What purpose do you think they were purposely formed for. I always believed it was to oust the Syrian regime and to do their revolutionary overthrows. But, curious of your thoughts.
My view is that our policy is incoherent.
Under Bush we prepared for war against Iran, along with our allies. Hence we built a ring of bases and basing agreements around Iran on all sides. Afghanistan and Iraq, obviously, on the Persian Gulf side with the Saudis and all the emirates, and even on the north with Azerbaijan and the Kazakhs.
With this in mind, if you were preparing for war against Iran, it made sense to take down Assad as he was their only ally at the time. Russia wasn’t really in the picture, in fact when Bush was in office Russia was helping us.
Taking out Assad closed Iran’s window to the Mediterranean and left them isolated.
Someone had the bright idea that a good way to handle Al Qaeda was to re-direct them against our enemies. So they sent them against Khadafi, and then turned them loose on Assad. A Turkish general directed the war against Assad and Turkey was the safe rear zone for the “Syrian rebels” who self-identified as Al Qaeda (but are always referred to in the US press as “the rebels”).
We armed them, a lot of them were trained in Qatar by our guys. We stockpiled enormous quantities of weapons and vehicles in western Iraq, and when they broke out and grabbed it (our guys were withdrawn and the stuff was left undefended) the group now re-labeled as “ISIS” became the best armed army in the region after Turkey. By seizing western Iraq they formed a physical barrier between Iran and Syria. They also in one move achieved the partition of Iraq that a lot of people had called for but which was politically impossible.
It would have been a brilliant chess move had it not been for the whole head-chopping business. Another president might have told all involved, Al Qaeda, ISIS, the Turks, the Saudis, that we expected them to protect every hair on the heads of every Christian in the region if they expected to continue receiving our support, and that if they did not we would turn them into charcoal. But our president and State Department never did that, the Turks certainly weren’t interested in defending minorities. The Saudis seem to have been more sensitive to the bad publicity well before even our State Department and were back-pedaling early on.
You will notice that even now, Turkey is ISIS’s safe rear zone, its where they take their wounded. Turkey’s president’s son markets ISIS’s oil.
Now, where does it all become incoherent? What is the point of isolating Iran, taking out Assad and occupying western Iraq, if you are going to give them nukes? And make no mistake, our treaty with Iran does the precise opposite of what it is purported to do, it shelters, defends, and bankrolls Iran’s nuclear project. And of course we have opened the door for Russia to get into the mix which further renders our policy incoherent.
So thanks to us and the Turks, genocide is underway. Syrian Christians do not qualify as refugees in the US under State Department rules, only muslims who oppose Assad qualify... which would include people who support the “rebels”, the self-identified Al Qaeda militias. They qualify. Christian do not since they are being killed by non-government entities ie ISIS and Al Qaeda.
Of course you have geniuses who want to shoot down Russian planes which both Turkey and the “rebels” have already done.
Anyway, since ISIS has become such an embarrassment, we have been forced to pretend to fight them to solve the PR problem. But we are ever so careful not to actually defeat them.
Notice that Trump talks about killing ISIS and most of the other candidates were threatening to shoot down Russians. Incoherent.