Editor,
Senator John McCain recently criticized the US war effort against ISIS.
In a letter to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, McCain said, “My conversations with military commanders both on the ground and in the Pentagon have led me to the disturbing, yet unavoidable conclusion that they have been reduced from considering what it will take to win to what they will be allowed to do by this administration.”
While one might be tempted to empathize with McCain’s commentary, a recent Defense Intelligence Agency leak proves unequivocally that the US played a role in the creation of ISIS and it’s so-called caliphate. McCain is either feigning ignorance at best, or he wants full scale war in order to wash our collective hands of the ISIS Frankenstein.
That 2015 declassified Pentagon paper says, ”...there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).”
So, there you have it folks; we were best buds with ISIS from the get go in order to try and knock off the Shia led government in Syria. If your head is starting to spin at this point, then consider that this is not an odd practice historically speaking. When Russia invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the US government supplied weapons, trying to arm the Muslim fighters who would later on become the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Jihadists were used by the US then and now in order to knock off geopolitical rivals and generally secular governments in the Middle East that dared to put the needs of their people first. Senator McCain is so off the mark with his comments that one does not know whether to laugh or cry.
Sincerely,
Muhajir Romero
UNM student
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