIS hands, too, as have many supplies dropped from the air for “moderate” rebels. In October, meanwhile, even the establishment media was reporting that a massive amount of U.S. “foreign aid” was flowing directly to ISIS. The Daily Beast, for example, reported that “truckloads of U.S. and Western aid have been flowing into territory controlled by the jihadists.”
Blunders Galore
Aside from the arming, training, and funding of jihadists in Syria, the “anti-ISIS” coalition’s creation — ISIS — could not have come about without decades of previous U.S. foreign policy “blunders,” as the establishment likes to call them. Without each successive piece of the puzzle falling into place, ISIS and the global jihadist movement being exploited by globalists today to advance their agenda would probably not exist.
Going back decades, the U.S. government and its allies were instrumental in creating the Islamist Mujahedeen to fight against the Russians in Afghanistan. Those Muslim “holy warriors” radicalized and armed by the U.S. government went on to become the Taliban and al-Qaeda — with al-Qaeda representing the genesis of what would later become ISIS. Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, writing in the U.K. Guardian, is one of countless sources who have acknowledged the U.S. role in creating al-Qaeda. Noting that “throughout the 80s [Osama bin Laden] was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan,” Cook called bin Laden “a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies.”
While not everybody agrees that it was a “miscalculation,” the fact that bin Laden and his fighters worked with and on behalf of the U.S. government and other Western powers is beyond dispute. Without having created that global jihadist powerhouse decades ago, what is known today as ISIS almost certainly would not exist.
Then came the next crucial element. Under the George W. Bush administration, U.S. forces overthrew former U.S. ally Saddam Hussein, the brutal Iraqi dictator who, seeking to stamp out competition to his bloody rule, had no tolerance for al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups. In fact, there was virtually no al-Qaeda in Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion and occupation. That particular interventionist U.S. foreign policy “blunder” also proved to be crucial to the emergence of ISIS, as the terror group began as an offshoot of the previously non-existent al-Qaeda in Iraq.
More recently, Obama’s UN-approved machinations in Libya involved literally backing the same terrorists previously fighting U.S. troops in Iraq and now fighting under the ISIS banner — laying the groundwork for the self-proclaimed “Caliphate” to emerge. “ISIL is certainly not a state,” Obama argued when he announced his unconstitutional “strategy” to supposedly “fight” ISIS. “It was formerly al Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq, and has taken advantage of sectarian strife and Syria’s civil war to gain territory on both sides of the Iraq-Syrian border.”
But none of that would have been possible without Obama’s illegal war in Libya. Indeed, Obama’s war in Libya provided the single biggest boost of the last generation to al-Qaeda and associated jihadists.
In early December 2014, U.S. General David Rodriguez, chief of the U.S. Africa command, even noted that hundreds of ISIS were now training at ISIS terror camps across Libya — and nothing would be done about it, except watch.
In a 2013 interview with The New American, John Rosenthal, a Europe-based journalist and author of The Jihadist Plot: The Untold Story of Al-Qaeda and the Libyan Rebellion, explained that the Obama administration had literally “switched sides” in the terror war. The administration’s Syria policy, he added, “is a continuation of its Libya policy”: siding with Islamists against secular regimes that even recently had helped the U.S. government in the “terror war.” Those same Islamists had for years been planning to overthrow the “apostate” regimes, and Obama stepped in to help at precisely the right moment.
Libya is now embroiled in a brutal civil war, with large swaths of the nation run by al-Qaeda-linked jihadists aided by the White House. From Libya, many of those Islamists gathered weapons — some from Gadhafi’s huge stockpile; others provided by the Obama administration and its allies for “revolution” — and headed for Syria to overthrow its “apostate” dictator with Obama’s assistance. Thanks to the Western-backed rebellion there — which had been in the works since at least the George W. Bush administration, according to documents released by WikiLeaks — Syria was sufficiently destabilized to make possible the rapid rise of ISIS.
Some astute U.S. lawmakers who previously warned that Obama’s strategy of arming al-Qaeda and other jihadists in Syria would backfire did speak out about the insanity. Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), for example, outlined those concerns on Fox News after the president’s speech about supposedly degrading and destroying ISIS. “The one thing we need to remember about all of this,” he said, “we need to remember how we got here. The reason we got here is we took it upon ourselves to topple secular dictators who were the enemy of radical Islam.”
But what about all those air strikes Obama is supposedly conducting against ISIS? Well, according to the Assad regime, which is locked in mortal combat with ISIS and other Western-backed Islamists, Obama’s unconstitutional military adventures, perhaps not surprisingly, have done nothing to weaken it. “All the indications say that (Islamic State) today, after two months of coalition air strikes, is not weaker,” explained Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem in a recent TV interview cited by Reuters.
The most powerful military in the world could not even “weaken” a rag-tag group of terrorists after two months of air strikes and countless millions worth of military support to “moderates”? If that is the case — which sounds rather implausible — perhaps Americans deserve a refund for the hundreds of billions of dollars spent each year on the military. More likely, though, is that, as top Obama officials have explained openly, the real purpose of the “anti-ISIS” war is to remove Assad — at least initially — on the road toward “world order.”
“I recognize the contradiction in a contradictory land and a contradictory circumstance,” Obama claimed in September 2014, downplaying the insanity and deception as if it were all some confusing misunderstanding. The week before those comments, though, his own ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, admitted in a separate TV interview that deposing Assad was among the real goals of the administration’s “contradictory” Syria policy. “The training also will service these troops [Obama’s so-called ‘moderate rebels’] in the same struggle that they’ve been in since the beginning of this conflict against the Assad regime,” Power said, contradicting the key selling point for arming “moderate” jihadists — to fight ISIS.
ISIS as a Force for Globalism
ISIS is now being hyped by globalists worldwide as justification for wide-ranging assaults on liberty, national sovereignty, and more. For instance, empowering the UN, Interpol, and the self-styled “International Criminal Court” to lead the “terror war” is at the top of the globalist agenda. Great progress has already been made for the globalist cause under that transparently phony pretext. A global war on “non-violent extremism” is in the works, too, meaning a war on any groups such as U.S. constitutionalists, who don’t toe the globalist line. Meanwhile, the CFR and globalist forces are also touting a “Middle East Union” — another building bloc of what they call the “New World Order” — as a “solution” to the chaos and horrors those same globalists unleashed on humanity.
From arming and radicalizing Islamists who went on to become al-Qaeda to overthrowing the Iraqi dictator and supplying weapons to brutal jihadists to unseat brutal tyrants, U.S. foreign policy appears to have been practically designed to create the “Islamic State” rather than destroy it. In other words, ISIS is the “new and improved” best terror group U.S. tax money can buy. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have already paid the ultimate price for the machinations. It is time for Congress to rein in the administration before further “blowback” comes back to haunt the very American people forced to pay for it all.