The Inadvertent Architects:How U.S. Politics Built The Islamic State

In April 2003, U.S. coalition forces captured the city of Fallujah in central Iraq.
Fallujah marked a crucial gain for the coalition, as its central position and placid residents
provided a fulcrum for the panoptical invasion into Saddam Hussein’s urban strongholds.
Unfortunately, Fallujah and the wider Anbar province to which it belonged would quickly
devolve into a crucible of sectarian violence. So when the new year dawned in 2014, Fallujah
and its strategic advantages had been captured once more, this time by the Islamic State of Iraq
and Syria. Considering the vast measure of military resources in the area, how was control so
quickly wrested from the coalition? Can undulating domestic political pressures explain such
wild swings in operational results? The externalities generated by complex geopolitical
statecraft dictate that there are no simple answers to such questions. Nonetheless, sufficient
evidence exists to make at least one decisive inference concerning the Iraq War: Western

foreign policy decisions have accelerated the destabilization of the Middle East by
inadvertently facilitating the rise of ISIS.
The desire to liberate Iraq from the autocratic Saddam was paramount in the early
decisions that culminated in the emergence of ISIS. The Iraqi Liberation Act of 1998, signed
into law by President Bill Clinton, clearly states “...that it should be the policy of the United
States to seek to remove the Saddam Hussein regime...and to replace it with a democratic
government.”(“H.R. 4655”). The calls to expel Hussein reached their apex after the terror
attacks of September 11, 2001 when intelligence suggested that the Iraqi government was
actively involved with Al-Qaeda - the radical Islamic group responsible for the attacks.
Ancillary intelligence also indicated that Saddam may have been purchasing and developing
components for use in military-grade “weapons of mass destruction” (“Iraq’s Weapons”). In
response to these allegations, the Bush administration spearheaded a full-scale invasion of Iraq
in 2003, resulting in the fall of Saddam and his Baathist government. Unfortunately, these
seemingly positive developments were attenuated by the unexpected convergence of hostile
entities into the region who attempted to fill the vacuum created by the sudden expulsion of
Hussein. Chief among these insurgents were operational cells from Al-Qaeda itself, later to be
rechristened Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQ-I).
Consequently, the attempt to prevent the AQ-I insurgency from gaining control of the
Iraqi power structure forced the western coalition to evolve their initial strategy of invasion
into a complete occupation. Domestic political divisions were exacerbated among western
leaders because of these new strategic developments, and the resolve of the coalition was
weakened considerably. Member-nations began to carefully withdraw operational personnel
from Iraq as early as 2006, forcing the U.S. to assume a majority of both the administrative and

engagement responsibilities for the remainder of the war. Intelligence gathered from captured
insurgents further compounded tensions among the allies when it was revealed that there was
never an alliance between Saddam’s government and Al-Qaeda (“Postwar Findings” 108).
In an attempt to mitigate the negative political effects of these revelations, U.S.
leadership began to transfer operational directives to the newly established pro-western
government of Iraq. The young Iraqi military proved largely incapable of the task however,
and AQ-I swiftly regrouped and expanded as a result of decreased western military presence in
the region. George W. Bush carried these adverse developments into the apogee of his
presidency, and both his diplomatic influence and the influence of the U.S. military in the
Middle East were softened as a result. In what would prove to be a final act however, the Bush
administration engineered the “troop surge” of 2007, which was largely successful in expelling
AQ-I from many critical urban areas. According to former Army Intelligence Officer Jessica
D. Lewis:
[AQ-I] reached its apex of territorial control and destructive
capability in late 2006 and early 2007, before the Surge and the
Awakening removed the organization from its safe havens in and
around Baghdad...degrading the organization over the course of
2007-2008 such that only a fraction of its capabilities
remained…(Lewis 7)
It is evident that a capricious western foreign policy had began to stabilize by 2007, but that
equanimity would not endure. Lewis further explains, “As of August 2013, [AQ-I] has
regrouped, regained capabilities, and expanded into areas from which it was expelled during
the Surge” (7). Throughout the period between 2008 and 2013, the convulsive nature of U.S.

