by Berry Friesen (July 14, 2015)
A lot of ink has been spilled by Christians over the past year writing about the Islamic State. But few (if any) have said the most important thing: the Islamic State is a proxy army of the empire.
Say what? The Islamic State kills, terrorizes and destroys on behalf of the U.S. and its allies? How can that be true? Isn’t the U.S. bombing the Islamic State?
That’s true, dear readers, because the empire finds it advantageous to fight on both sides of many of its wars. To the empire, war is simply a tool of the trade. It’s not a matter of winning or losing, but of dividing and conquering, of pitting one nation against the other and keeping everyone off-balance. It’s the empire’s way of maintaining what it calls “full-spectrum dominance:” no nation (or combination of nations) can have the capacity to chart and defend its own path.
Now I fully understand that most reading this post will consider it extreme to suggest the Islamic State is fighting on behalf of the empire. There’s nothing I can say here that will change that assessment. All I can do is ask that you do your own reading on the subject. I'll give you a few places to start.
The organization known today as the Islamic State was very visible and effective in Iraq during the years leading up to and immediately following the U.S. withdrawal of troops from Iraq. During 2012, it began an offensive called “Breaking the Walls” designed to secure the release of prisoners and reclaim lost territory in Iraq. The offensive included many car bombs aimed to kill Shiite civilians and facilitate prison breaks. The point is that the Islamic State was already a major force in Iraq three-to-four years ago.
In April, 2013, the Islamic State formally merged with al-Qaeda in Syria (called the Nusra Front) for the purpose of bringing down the Syrian government. As part of the merger, it changed its name to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as ISIL. During the last half of 2013, its fighters took control of smaller towns and cities in eastern Syria. In January 2014, it seized Raqqa, Syria’s largest city in the east, and made it the center of operations.
That same month, President Obama spoke about the Islamic State in
The New Yorker. He mocked it as “the jayvee team” and not a serious threat, involved only in local power struggles and sectarian disputes.
Yet only a few months later, in June 2014, the Islamic State had captured vast expanses of Syria and Iraq, including Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city.
Since then the shocking violence and smashing victories of the Islamic State have been featured in countless newscasts by Western media. In early July, U.S. Secretary of Defense Secretary Hagel added to the hype. He described the Islamic State as "a force that is sophisticated. It's dynamic, it's strong, it's organized, it's well-financed, it's competent. And it is a threat to our allies all over the Middle East. It's a threat to Europe. It's a threat to every stabilized country on Earth, and it's a threat to us." That same month President Obama sent U.S. troops back to Iraq. By August U.S. planes were bombing Islamic State positions and by September the U.S. had assembled a 40-nation coalition to resist the Islamic State.
That’s the background. For the analysis, you will need to do some reading.
A good place to start is Ted Snider’s “
America’s Bizarre Initial Response to the Islamic State.” Snider points out two of the most obvious lies we’re been told about the Islamic State: that its emergence was a surprise and that the U.S. tried to stop its allies from supporting the Islamic State. He states: "America did not wake up too late to the reality of ISIS: America was wide awake but willing to let it happen." Snider also helps us understand why the U.S. has wanted the Islamic State to succeed: it is weakening the Mideast governments that the empire wants weakened: Syria, Lebanon and Iraq (directly) and Iran (indirectly).
Next, I suggest you read about an August, 2012 report of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), uncovered in May, which revealed that the success of the Islamic State is the exact result the U.S. has been expecting for at least three years. I quote from the secret report: “If the situation unravels [in eastern Syria], there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria, and this is exactly what the supporting powers [Western countries, the Gulf states, Turkey] to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.” Note the phrase, “possibility of establishing;” it appears to be speaking of the empire’s options, not what the Salafists might do.
Next, take a look at a couple of articles by Tony Cartalucci, “
Logistics 101: Where Does ISIS Get Its Guns?” and “
TIME Admits ISIS Bringing Arms, Fighters in From NATO Territory.” Relying on mainstream media sources, Cartalucci shows in these two articles how truck convoys from Turkey keep the Islamic State army equipped and supplied. “ISIS is supplied not by ‘black market oil’ or ‘hostage ransoms’ but billions of dollars worth of supplies carried into Syria across NATO member Turkey's borders via hundreds of trucks a day,” he says.
In “
America’s Multinational Ramadan Assault,” Cartalucci describes the geographic breadth of Islamic State terrorism (France, Tunisia, Yemen, Kuwait, China’s western Xinjiang region) in the recent Ramadan attacks and asks who had the motive and the logistical capacity to carry off such an astonishing array of closely timed attacks over such a huge area.
Writes Cartalucci, "It appears that only the United States and its hegemonic ambitions stood to gain from the otherwise senseless violence perpetrated this Ramadan. Its enemies have been directly attacked, and its allies given further justification for military adventures abroad. And not coincidentally, it is only the United States and its vast, criminal intelligence community that possess the operational capacity and network of proxies necessary to organize and execute such large scale and conveniently timed attacks.”
Then there is all of the money and arms coming to the Islamic State from sources in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey. These are all U.S. allies, of course, yet one hears not a word from the U.S. about putting a stop to their support of the dreaded Islamic State. Nafeez Ahmed
describes this here and puts it within the larger context of the past 35 years. Marcy Wheeler
adds the Benghazi connection and shows how the U.S. worked with its allies back in 2011-12 to ship weapons from Libya to Salafists in Syria.
Still reading? Then consider what happened in May when the Islamic State captured Ramadi, the capital of Al Anbar province located about 65 miles west of Baghdad. It held a
victory parade on a sunny day under skies controlled entirely by the empire. You would think the parade would have been bombed, but it wasn’t. And the pictures of the triumphant and seemingly unstoppable Islamic State parading through Ramadi showed up on all the evening news shows that very evening. Hmmm.
In short, the Islamic State is scary and powerful because the empire wants it to be scary and powerful. You want to stop the Islamic State? Resist the empire.