When Obama Apologizes for the CIA’s Underestimation of IS

Just like a husband who has been betrayed, President Barack Obama has finally announced that the CIA underestimated the threat posed by the Islamic State in Syria. Obama’s speech came the day after the launching of the international coalition strikes on Islamic State sites in Syria a few days ago, to justify the war to the American public opinion. It also comes more than three years after the start of the Syrian crisis that changed the face of the region!

What appears from Obama’s statement is a kind of underestimating the capabilities of the CIA. In a serious crisis like Syria’s, which took broad and complex international and regional dimensions, its developments have dug deep in the face of the Middle East. We do not expect that Obama can believe himself when offering such an excuse and justification for the Islamic State growing, nor the complexity of the region’s crises and catastrophes that were caused by American politics.

Obama will not be held accountable, nor his Great States. Today, he argues that the security and political situation in Syria, Iraq and the Middle East came from the underestimation of his CIA — which has a budget that exceeds the budget of some countries, and has a huge and complex network with other countries’ intelligence networks. It can eavesdrop on most of the world’s population! Even we, the distressed in this East, will not ask him, and we are not interested in holding him accountable for the miscalculation on his intelligence. But we are whispering in his ear today not to come back after two years, with the approaching of the end of his second term, to apologize again for the underestimation of others.

This story of the Islamic State and the growth of extremism in our country and our region was not caused by CIA underestimation; it is a result of stupid, criminal and greedy political, security and military gambling by America’s politicians, when they engaged with the clashes in the region and its issues.

When we talk about Iraq and Syria as the cradle of today’s violence, extremism and terrorism and of the Islamic State, this situation did not come from an underestimation. It came from reckless, aggressive and stupid policies, like a gambling drunk in a Las Vegas casino.

The occupation of Iraq in 2003 was not an underestimation. The fragmentation of the country and raking the history to hold feuds between sects, and allowing operations of exclusion and marginalization of its essential components, were not American underestimation. Those were aggressive gambles that invited all the evil into the region and its people.

As for Syria, since the first day he has raised the slogan of supporting the popular revolution against the bloody regime. This slogan was used by America and its allies as an approach to the arming and militarization of a popular uprising, and providing them with “Treasures of Solomon,” thousands of fighters, and dozens of militias. In addition to that, the destruction of the Syrian state structure and the stability of the region in order to get rid of the Assad regime and its regional alliances — creating a conflict that cannot be described except as a stupid, reckless and criminal gamble against the Syrian people and the people of the region.

The American underestimation of the Syrian crisis is betting on the military resolution to the crisis, even with the use of al-Qaida, the Islamic State and Jabhat Al-Nusra, and even if Syria was destroyed en masse — exactly as Libya as has become today, which can be described as anything but a state or a society.

The American underestimation is refusing to support the reach of a political solution to the Syrian crisis to save the poor people from waves of killing, division, displacement and destruction. Because there are those who gambled to give the military solution to the Syrian crisis time, sometimes said just a few months, with the opening of the door of the money supply, the men and extremists, would end the Assad regime, and all regional and international alliances, and then Syria and the Syrian people can go to hell!

If Obama is able to hear the voice of the region, after he ignored tens of thousands of statements, tips from politicians and experts from the region and the United States itself over the past three years, then the advice and appropriate estimation is firmly pressing with America’s power to achieve a political solution to the Syrian crisis, and straighten the deep imbalances in the Iraqi political equation. Thus, after two years you will not need to apologize again for the underestimation of your CIA!