foreign policy in the Middle East would again render a path for AQ-I’s advancement. The
results were consistent, but the names had changed.
Cratering support for the Iraq War was an almost singular factor in the ascension of
Barack Obama to the U.S. Presidency in 2008. Positioning himself as the “anti-Bush”, Obama
introduced a new strategy for Iraq as Commander-in-Chief. The Bush administration’s intrepid
venture to bring democracy to the Middle East was replaced by a more passive counterreactionary foreign policy. The Obama administration quickly began to curtail U.S. military
operations in the region, preferring to cede engagement responsibilities to the fledgling Iraq
government. Predictably, the Iraqis were again incapable of interrupting AQ-I advancement,
and the insurgency began yet another phase of rapid growth. Simultaneously, Al-Qaeda in Iraq
expanded their roster to include thousands more Sunni fighters by supplying vital military
assistance to rebel factions during the eruption of the Syrian Civil War. These developments
were crucial to the evolution of AQ-I. After gaining control of important strategic areas in Iraq
and Syria, antipathy between AQ-I and traditional Al-Qaeda leadership resulted in the
metamorphosis of AQ-I into ISIS - The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Bunzel 17).
In a strange reversal of fate, the Obama administration was compelled by domestic
political pressures to surge back into Iraq to prevent the fall of the Iraqi government to the
newly-emboldened ISIS. President Obama was also forced to publicly abandon planned
military support for rebel factions in the Syrian Civil War when it was discovered that many
rebels were defecting to ISIS (Catalucci). The Obama administration then changed course and
offered military support to the Syrian regime, initiating a precision air offensive against the
rebels. Obama and U.S. military commanders were forced into a lengthy state of deliberation
after finding themselves in such an impossible political situation, and ultimately responded by

ordering another large withdrawal of forces in the region. Top Al-Qaeda commander Dr.
Ayman al-Zawahir curtly defined the U.S. predicament - “The Americans are between two
fires. If they remain [in Iraq] they will bleed to death, and if they withdraw they will have lost
everything.” (qtd. in Byman and Pollack 55).
Inevitably, these military reductions precipitated an expansion of ISIS operations into
Africa. After the Obama State Department engineered the overthrow of the militant dictator
Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, ISIS satellites rushed in to the fill the vacancy in much the same
manner as when Hussein was felled in Iraq by the Bush coalition. Journalist Catherine
Herridge recently reported on, “One of the alleged ISIS leaders in [Libya] is Abdelhakim
Belhadj, an al-Qaeda-linked [Libyan] who was considered...a willing partner in the overthrow
of Muammar Gaddafi…”(Mora). Adding to these vexatious circumstances was the reticence of
western nations to involve themselves in central African affairs. This protraction has allowed
numerous terror groups (such as Boko Haram) to proliferate and pledge their loyalties to the
Islamic State (“ISIS Expands”). As a result, the deathly scope of ISIS has expanded beyond
Iraq and into the Eastern Mediterranean region, a mere two-hundred miles from Europe.
Ultimately, history is the only laboratory in which we may accurately calculate the
“rights” and “wrongs” of Middle Eastern foreign policy, and even then the results will surely
be rife with contention. Despite these eventualities, we must never undervalue the irrepressible
evidence that the United States and her allies, however inadvertently, aided the Islamic State in
its rise to prominence. We may never know if the alternatives were preferable, but we can be
sure that the erratic push and pull of internal politics helped clear the way for this barbarous
new enemy. Though recent gains against ISIS in both Iraq and Syria are encouraging, the
pragmatism of history should temper any confidence. Once again, Fallujah belongs to pro-
western forces, but according to Byman and Pollak, “...it is far too soon to count [ISIS] out.
History is littered with the corpses of countries who believed that they had eliminated an
insurgency, only to have it come roaring back when they prematurely shifted their focus” (57).
Viewed through that prism, Fallujah hardly seems to belong to anyone.