The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

The proverb most people are familiar with is, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” However, the proverb needs a time stamped expiration date, meaning that nearly always taking sides against one side, results in the other side turning against you. Witness the true story of U.S. Congressman Charlie Wilson who partnered with the CIA to launch Operation Cyclone, a program to organize and support the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Bottom line: It worked, for a time, but eventually the mujahideen metastasized into numerous versions of what we know today as radical Islamists (one of which is the Taliban and another ISIS) using the military hardware we supplied turned against us: expiration date. 

According to globalresearch.org, “Washington supported the Free Syria rebels who aligned themselves with the terrorist group called Al-Nusra to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad. Then the Syrian rebels, and other groups in Iraq, form another terrorist organization who call themselves the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The consequences of Washington’s policies of aiding the Syrian rebels, including ISIS, have served a purpose.” The question is, whose purpose? 

The Al-Nusra Front is otherwise known as, “The Support Front for the People of Al-Sham,”: al-Qaeda in Syria—a branch of al-Qaeda operating in Syria and Lebanon. Get it? Bashar al-Assad (General Secretary of Syria and Regional Secretary of the Ba’ath Party in Syria), an acknowledged enemy of the U.S. and ally of Shiite dominated Iran (an acknowledged U.S. enemy), is opposed by the Free Syria rebels. They align themselves with al-Qaeda in Syria (also our enemy), we support both and one part is spun off to become ISIS. In the meantime we arm and equip the “New Iraqi Army” (mostly Shiites) at a cost to U.S. taxpayers of some $25 billion. Then the Iraqi Army quickly cut and ran against the well equipped ISIS forces, who then acquired all of the costly military hardware we supplied to the Iraqi Army and used it against us. The question is thus, whose the enemy? Better yet, whose the ally? 

Mr Twain never spoke truer words than these: “There has never been a just war, never an honorable one—on the part of the instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change in so many as half a dozen instances. The loud little handful—as usual—will shout for the war. The pulpit will—warily and cautiously object—at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, ‘It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it.’ Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers—as earlier—but do not dare say so. And now the whole nation—pulpit and all—will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.”

There are many twists and turns that happened after the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Bremer fiascos but history will show that none of them mattered. All that matters is ISIS is here, and now and we can take credit for that. The question now becomes, are there any allies, or is everyone an enemy who we didn’t create?