Also, one shouldn't equivocate between Saudi's (citizens of Saudi Arabia) and the House of Saud. The US has allied itself with the House of Saud, the royal family which rules over Saudi Arabia (SA). There is a very tenuous alliance between the House of Saud and the clerical factions in SA. The more hard-line clerics, who influenced people like Osama bin Laden, oppose any monarchy in the Holy Land, and would only accept a Caliphate for SA, especially considering that Mecca and Medina are located there.
What I have to ask is, "Where is ISIL getting their weapons from? And who is supplying them with food, fuel, and transport?" Rebellions do not finance themselves. Someone is behind this. My guess would be Saudi Arabia since they are Sunni and the rebels are Sunni, and the Iraqi government is sympathetic to Iran. But what that would mean is that Saudi Arabia is working against US policy in the Mid-East.
On the other hand, I guess that's to be expected. US policy everywhere in the world is so incoherent that one shouldn't expect that our allies are necessarily going to defer to all of our schemes all of the time.
From the reports ISIS gets a lot of funding from conservative Saudis. It is the Iran-Saudi proxy war in Syria. The Saudis have been arming Syrians. It is rarely emphasized in the media and never by our govt, the Saudis have long funded extremists. 9/11 traced back to the Saudis. including anti-west religious schools in the USA.
Anyone who gains influence in the US foreign policy establishment never gets called out by the media. It doesn't matter whether your from the military industrial complex, the Wall Street establishment, or a foreign power. US policy is always treated as if it is purely a matter of a bunch of all-seeing Harvard savants patriotically promoting America's grand strategic interests with no base motives at all.
I agree that the US media is disgracefully inadequate vis-à-vis its role as the 'fourth estate.' They essentially parrot whatever talking point the current administration puts out. However, there are very intelligent people who understand the situation in the Middle East very well that work for our foreign policy agencies. The problem is that US leaders fail to heed their advice. The neocons of the Bush 2's admin were particularly bad at ignoring the opinions of these people. I'm still on the fence with the Obama admin, but I'm leaning towards incompetence.
The fundamental problem is that we do not understand our enemy. Robert McNamara, before he died, said the following:
If we are to deal effectively with terrorists across the globe, we must develop a sense of empathy—I don't mean "sympathy," but rather "understanding"—to counter their attacks on us and the Western World.
This was a lesson he should have learned from
Llewellyn Thompson during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Unfortunately he did not learn it until after the Vietnam War. Even more dishearteningly, it seems this lesson hasn't sunk in for the current generation of rulers.
