I just finished skimming Gerges' History of Isis, recommended by CNN's Fareed Zakaria
On his show, which I always tape and watch, Fareed declared this book the authoritative source on Isis. It was on the shelf in my town library.
Ok, no way could I wade through the long narrative of the life stories of all the players, their training, attacks, imprisonments, regroupings....it's endless. I don't know how Gerges ever got through it all himself, but his notes start on page 298 and end on 351.
ANYWAY, the quick takeaway is more or less what we've been hearing:
1. Isis required the breakdown of the Iraqi government, courtesy of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Bolton and all the other well-known neocons. Just lay the blame there and you're on the money. Pottery Barn theory was right: We broke it, we didn't fix it, enter Isis, stage right.
2. It also required the Syrian civil war. All this instability was required for Isis to gain followers to the apocalyptic goal of killing off all global non-muslims and establishing a caliphate a la the year 700AD. Quite appetising, to be sure. Looking forward to it.
3. It also required lots of unemployment, hunger and social abandonment all over the middle east. Yup. Knew that.
4. Blame has to be laid on the eternal death battles between the Sunni and Shia muslim sects, and on their backers: i.e.: Us, Russia and Iran. Nice. Here, the U.S. and we, the semi-informed civilians, fail to appreciate how much sectarian hatred dominates the lives of many middle easterners. They're not done killing, yet. Not even close. We just don't understand killing for god like they do.
5. They also gain steam from the un-resolved isreali-palestine issues.
Of course, many middle eastern civilians detest all this violence and pre-historic yearnings. But they're at the mercy of whoever seems to keep the lights on, today. It's hard to argue with machine guns, grenades, and hand-made bombs. Your kids need food and water and shelter.
6. We're a big part of this, but of course, we don't want to spread that around too much.
Bottom line is Isis won't stop the terrorist incursions on the western world until we reverse the poverty and hopelessness of the 3rd world. Again, no big surprise. Moving muslims around the planet will help a little, but there will always be enough marginalized backers left behind to make our lives miserable.
So, Obama was right not to get us into their ground war: They want us as targets. This feeds their cultish death paradigm. They love shooting at infidels. So, we can all stop berrating Obama for "not fixing syria way back when....." there was no opportunity to fix this mess. There are no threats or punishments that will contain this killing. It's killing because allah wants killing. Death 'cause death is holy. "Killing R Us." Obama has no impact on this. Hillary won't either. No one will. Time, alone, will get the world beyond this, if it ever happens. We might collectively kill the planet before they're done killing each other.
The U.S. bombing raids and missiles and drone attacks have recaptured about 40% of the land Isis has taken. But they'll just go elsewhere until the poverty and hopelessness is reversed and legitimate governments are effectively established. At that point, Isis will lack the air, water, and fuel to gain adherants and they'll drift into obscurity. Regular people would rather work a job, get married, and spend their free time with friends and family, if that's at all possible, than attend jihad training camps and blow themselves up.
Right about now, a blood-thirsty non-sectarian tyrant running Iraq and establishing order sounds pretty good. Anyone know a guy who can do that?
Oh, yeah. He's gone.
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I have been pouring over it for an hour now, it's truly fascinating.
Sending it on, too.
Thanks!!!! 
