ISIS may not be what you think it is

It's the American way: We had to drop bombs on ISIS to find out what's inside of it. No doubt ISIS, or ISIL, or the Islamic State...whatever we're calling it today...is an especially loathsome group, but where did America's Next Top Enemy even come from? Matt Stoller has some answers that may (or may not) surprise you:

Let's start by understanding what ISIS actually is. First, ISIS is a brutal fascistic movement of radical Sunni militants, well-armed and well-trained, and bent on the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate throughout the Middle East. Second, it may also be and almost certainly was an arm of a wealthy Gulf state allied with the United States. This contradiction probably doesn't surprise you, but if it does, that's only because it cuts against a standard narrative of good guys and bad guys peddled by various foreign policy interests. The reality is that ally and enemy in post-colonial lands is often a meaningless term —it's better to describe interests. A good if overly romanticized Hollywood illustration of this dynamic is the movie Charlie Wilson's War, about the secret collaboration between Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan Israel and the CIA to undermine the Soviets in Afghanistan.

This foreign policy apparatus is usually hidden in plain sight, known to most financial, political, military, and corporate elites but not told to the American public.ISIS, like Al Qaeda, is an armed and trained military group. Guns and training cost money, and this money came from somewhere. There are two Gulf states that finance Sunni militants — Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

And it's not Qatar:

Steve Clemons, one of the few members of Washington's foreign policy establishment who sometimes speaks clearly about what is actually going on with the American empire, believes Qatar [isn't linked to ISIS]. According to his sources, while the Qataris funded the radical group Al-Nusra in Syria, "ISIS has been a Saudi project." Clemons goes further, and discusses a very important American and Saudi figure, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then the head of Saudi Arabia's intelligence services and a former ambassador to the United States (as well as a Washington, DC socialite). Clemons writes, "ISIS, in fact, may have been a major part of Bandar's covert-ops strategy in Syria."

In other words, ISIS got its start in Syria as part of the Arab Spring uprising, and it was financed by Saudi Arabia to go up against Assad. The Gulf states were using Syria to fight a proxy war against Iran, and the precursor of ISIS was one of their proxies in that war. It's hard to imagine that today ISIS isn't at least tacitly tolerated by a host of countries in the region, though its goodwill from neighboring countries may be running out. Today, ISIS may be self-sustaining, though it's quite possible that money is still coming from conservative wealthy individuals in the Gulf states, money which originally comes from the West in the form of oil purchases.

Like Charlie Brown and Lucy's football, the United States keeps getting sucked into the "great game" of the Middle East, and we keep landing on our head with a thump. In the short run, we ought to get real about who the Saudis are and what they want -- and we can start by releasing the 28 pages about Saudi connection to the 9/11/01 attack on America. On the long run, growing out use of renewable energy will mean we won't be hostage to Saudi oil ever again, and that might be a more liberating thing than many Americans could even imagine.