Jesus christ. Read what I'm writing. There was a point when ISIS got much more powerful (you might recognize this point because that's when they actually started calling themselves ISIS). Everyone who's treating this honestly knows about what I'm talking about. Your pretense that you don't is just childish at this point.
No there wasn't such a point. There were trends, battles, politics, there is no numerical evidence for your pet theory of "USA sent muh weapons and suddenly ISIS became powerful", it's just a cool story for naive people with an axe to grind.
It is your political kaleidoscope play that is childish, sure, if you want to see it hard enough you will see it, but i don't give a shit, i don't have passionate political views that require me to see it, so of course i'm failing to do that.
It's not the only one to blame, but yeah, they get some of the blame. You are just as bad as the ones who assign US all of the blame if you think there's no blame.
The blame assigning game holds less importance to me than yesterday's dinner. This leftist pseudomoralizing shit is something i despise, i vehemently refuse to honor it.
Yet for some reason, you go to the meme level of stating that USA is to blame for it, rather than spreading the blame among something like a dozen countries while making statements about it.
Nusra Front wasn't ISIS then. ISIS wasn't ISIS then. They were ISI. From your source:
"Due to these successes, Baghdadi changed the name of his group from ISI to ISIS in April 2013."
What the fuck does the name have to do with power. It's like saying Facebook suddenly became a totally independent thing different from Facebook when Zuckerberg changed its name to Meta and so all the history of Facebook no longer applies to it, holy fuck, this is some clown world shit you are trying to get me to believe.
The point was that the guy in charge of Islamic State under whatever name at the time sent his loyal henchmen to gain influence in Syrian jihadi factions, which they did, which is what paved the way for their future successes, having people on the inside made it easy for ISIS to absorb, or failing that, defeat the infiltrated rebel groups and snowball at their expense.
Also 2013 is notably *before* US lethal aid to rebels, so there goes your pet theory again.
That you think that good management was possible shows yet more problems with what you are doing.
That you think this is not correct shows that you are thinking about this in the framework of American peacenik "war theory" dogma that i'm blaspheming against rather than the reality the rest of us live in.
Of course the US was going to mismanage Iraq, there was no plan at the get go other than "WAH, he tried to kill my dad" and "We'll pretend there's nukes, call them WMDs, then when we find anything look like chemical weapons, claim success."
Yeah, they should have killed a lot more of Saddam's security apparatus and probably be a lot more conservative with trying to push democracy on the place.
There was a plan, the problem is that it was a very naive plan, and there was no plan B, C and D. Then again, the worst of ISIS saga
happened under Obama, so can't even blame Bush for the further mismanagement after his presidency.
Also historical irony in how well do these mistakes rhyme with Afghanistan withdrawal.
There was no plan for how to leave, or whether to leave. It was a dumb plan, that lead to Iran getting more powerful.
Screw leaving or plans to do so, that's an idiotic leftist pet peeve, there was no plan to get the place into a state worth leaving, it should not be left in that state, no need for bureaucratic "leave by X date no matter what" retardation, the problem was in a completely different direction.
Iran certainly is playing there a lot, but being more powerful, i would not go so far, considering how much of a war chest they are having to provide to have the influence they do in Iraq.
This isn't some isolated situation, Iran has its imperial ambitions, and redirects attention and resources wherever it sees an opportunity, so one could as well argue that it forced Iran to divert resources from Houthis and Hezbollah, who would be stronger otherwise.