The Media bullshit storm surrounding Isis

Isis. We don't know where Isis came from, how they became so powerful or how they managed to take over Iraq so quickly. But clearly they are very strong - and therefore dangerous so we have to deal with them. Bollox. Utter crap. Our political and media leaders always behave as if everything that happens in the world is a complete suprise to them. They want us to believe that the Middle East is full of terrorist Genie's that burst onto the scene out of knowhere and have to be clubbed down like a huge international game of 'club-a-mole'. Cause and effect is completely disgarded. No context is provided.

It would be more suprising if Isis didn't exist and its bloody simple to explain where they came from. Both Iraq and Syria are brutalised, war-torn countries that have seen many years of western funded and supported slaughter (more directly in Iraq and less in Syria.) For people in these countries, life is scary. Scary as shit. The random violence, the bombings, the food and power shortages, all contributed to making life unpredictable and unstable.

In both these countries life is even more scary for the Sunni's than it is for the Shia because both of them have Shia governments that have effectively been at war with their Sunni populations, so the Sunni's don't even have local authority on their side. Until last year, the Sunni areas of both countries were full or rival militias, fighting the government, fighting each other for power, a total break down of social order and the rule of law (which is what prolonged wars tend to create - EVERY TIME).

But because we didn't like the Assad government in Syria, we pumped huge amounts of weapons and money into the Sunni area that straddles the Iraq-Syria border. Lets re-cap. The economy was in tatters, there was no law, no security, no government that could be trusted, rival militia wars, mass kidnappings, rape - you name it - and we pumped in loads of weapons and money?!?

Do the origins of Isis still seem like some grand mystery? History teaches us that war torn siuations of political and social breakdown - power vacuumes - generally don't last for long. The craving and the desperation of the people for some kind of order (ANY kind of order) eventually means that the biggest bastard rises to the top. Where warlords rule the roost and there is a common enemy - especially when there are billions of Dollars of US weapons being pumped into the area - the most calculating, vicious and ruthless groups have the best chances. If it wasn't Isis it would have been someone very similar.

How do you think this rag tag group of a few thousand militants took over such a massive area so quickly? The people were ready for them. Rather than a conquest the Isis takeover of this area is more of a revolution, a general Sunni uprising led by the most psycho hard nuts on the block. Look at the expansion pattern, they swept through huge areas - barely firing a shot - and then virtually ground to a halt. Thats because they had already taken the Sunni area and are now hemmed in by Kurds, Shia and well armed foriegn borders on all sides.

The best solution to this crisis (if any of our leaders were even remotely interested in finding one, rather than finding an excuse to re-man their military bases in the area) would be to recognise that Sunni-Shai relations are now too bad to be reconciled and to negociate with the Sunni about their own state. Hopefully this would lead, over time, to the Sunni themselves rejecting the Isis extemists as life gradually calms down.

The alternative is to bomb the living crap out of the area and eventully re-invade. Lets rephrase that, in a situation where years of western bombing (and support for Syrian militants) have created such a mad-max like collapse of society that the people are supporting the biggest hard nuts on the block in a desperate attempt to restore some kind of normality, our only plan is to blast the living shit out of the exact same people who are going nuts because they have had the crap blasted out of them so much over the last 15 years?!?!?!

Our political and military leaders are not that stupid. This is 'The Shock Doctrine' being used all over again. We want to re-occupy the extremely expensive and strategically important military bases in the area and know that we cannot do so without a bloody huge crisis. The West did not hand pick or create Isis, but by pumping huge amounts of weapons and money into such a mental situation they may as well have, someone was going to fill the vacuum and it was never going to be the Quakers. Photogenic evil Disney villians going around loping off heads and showing it on Youtube. Thats a great reason to re-invade. And every civilian we kill will lead to another 10 recruits joining Isis. And the cycle goes on, so our presence will continue to be needed. Similar games were played all over the British Empire in colonial days, its a technique that we and the US are very familiar with. BASTARDS