Rand Paul Is Right: Republican Neocons Created ISIS by Bruce Fein

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was created and is fueled by Mr. Paul's lobotomized neocon rivals.

In other words, to paraphrase Walt Kelly's Pogo about the Vietnam War, Mr. Paul's foreign policy detractors have met the enemy, and they are them!

With the predictability of the sun rising in the East and setting in the West, power vacuums in primitive political cultures give birth to extremists--religious or otherwise. There are no exceptions. Ruthlessness and fanaticism flourish in a Hobbesian state of nature.

Israel gave birth to Hamas by crippling the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Yasser Arafat's dominant Fatah faction.

Hezbollah emerged from a power vacuum in Lebanon.

Al Qaeda and Taliban were created by a power vacuum in Afghanistan following the ouster of Soviet troops in 1989.

Iran's radical Shiite regime is the offspring of the power vacuum created by the 1979 overthrow of the Shah.

Despite the obvious, Senator Paul's deluded Republican opponents bugled for the overthrow of Iraq's secular President Saddam Hussein in 2003 heedless of the power vacuum that would ensue. Saddam was a fierce antagonist of Iran's ruling mullahs, against whom he had warred (with United States support) for eight years, 1980-1988. No-fly zones and sanctions had crippled Saddam's capacity to threaten the United States. But the neocons insisted on an invasion and the obliteration of Saddam and the ruling Baath Party to save the world from imaginary weapons of mass destruction and to erect a model democracy for the region. After Saddam's ouster and death, Iraq predictably became convulsed by internecine warfare and strife between Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds featuring an unstable and extremist sectarian central government allied with Iran. A splinter group of Al Qaeda (which itself was armed and trained by the United States to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan), ISIS was born by a United States generated power vacuum in Iraq. ISIS also took root and grew from a complementary power vacuum in Syria, which neocons fortified by urging the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and training Sunni rebels.

Undeterred by their predictable multi-trillion dollar debacle in Iraq, Senator Paul's neocon detractors idiotically championed war against Libya's secular Muammar Gaddafi after he had abandoned WMD and support for international terrorism. The neocons supported Islamic radicals in the overthrow and murder Gaddafi, which was followed by the plunder of his vast conventional arsenal by Islamic radicals. A power vacuum predictably followed, which ISIS exploited to gain a menacing toehold in Libya.

Neocons then placed their staggering stupidity on steroids. They recklessly armed cowardly and inept opponents of ISIS knowing that the weapons would be captured or sold to the enemy--a second edition of the arms we supplied South Vietnam which quickly found their way to the Viet Cong or North Vietnamese. Emblematic is a June 5, 2015 report in Business Insider corroborating that U.S. Humvees captured by ISIS from the Iraqi army have been used in waves of suicide bombings across both Syria and Iraq.

Neocons also created a fetching calling card for ISIS recruitment. They vastly inflated its military capabilities and danger to the United States and the region. That image of omnipotence predictably excited impressionable youths to join because of the neocon engendered perception that ISIS was the New York Yankees of international terrorism. ISIS ranks swell each time a Republican neocon hyperventilates.

South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is characteristic. On Fox, he bettered the instruction of Chicken Little in operatically insisting that ISIS was on the verge of world conquest:

"[T]hey're intending to come here. So, I will not let this president suggest to the American people we can outsource our security and this is not about our safety. There is no way in hell you can form an army on the ground to go into Syria, to destroy ISIL without a substantial American component. And to destroy ISIL, you have to kill or capture their leaders, take the territory they hold back, cut off their financing and destroy their capability to regenerate.

"This is a war we're fighting, it is not a counterterrorism operation! This is not Somalia; this is not Yemen; this is a turning point in the war on terror. Our strategy will fail yet again. This president needs to rise to the occasion before we all get killed back here at home."

"[I]f they survive our best shot, this is the last best chance, to knock him out, then they will open the gates of hell to spill out on the world. This is not a Sunni versus Sunni problem, this is ISIL versus mankind."

Notwithstanding Lindsey Graham and fellow neocons, I would wager not a single American has lost a wink of sleep worrying about ISIS attacking the United States.

Of them all, only Rand Paul has earned the accolade of Rudyard Kipling's poem If...

"If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you...you'll be a Man my son."

Rand Paul Is Right: Republican Neocons Created ISIS
by Bruce Fein, huffingtonpost.com

The Neocon factor

THE US involvement with the disastrous Iraqi war ended four months ago; it cost it in excess of 4,500 dead, 30,000 wounded, and more than a trillion dollars.

