What sort of self serving empire building/apologia rubbish is this? The rise of Sunni extremism is directly related to the role successive US regimes and their (intended and chaotic) interference in the ME. Divide and conquer tactics are empire favourites. The US along with the Saudi's and Qatar have pumped weapons fighters and ideology for decades into the region for political outcomes and have used essentially the same people in Libya, Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq – and that's just for starters.

The West could not lie straight in bed. They invaded Iraq for oil and now need to go back to secure it. Dr Paul Craig Roberts is the ex-assistant secretary to the US Treasury and he knows the truth. The USA and Israel have us a path of nuclear war with Russia and China.http://usawatchdog.com/threat-of-nuclear-war-back-paul-craig-roberts/

mdelmege and Arjay

After some anti-Western, anti-humanitarian articles on Iraq have featured on OLO the record needed to be set straight.

It is not the West, not oil, not banks (Arjay) and not the US that is the problem its the livestyle, traditions and hatreds of the Middle East.

We don't want such self-justifying hatreds to infect Australia.

So where do you stand on ISIS?

Unfortunately, the author of this article, like so much in the msm, has a grasp of history and the facts that could be summarised on the back of a postage stamp.

What is happening in syria and Iraq fits perfectly with the Yinon Plan of an Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates. The americans only attacked ISIS when the latter threatened the Kurdish area of Iraq. Iraqi Kurdistan is friendly with Israel and supplies Israel with part of its oil needs.

According to French sources, al Baghdadi, the ISIS leader, is in fact Simon Elliott, a Mossad operative with Jewish parentage. That may be one reason why ISIS has yet to attack a single Israeli target. According to Jordanian sources, ISIS forces were trained by the US at Jordanian bases. Their main source of finance appears to be Saudi Arabia, whose pernicious form of Islamic fundamentalism poisons the Muslim well around the world. Yet Saudi Arabia completely escapes US condemnation. That in turn owes much to the deal Kissinger negotiated in the early 1970s to (a) quadruple the price of oil; and (b) ensure that the petrodollar was the sole currency of oil trading.

We now have the beginnings of a breakdown in that cozy arrangement which has subsidised much US adventurism around the world. It is not a coincidence that the emergence of the BRICS development bank, and the enlargement of the SCO, and major developments in the Eurasian region have been accompanied by hysterical anti-Russian and anti-Chinese rhetoric. As for Mr Coates' characterisation of the Ukraine conflict, it is simply pathetic and needs a systematic rebuttal of its own.

James O'Neill

While your brain-mass wouldn't topple off a pinhead, let alone a postage stamp, you may have a point that al Baghdadi is, in fact, an Islamic businessman at heart.

An article of 23 June 2014 puts a whole corporate perspective on ISIS - upsetting previous assumptions that ISIS was mainly funded by such Sunni countries as Saudi Arabia.

The article indicates http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/06/23/231223/records-show-how-iraqi-extremists.html that:

ISIS sprang up from a largely self-funded, corporation-style prototype by the time al Baghdadi assumed command in 2010.

"Baghdadi inherited...a sophisticated bureaucracy that was almost obsessive about record-keeping. [where ISIS] middle-managers...list expenditures in neat Excel spreadsheets... Income from [ISIS] looting of Shiite Muslim-owned property was recorded as “spoils.”

[ISIS] even had begun siphoning a share of Iraq’s oil wealth, opening gas stations in the north, smuggling oil and extorting money from industry contractors".

So yes Baghdadi's ISIS may well be an Islamic money-making concern that just uses young men as pawns to be martyred.

The question of the US airstrikes is in response to Iraq government's request and as such does not mirror the invasion of Iraq under George W Bush Jr. The troubles do however stem from the invasion and the formation of the new government. With the formation of the government the Sunni were ignored and at times persecuted for their religious beliefs. The US acted in response to the actions of a terrorist act that in some ways is associated with the Sunni movement. It is to protect the citizens under attack from the ISIS and they and other states have provided humanitarian aid. This action does fit under the Responsibility to Protect and as such it can be conceived that the US and other states acted under a UN principles.