Zunes: The U.S. and ISIS

http://www.nationofchange.org/us-and-isis-1410095745

Ironically, however, President Obama has been getting the most high-profile criticism from those wishing he had been more aggressive with projecting American military power. For example, in a well publicized interview in The Atlantic, his former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, appeared to blame the rise of ISIS on Obama's failure to sufficiently arm and support the so-called moderate rebels of the Free Syrian Army.

Such a charge defies logic, however. The Free Syrian Army consists of literally hundreds of separate militia without a central command, largely composed of relatively inexperienced fighters, who would have been no match for the well-armed, experienced, disciplined fighters of ISIS, regardless of the amount of weapons the U.S. might have provided. In fact, it was an awareness of ISIS's potential dominance of the Syrian rebel movement, which served as an important reason why the Obama administration didn't go beyond the relatively limited arming and training of a few small groups affiliated with the Free Syrian Army.

Indeed, part of ISIS's military prowess comes from weapons they captured from overrunning FSA positions and from their ranks supplemented by FSA fighters who, in the course of the three-year battle with Assad's regimes, became radicalized and switched sides.

In any case, ISIS has found an even stronger foothold in Iraq, a direct consequence of the U.S. invasion and occupation. In a profile of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a one-time moderate Sufi turned Salafist extremist, the New York Times observed, "At every turn, Mr. Baghdadi's rise has been shaped by the United States' involvement in Iraq -- most of the political changes that fueled his fight, or led to his promotion, were born directly from some American action."