Global Research, November 20, 2014

A torrent of “foiled” terror plots have recently undulated headlines across the Western World. In Rochester New York, the FBI netted a man they claimed was plotting a shooting spree targeting US service members. In Australia, over 800 security agents swooped in on 15 ISIS suspects whom the Australian government claimed were plotting to randomly behead a member of the public. In the UK, 4 suspects allegedly linked to ISIS were arrested before carrying out a plot Scotland Yards claims was aimed at the Queen of England herself.

According to Western security agencies, in addition to ISIS’ regional campaign of brutality stretching from Lebanon, across Syria, and into Iraq, it is also working ceaselessly to carry out attacks against targets within the US, across Europe, and even in the Pacific.

US Policymakers Claim ISIS is Neither a Threat Nor Necessary to Defeat

Considering the hysteria generated by ISIS’ alleged global exploits, it should then be infinitely curious to readers who happen across US policymakers claiming that ISIS may pose a threat, but constitutes by far a lesser threat than Iran or Syria – the two principle nations leading the real fight against ISIS and its international sponsors. Furthermore, US policymakers claim there is no urgency to defeat ISIS, and it should instead be “contained.” Of course, this “containment” will be within states targeted by US-backed regime change – serving as a convenient agent of destruction, destabilization, and perhaps even regime change itself.

Image: A growing chorus among US policymakers and the Western media are claiming that ISIS poses a minimal threat even amid simaltaneous efforts to ratchet up public hysteria. The West also claims it is no longer necessary to “defeat” ISIS and it should instead be “contained” – instead nations targeted for regime change by the US, allowed to continue fighting America’s enemies by proxy … or in other words, ISIS should continue serving as the West’s private mercenary army.

More troubling still, such policymakers hail from the US-based Brookings Institution, a prominent corporate-financier funded policy think-tank that has helped direct American foreign policy for decades. Brookings “Federal Executive Fellow” Robert Hein, a career US Navy officer, has presented analysis under an article titled, “The Big Questions on ISIS.” After diminishing the threat ISIS actually poses to the US and suggesting that the battle against the terrorist organization will be perpetual – without qualification he claims:

There are other hard questions for even bigger threats in the Middle East, such as how to ensure a nuclear free Iran and how to deal with the Assad regime in Syria. For ISIS, though, we may have it right.

It would have been interesting if Hein did qualify that final statement – explaining how an extraterritorial terrorist army armed and funded by some of the largest, most influential nation-states on Earth, currently ravaging three nations while allegedly plotting against the rest of the planet is somehow a lesser threat than Iran and Syria – both of which have not threatened the United States, and in fact, according to the Brookings Institution itself, have expressed a specific desire to avoid a confrontation with the West.

ISIS is a Lesser Threat – But a Lesser Threat to Whom?

As bizarre as Hein’s analysis may seem, it strikes at a troubling but undeniable truth. If by “US” Hein meant the American people, America’s service members, and victims of various staged attacks aimed at justifying foreign wars, then ISIS is a threat. For the many millions living in the Middle East or North Africa, ISIS is undoubtedly a threat. For corporate-financiers on Wall Street, the many corrupt politicians in Wall Street’s pocket in Washington, or corporate-financier funded policymakers like Hein himself, ISIS is not only not a threat, but an indispensable asset.

As such, prioritizing ISIS’ destruction is not part of Wall Street or Washington’s agenda – rather – perpetuating this threat for as long as possible is. Hein is unabashed about this notion, claiming:

Should we defeat ISIS? Rather than defeat, containing their activities within failed or near-failing states is the best option for the foreseeable future. The United States has no desire to build nations, and without a stable Middle East, terror groups will continue to find safe haven; if not in western Iraq or Afghanistan, then in Yemen or Somalia. The Middle East and Africa have no shortage of ungoverned or poorly governed territories. The current strategy of prolonged engagement, development and training of local militias, logistic support and air strikes against real targets may be the best solution after all.

Hein’s strategy also works exceedingly well if ISIS was intentionally created as a proxy mercenary force, deployed by the West against its enemies. Such a notion, while dismissed out of hand by many as a “conspiracy theory” is not only plausible, but in fact a documented fact. The use of terrorists and sectarian extremists is a reoccurring feature in Western foreign policy – including its most notorious use in the mountains of Afghanistan in the 1980′s where the US created Al Qaeda to begin with. As recently as 2007, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh documented a conspiracy to once again use sectarian extremists aligned with Al Qaeda to target, undermine, and overthrow the government of Syria and wage a proxy war against Iran.

His report titled, “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?“ stated (emphasis added):

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

It would be difficult to read Hersh’s 2007 report and attempt to deny that is not precisely what has unfolded, verbatim, beginning under the cover of the US-engineered “Arab Spring” up to and including the creation of “ISIS” and its growing fighting capabilities possible only through an immense, coordinated multinational effort.

The creation of ISIS and what appears to be concerted attempts to justify the slow burn prescribed to “stop it” are echoed in Hein’s proposal of “not stopping ISIS to stop it.”

Why Syria and Iran are Bigger “Threats”

Ironically, it was an extensive policy paper produced by the very think tank Hein belongs to – Brookings Institution – that noted Iran (and therefore Syria) not only did not want war with the West, but was willing to weather endless covert provocations to avoid giving the West an excuse to wage hegemonic war against the nations. Within the pages of Brookings’ “Which Path to Persia?” report published in 2009, it was stated:

With only one real exception, since the 1978 revolution, the Islamic Republic has never willingly provoked an American military response, although it certainly has taken actions that could have done so if Washington had been looking for a fight.

Thus it is not impossible that Tehran might take some action that would justify an American invasion and it is certainly the case that if Washington sought such a provocation, it could take actions that might make it more likely that Tehran would do so (although being too obvious about this could nullify the provocation). However, since it would be up to Iran to make the provocative move, which Iran has been wary of doing most times in the past, the United States would never know for sure when it would get the requisite Iranian provocation. In fact, it might never come at all.

The report would also state:

…it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it. (One method that would have some possibility of success would be to ratchet up covert regime change efforts in the hope that Tehran would retaliate overtly, or even semi-overtly, which could then be portrayed as an unprovoked act of Iranian aggression.)

The entire report is a documented conspiracy to justify and provoke war with a nation actively seeking to avoid war even at the cost of suffering innumerable humiliations, covert attacks, assassinations, decades-spanning sanctions, and other forms of terroristic provocations. When Hein and other US policymakers refer to Iran and Syria as a “greater threat” than ISIS, they do not mean a threat to the national security of the American people or the territory of the United States itself – but rather a threat to their own hegemonic interests well beyond America’s borders and even interests that lie within the borders of Iran and Syria themselves.

Deciphering the deceptive, criminal language used by US policymakers illuminates the ongoing conspiracy in which ISIS plays a central part. ISIS is considered not a threat – not because the US can manage what they claim is an inherently “anti-Western” terrorist organization – but rather because the US itself created and controls it. Syria and Iran, while not actual threats to the West, are considered instead “threats” to US interests – more specifically – the interests of the corporate-financier elite on Wall Street and their lobbyists in Washington D.C.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

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