A day after jihadists released a gruesome video of the beheading of US journalist James Foley, Barack Obama urged US allies in the Middle East to join together in routing the “cancer” of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis). 

Obama pledged a relentless response to “cowardly acts of violence.” US Secretary of State John Kerry said that Isis “must be destroyed” and the world must know that the US will never back down in the face of such evil.

Isis controls large parts of Syria and Iraq, and the US has been carrying out air strikes in Iraq since August 8. Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said US air strikes have helped to break the Islamist advance in Iraq, but the militants could be expected to regroup. The US says that Isis will have to be addressed on both sides of what is essentially at this point a non-existent border between Syria and Iraq.

As despicable and murderous as Isis certainly is, the hypocrisy emanating from Washington is tangible. The US and its proxy states have shown they have scant regard for human life. 

After it plunged Yugoslavia, Afghanistan (and Pakistan), Iraq, Libya and other countries into chaos and war and killed or wrecked the lives of millions in the process, Washington is now churning out its hollow rhetoric about evil and barbarism as it sits back and allows Israel to kill some 2,000 Palestinians in Gaza.

Moreover, Isis was an offshoot of al-Qaida-backed rebels supported by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the US to overthrow the government of Syria. Syrian President Assad warned that what was happening in Syria in 2011 was not a pro-democratic uprising or a secular rebellion. The forces against his government were Western-backed terrorists with ties to al-Qaida.

The murder of Foley has caused an outpouring of anger in the West. Such sentiment, however heartfelt, has been ignited courtesy of a compliant mainstream media whose purpose has time and again been shown to be to cheerlead the public into supporting illegal, baseless wars on behalf of resource-extraction industries and other state-corporate actors under the guise of rooting out terror.

Having failed in its aim to use Isis and other groups to defeat Assad, Washington is now manipulating public sentiment to justify a resurgence of US military intervention across the region, including possible direct intervention in Syria, which it has wanted for some time to topple Assad.

Now it is warning of direct military intervention within Syria itself under the pretext of destroying Isis, the monster it created. The US’s top general, Martin Dempsey, has noted that Isis could not be defeated without attacking their base in Syria.

Will US air strikes be used to bomb a path to Damascus for (trained and bussed-in from Libya and elsewhere) militant forces in Syria under the guise of attacking terrorists?

The US, Turkey, France, Britain, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have for a long time been heavily arming militants along both Syria’s border with Turkey in the north and within Jordan in the south. 

In the Daily Telegraph’s March 2013 article, US and Europe in Major Airlift of Arms to Syrian Rebels Through Zagreb, it was reported that 3,000 tons of weapons from the former Yugoslavia had been sent in 75 planeloads from Zagreb airport to the rebels, largely via Jordan.

The shipments were allegedly paid for by Saudi Arabia at the bidding of the US, with assistance on supplying the weapons organised through Turkey and Jordan. A New York Times March 2013 article, “Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With CIA Aid,” stated that, with help from the CIA, Arab governments and Turkey had sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters. This aid included more than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and Qatari military-style cargo planes.

The Washington Post’s September 2013 article, US Weapons Reaching Syrian Rebels, reported that the CIA has begun delivering weapons to rebels in Syria, ending months of delay in lethal aid that had been promised by the Obama administration.

And who are “the rebels”? Where did all the equipment and money go to? It is no coincidence that we now have a well-equipped and organised Isis.

The West funded and created Isis to do its bidding in Syria and also to put pressure on an increasingly independent government in Iraq, which refused to allow US troops to remain in the country with immunity from prosecution.

Sensationalist videos of decapitations of westerners serve a purpose. They manipulate public sentiment, stir up anti-Islamist sentiment and get a war-fatigued public to support even more wars of slaughter and empire under the lie of protecting civilians, a bogus “war on terror” or rooting out barbarism and evil.

Part of the battle for the public’s hearts and minds is to keep people confused, to play on the ignorance and confusion by lying to them about what is happening and to ensure they continue to live in fear from a manufactured threat to “national security.”  

For the most part, the public remains blissfully ignorant and easily manipulated by the psych-ops directed at them through a corporate media. Anyone who knowingly stands in the way or just happens to be in the wrong place and in the way of this cabal’s quest for global domination is regarded as its enemy and expendable.

Washington’s ultimate aim is to balkanise Iraq, to attack and weaken Iran and its allies in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza (courtesy of Israel) and across the region. 

After getting rid of Putin’s allies in the region, it will use its proxy forces to destabilise Russia via its borders to the south.