right at the start of the writers argument stating it wasn’t founded until 3 months after Hillary was out wouldn’t pass any reasonable fact check. Does the writer believe they hadn’t been setting up for a long time?
Let's, all of us, clear the air once and for all about ISIS, so that we can answer this question definitively the next time we are confronted by a liberal who "knows" that it was Bush's fault.
I spent some time reading the Hillary Rodham Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State wikipedia page (which, for some reason is longer than the Presidency of Jimmy Carter Wikipedia page) last night to understand the liberal point of view. I wanted to verify Clinton's final day in office. It was February 1, 2013.
The word "ISIS" is not mentioned. Nor is "Syria," other than an account of her travels there in 2012. I have a Wikipedia account, and have a good mind to correct this oversight at some point in the next 11 months.
For the time being, Let's get a couple of things straight: Before there was an ISIS, there were various other terror groups in the neighborhood, including one we now sometimes refer to as ISI (or Islamic State of Iraq), that did form during the Iraq War, had allegiance to al Qaeda, and was led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
It is important to note that before ISIS stated beheading people we never referred to ISI. It was known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (or AQI). al-Baghdadi was a contemporary of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and may have studied with him at the University of Baghdad, but the two were not close, and al-Baghdadi's goals were not the same as al-Zarqawi's. When the US sent it's 500 pound love note to al-Zarqawi, al-Baghdadi did not originally take over. When he did, AQI (or ISI) was moderately successful at attacking Sunni targets in Iraq, particularly after US troops were withdrawn. It did not claim credit against any US troops or civilian targets.
Meanwhile, in Syria, we have a group called al-Nusra Front, which announced its formation on January 23, 2012 (note the date). The group had been attracting foreign jihadis in the war against Bashir Asad. On April 8, 2013 AQI (or, now in the scrubbed for Hillary Version, ISI) announced a merger with al-Nusra Front to form Daesh or ISIS. Soon thereafter al-Baghdadi had a falling out with al-Nursa leader Abu Mohammad al-Julani who went his own way, but 80% of the foreign fighters remained loyal to al-Baghdadi. Mostly because the al-Qaeda group had American weapons that they had seized from the Iraqi Army after the US withdrew from the region. A scaled-back al-Nusra Front continues to fight in the Syrian war, against both Asad and ISIS, and is currently being bombed by the Russians. Shed no tears, they are definitely a terrorist group.
My view of ISIS is that it is the brainchild of al-Baghdadi, who was radicalized during the Bathist repression that took place during the Saddam administration. The man is a sociopathic megalomaniac along the lines of Hitler. It is true that without the Bush43 invasion, he would never have had the opportunity to lead al Qaeda in Iraq. However, without the troop withdrawl, he would most likely be dead right now. Without the Arab Spring, he would never have been given the opportunity in Syria. And if US troops had been in Syria, he would have taken advantage of softer Islamic targets and ISIS would never have been able to seize large strategic targets.
A good analogy is that, given the chaos in Germany in 1945, if the US and the Soviet Union had both withdrawn at that time, it is very likely that a successor to the Nazi legacy would have emerged to cause similar problems. The difference with Islamic terrorists is, of course, the religious component, and that makes them far more dangerous.
What is happening to today in Islamic State is that a new generation of true believers, similar to the Hitler Youth, are being systematically indoctrinated, making future action against them increasingly more dangerous as each year goes by.