Did Bush and Cheney have a time machine to go back to the 7th Century to cause the Islamic schism?

[FrodosPet]

Bush and Cheney are supreme assholes, but there is blame here going back to the earliest days of Islam.

The biggest thing B&C did was move the timetable, but this crap has been brewing for centuries.

I fukkin hate fundy religionists!

[TexasProgresive]

1. Both Iraq and Syria were secular states admittedly repressive

What the Iraq war and the rebellion in Syria did is to break a stable system to be replaced by chaos. This generally happens in revolutions. There is a coalition of groups to throw out the king, dictator whatever and once that happens there is a fight among the various parties to gain control. It is the Pottery Barn rule, "you break it, you own it."

'You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people,' he told the president. 'You will own all their hopes, aspirations, and problems. You'll own it all.' Privately, Powell and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage called this the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you own it.[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pottery_Barn_rule

The destabilizing of Iraq created all kinds of unintended consequences including the destabilization of the whole area. It is like the US arming the Mujahedin against the Soviets indirectly empowered bin Ladin and al-Qaeda.

[ProfessorGAC]

2. Absolutely

Getting rid of Saddam was the dumbest thing we could do in that region.

No doubt he was a really bad guy, but it was not an unstable situation. If there was a dictator in the world who knew not to fuck with the US, it was Saddam. His "4th biggest military in the world" got their assess handed to them in Desert Storm. The Republican Guard was in shambles in a week or so.

None of this happens if we don't target the wrong bad guy.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

3. Saddam was hardly suppressing a nascent ISIS. He was out to slaughter as many Kurds as ISIS.

And the Arab Spring was also destabilizing, i.e. the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood.

ISIS is Assad's Frankenstein's monster. Syria was a waypoint for jihadists going to Iraq. They stayed and capitalized on the populist protests since they were better organized than the people.