sArun Gupta:

Chickenhawks love to thump their chests about how "We need to destroy ISIS." It's important to push back. The U.S. is the best friend ISIS ever had. The Iraq War created a fertile breeding ground for Al Qaeda in Iraq, which eventually morphed into ISIS. In the last few years, the U.S. and its allies have allowed ISIS to grow into a terrifying entity because it serves their grand geopolitical chess game.

Here are some important facts and points to know.

1) Turkey is the main supplier of ISIS because it lets fighters and arms go through its borders with Syria as part of its war with the Kurds and Assad's regime in Syria.

http://www.reuters.com/…/us-mideast-crisis-turkey-arms-idUS…

2) Many of ISIS's weapons came directly from the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

http://foreignpolicy.com/…/where-does-the-islamic-state-ge…/

3) Turkey benefits from cheap oil being smuggled by ISIS, with allegations that President Erdogan's son is profiteering from the oil trade.

http://www.zerohedge.com/…/isis-oil-trade-full-frontal-raqq…

4) Three days ago the U.S. asked Turkey to clamp down on the smuggling routes ISIS uses. So much for fighting terrorism if the US and NATO knew ISIS could freely smuggle fighter, weapons, and oil across Turkey's borders. 

http://www.wsj.com/…/u-s-urges-turkey-to-seal-syria-border-…

5) As even the New York Times admitted, it took the U.S. 14 months to begin attacking ISIS's oil convoys. How's that "war on terror" going?

http://www.nytimes.com/…/middleea…/us-strikes-syria-oil.html

6) The U.S. is reluctant to attack ISIS, Al Nusra, or other violent jihadis because it has created a world war in the Middle East. The U.S. leads an axis of evil of NATO, Turkey, Israel, and the Gulf sado-monarchies against a grand Shi'a-Russian alliance. (This is not about sectarianism, but crude power politics.) Kuwait and Qatar are allegedly prime supporters of Jihadi outfits, and it's widely believed many powerful individuals in the Gulf states also fund ISIS, et al. And of course our stalwart ally Saudi Arabia gave the world Al Qaeda, Bin Laden, and nearly all of the 9/11 hijackers. 

https://web.stanford.edu/…/mappingm…/cgi-bin/groups/view/493

7) Now it appears Israel is getting smuggled oil from ISIS. That's right. Noble Israel, that tiny outpost of democracy in a sea of barbarians, is a primary beneficiary of the ISIS oil trade. Of course Israel has been happy to stoke the civil war in Syria to see Assad and in turn Iran and Hizbullah weakened.

It's silly to say the U.S. and its allies are the hidden hand behind ISIS as conspiracy theorists allege. ISIS is all too real. If the left cannot offer a response as to what should be done about ISIS, then it allows the West to define the terms of the debate. And the Paris attacks is evidence of how terrorism works quite well for capitalist states. This is one of Bernie Sander's biggest failings. By not offering a credible alternative, he has given a free pass to Hillary Clinton's belligerence.

Chomsky, as usual, has one of the sharpest takes on what is happening and should be done, including it would be best if ISIS were wiped out by local forces, i.e., the Kurds, but that's highly unlikely because the Turkish state freaks out about Kurdish separatism.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/…/noam-chomsky-interview-isis-s…/

Final thought: we need to build an anti-imperialist/anti-war movement that has principles instead of a slavish devotion to the Democratic Party

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https://www.globes.co.il/en/article.aspx?did=1001084873