The invasion launched in March 2003 was a conflict of choice, since no compelling rationale existed to justify it. Yet, at the time it was vigorously promoted with a well-orchestrated campaign, conducted through mass media, and argued by a coalition of zealous politicians known as neoconservatives.

Supporters of the invasion were generally sympathisers of Israel, and believed that Saddam Hussein was a peril to the Jewish state and inimical to the US interests. As it turned out, the Iraqi ruler was far more concerned about a threat from Iran, and his bedraggled army presented no real danger to Israel, let alone the US, his frequent empty blusters against the Jewish state notwithstanding.

In the months preceding the invasion, the perception was generated that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, including chemical, biological and possibly nuclear weapons, which he was ready to transfer to Al Qaeda terrorists. It is now clear that most if not all the damning information was drawn from faulty or unreliable intelligence reports that ultimately proved fallacious. The realisation of the pointlessness of the Iraqi war drove the popularity of President Bush to one of the lowest levels for any president.

Nearly a decade has passed since the US and Britain invaded Iraq, the involvement lasting nearly nine years. The repercussions of the invasion, nevertheless, continue to torment the Iraqi population, while thousands of returning American war veterans suffer from devastating physical and mental disabilities. Although withdrawn from Iraq, US forces continue to battle the Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan as they have been doing for 11 years.

Initially, the war had some worthy objective: to rid the country of the brutal, misogynistic Taliban rule. America, however, was unprepared for the enormous task of reconstruction and radical transformation of Afghan society, which had stubbornly resisted such changes for millenniums. The war is no longer popular. Recent opinion polls have shown that a clear majority (69 per cent) of American public is tired of the conflict, and would like the troops brought home.

While the situation in Afghanistan remains volatile, there are signs of an incipient conflict with Iran on the issue of nuclear arms development. Much of the rhetoric urging a military strike against Iran is driven by the same coalition of forces that pushed this country to invade Iraq nearly a decade ago — Israel’s supporters, evangelical Christians and conservative politicians. They believe that a nuclear Iran would constitute an existential threat to Israel.

Iran is already reeling under punitive economic sanctions mandated by the UN, but many from both Democratic and Republican parties would like to see military action against Iran’s nuclear installations. The Iranian leader, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, does not help his cause or earn world sympathy as, while stridently denying any intention of making nuclear weapons, he makes inflammatory statements against Israel, threatening to wipe the country out of existence.

Such bluster is ill-advised, but more importantly is devoid of any real credibility, since Israel has a powerful arsenal of nuclear weapons and an efficient delivery system, capable of reaching Iranian metropolises.

It is unlikely that in this election year, with all the economic and financial problems facing the country, the Obama administration will initiate a new conflict with Iran by targeting its uranium enrichment facilities. President Obama has made that much clear, repudiating “the loose talk of war.” Even the Israeli rhetoric has largely cooled, although only two months ago a unilateral Israeli strike looked very likely.

The US has apparently succeeded, at least temporarily, in restraining the hawkish Israeli Prime Minister, Netanyahu, from attacking Iranian uranium-enrichment facilities, since it would drag the US into the conflict, with unforeseeable consequences. Various opinion polls suggest that the Israeli public also has no appetite for initiating the war with Iran, inviting retaliatory attacks.

The powerful influence that the Israeli government can exert on the US foreign policy was evident last month, when its highly influential lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), held its annual convention in Washington D.C. The highest officials of the US government, senators, congressmen, along with the president and his Republican rivals, made their appearance and reaffirmed their commitment to Israel in its confrontation with Iran. The support of the US politicians does not flow gratuitously or entirely for altruistic considerations.

Pro-Israel donors have contributed over $47m since 2000 to various candidates of both parties seeking elections to the US Congress. While the debate about how aggressive the US policy should be towards Iran is driven mainly by the most hawkish Israeli supporters, it is no secret that Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, fearful of a nuclear Iran, will shed no tears if Iran’s nuclear capabilities are crippled.

Paradoxically, opposition to any military action against Iran also comes from an unlikely source, some liberal Jewish groups in America. In recent years, a coalition of progressive Jews, known as J Street, that supports the two-state solution, one Jewish and the other Palestinians, has gained much strength and visibility.

They present an alternative to the more hawkish groups such as AIPAC, and advocate a diplomatic resolution, as opposed to use of military force, of the Iranian nuclear problem. J Street has established itself as a moderate lobbying group, with a broad, holistic vision of Middle East disputes, dispelling the notion that the American-Jewish community is monolithic and blindly supports all Israeli policies.

By Syed Amir | The writer is a freelance contributor; http://dawn.com/2012/04/29/the-neocon-factor/

Delusional Milestone

Delusional Milestone. Romans 10:1-3 Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ... keep reading 

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