Why do people state that the United States is funding ISIS?
Answer by Vishu Menon:
On the face of it, it’s a preposterous conspiracy theory. Why, indeed would the United States want to fund a terrorist gang that it’s fighting?
But wait a minute. The United States is not a monolith that works according to the planned directives of its President and his cabinet and advisers. You have CIA, a government within government which has always had an agenda of its own. Though the CIA might not be much known for its intelligence capabilities – for it did not know nor check why, while twenty men were training to fly transport jets without showing any keenness to practice landing (wherein lies the need for most practice), nor it knew that the ‘Arab Spring” which was touted so much as a new dawn in favor of Western style of democracy was going to end up worse in terms of dictatorship and instability. It did not anticipate any of the bombings that took place in the United States since 9/11, nor had watched the ideological transformation of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan who killed 13 and injured several of his fellow soldiers.
On the other hand, CIA had tirelessly worked on hoisting up bigots and dictators across the world and helping them to suppress democracy and kill its own citizens. Take a look at the vicious men who found favors with the United States at least till they were thought ripe to be overthrown. The list is by no means exhaustive.
The timeline of murders that followed the assassination of John F Kennedy soon after he refused to send bombers again after the first failed Bay of Pigs attack has intrigued many in the US itself. Jack Ruby conveniently succumbed to a mysterious illness after murdering Lee Oswald who is supposed to have shot JFK. The rumor that CIA, or someone in the CIA, stage-managed the assassination and the sequence of murders still persists. Electronic Surveillance of the best of friends of the United States – including Angela Merkel of Germany (did they think she would go the Nazi way? Until half way through the war, Hitler was a friend of the US, and the latter was just as anti-semitic) is a proof that CIA or some agencies including many of the presidents in the US government would do anything to sabotage the interest of peace.
How do those arguments fit in with your question? Whether CIA or whoever in the government or outside the government in the US, you could attribute several motives for such a step as funding the enemy. Never forget that Reagan supplied deadly weapons through Israel to Iran while also arming Saddam Hussein to the hilt and offering him know-how for chemical and biological weapons to fight Iran.
Islamic State and Saudi Arabia have a common ideology. In fact, the ideology and the primitive laws that Islamic State is promoting with fierce vigor – Wahabism – originated in Saudi Arabia which is practicing it with equal vigor. Both cut throats at the first chance and stone women for alleged adultery. Both amputate limbs. The only ideological difference between the two is on who should lead a Caliphate when it comes down to the brass-tacks. That’s something they could settle later as and when the cause is achieved.
Saudi Arabia does not bomb Islamic State. It bombs Al Assad’s army, which fights Islamic State. Assad was certainly no worse a dictator than King Abdullah was (who, incidentally was a little more moderate than the line of kings) or for that matter, King Salman is. Bashar Al Assad of Syria, now enemy for no reason, was more western-oriented (as was Hosni Mubarak, who had no quarrel with Israel) and ruled under a semblance of democracy; Gaddafi was a leader who had genuinely evolved from Little-green-book demagogy to making a welfare state in his own Country. While denying his involvement in the Lockerbie bombing, he still paid compensation so as to get into the good books of the Western nations. Yet the United States engineered and abetted their ouster and the brutal killing of Gaddafi.
The only grouse against Assad after those two men were brought down could be that Assad, a Shia (of the Alawi sect) hated by Saudi Sunnis still stuck to power. What did the Secular United States (where, at least until and if Ted Cruz becomes President) religion has no place in the administration have to do with this Sunni-Shia conflict except the urge to support the nefarious cause of Saudis? Why did Obama send so many weapons and continues to send weapons to Syrian Rebels -knowing fully well that much of it will land up in the hands of Al Qaeda which is fighting alongside the rebels, but is organizing terrorist activities in Europe and the UK? It doesn’t matter whether the weapons were sold to foreign belligerents or bought by the government and sent to the war-fronts at the cost of the taxpayer, what matters to the decision makers in the US, who are lobbied and paid by weapon manufacturers, is that they get the profit from the sale of the instruments of carnage.
George W Bush destroyed Iraq (after first disarming it and rendering it powerless); Obama, the ideologist, helps in destroying the enemies of Syrian government – the combined effect of which has been the rise of the Frankenstein called ISIL or Islamic State. How does the Islamic State funds its operation? Not by the meager tax they collect from the few citizens who remain – quite a few of them with severed limbs under the Shariah law to be able to earn a living. The King might not be doing it, but there are hundreds of princes and prince-lings who have money to fund the glorious coming of the Wahabi domination of the world. Who would dare market oil from Islamic State except the two close conduits available – Saudi Arabia and Turkey? Doesn’t the director of the CIA, Secretary of State or the President himself know this simple fact?
If the US does not want to place “boots on the ground”, that’s fine, but why do a majority of the conservatives in the US (funded by the weapon manufacturers) want to scrap the agreement with Iran which is one country that openly sent its troops to fight Islamic State? Don’t you find it curious that the same conservatives do not object to the police conducting background checks for issuing passports and driving licenses, but fiercely oppose background checks for sale of even military grade weapons to private citizens? Weapon business is the most profitable business in the US; citizens only buy small arms, but to sell missiles – including the popular shoulder-fired variety , airplanes and bigger armaments, the United States need a war somewhere overseas. They had created, or involved themselves in, at least 40 wars and blood skirmishes in distant Asia after the end of the Second World War.
The human suffering that the new war in the Middle East doesn’t concern those who decide the policy of war while a helpless President is a mere tool with his audacity of hope shattered by the animosity of the Senate and the Congress, and now worrying himself silly about how the US historians would interpret his legacy . If the war could be sustained without its fall-out reaching the American shores, that would only benefit the US.
The current mixed-up battle that goes on in Syria (with everyone bombing and fighting everyone else), it does not look like the war would end, and that’s a good sign. Lives – even of US citizens – is not important; nobody in the Republican party has challenged Iran to prove its allegation that they (the Republicans) requested Iran not to release US prisoners till the election was over. With such a mentality, it’s not entirely impossible that there is an element of indirect funding of the ISIL from the United States.
Funding the belligerents from both sides is a common practice with the US who manfuacture and export over 50% of all weapons and combat aricraft used anywhere in the world. In the Afghan war, knowing fully well that it was Pakistan’s ISI that was training Taliban that was fighting the US, Bush continued to pour arms into Pakistan; the arms went to the hands of Taliban – at least until the fierce battle was over and the Taliban turned against its beneficiaries and started killing Pakistanis.
The US supplies weapons to Pakistan, virtually free of cost, while also selling weapons to India in full knowledge that the long-lasting feud between the two countries over Kashmir has only worsened. In the meanwhile, Taliban, Al Qaeda and Islamic fighters roam the countrysides, looking for victims with American- supplied missiles and rockets, occasionally catching a western journalist or UN aid worker off-guard and cutting his throat.
No, Sir, that the idea that ISIL gets funded, albeit indirectly by the United States is not all that preposterous as it might appear at first sight. Some conspiracy theories do contain substance.
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