When ISIS came boiling out of the desert like Natohk’s Horde to storm Mosul, Iraq, in 2014, then-President Barack Obama notoriously referred to the ultra-radical death cult as “the JV team.” Miscalculation or obfustication, that statement reflected a profound misunderstanding of a whirlwind of destruction the West had not seen the likes of since the forces of the Mahdi cut off General Gordon’s head at Khartoum in 1885.
ISIS was not, of course, simply conjured up out of the desert. It had its origins in Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s al Qaeda in Iraq, the outfit that turned that nation into a charnel house in the mid-2000s and threatened to push the region into an all-out Sunni vs. Shia civil war. But what really gave ISIS legs was the collapse of Syria.
National Geographic will explore the collapse of the nation of Syria and the rise of ISIS in a documentary airing June 11. It’s going to be hard to watch. The title, Hell On Earth, is not mere hyperbole. It’s a glimpse of the depths that are plumbed when a society collapses totally and heavily armed factions underpinned by brutal ideologies pull out the knives and start carving.
Oscar-winning filmmakers Sebastian Junger and Nick Quested chronicle Syria’s descent into the unbridled chaos that allowed the rise of the Islamic State. Pulling from nearly 1,000 hours of visceral footage, they capture the Syrian war’s harrowing carnage, political and social consequences, and human toll, while painting an alarming picture of the west’s role in the creation of ISIS.
We have to look. We own a good part of this. The 2003 invasion of Iraq, far from bringing a flowering of democracy and liberalism and a benevolent American hegemony, destabilized the region and created a breeding ground for extremists who make al Qaeda 1.0 look tame in comparison. It empowered Iran and now Russia. And, worst of all, it created the conditions in which hundreds of thousands of civilians, especially children, have had their lives blighted in ways we can scarcely imagine.
We helped create hell on earth, and we’ve done precious little to alleviate it — not that there’s any straightforward path to doing that now. The least we can do is bear witness…
Black Tyrone says
Once more we hear the word
That sickened earth of old:-
“No law except the Sword
Unsheathed and uncontrolled.”
Once more it knits mankind,
Once more the nations go
To meet and break and bind
A crazed and driven foe.
R K “For All We Have And Are
2nd verse