But operationally, the command structure and leadership is made up of Sunni thugs from the secular Saddam regime who lost their positions of privilege and patronage when the Shiite majority in Iraq gained power (backed by Iran and led by the puppet Maliki). ISIS is a result of the fall of Saddam, it is an Iraqi phenomenon, precipitated by our regime change policy in that country. There is no way any American policy maker could have anticipated the sequence of events that resulted from our invasion and occupation, but that's the whole point isn't it? We don't know what we're doing over there, or at least, we didn't in 2003. And it is no coincidence that once the front against Assad in Syria stabilized, ISIS immediately turned its attention to the Sunni areas of Northern and Western Iraq--it is where their main interests and support lie. They even call themselves the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

The success of ISIS/ISIL has inspired other apocalyptic Islamists in other parts of the Muslim world, and the movement has metastasized, but these splinter groups are coat-tailing on ISIS' reputation, they were not deliberately and systematically created by ISIS.

Come to think of it, the fundamentalist theme that runs through middle eastern politics (both Sunni and Shia) is analogous to the fundamentalist Christian core lodged in American Conservative thought. Evangelical fanaticism does not cause, or control, Right wing politics in the USA, but it plays a major role in it. In fact, you really can't understand one without the other. Are there Christians who are not fundamentalists? Sure. Christians who are not Conservative? Certainly. Conservative Christians who are not fundamentalists? Of course there are. There are even Conservative Jews, Muslims and atheists, too. But Conservatives are rather intimidated by their fundamentalists, and are not likely to stand up to them. Not only are they afraid of them, they need them.