So after the grotesquerie of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 suicide killers of 9/11, meet Saudi Arabia’s latest monstrous contribution to world history: the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), invaders of Mosul and Tikrit – and Raqqa in Syria – and the ultimate humiliations for US Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Middle East correspondent of The Independent Robert Fisk wrote.

The story of Iraq and the story of Syria are the same – politically, militarily and journalistically: two leaders, one Shia, the other Alawite, fighting for the existence of their governments against the power of a growing Takfiri international army.

While the Americans support the Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his elected Shia government in Iraq, the same Americans still demand the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad of Syria and his government, even though both leaders are now brothers-in-arms against the attackers of Mosul and Tikrit.

Bush and UK ex-PM Tony Blair destroyed Saddam’s regime to make the world safe and declared that Iraq was part of a titanic battle against extremism. Well, they lost.

Remember that the Americans captured and recaptured Mosul to crush the power of extremists. They fought for Fallujah twice. And both cities have now been lost again to the terrorists. The armies of Bush and Blair have long gone home, declaring victory.

Under US President Barack Obama, Saudi Arabia will continue to be treated as a friendly “moderate” in the Arab world, even though its royal family is founded upon the Wahhabi convictions of the extremists in Syria and Iraq – and even though millions of its dollars are arming those same fighters.

Thus does Saudi power both feed the monster in the deserts of Syria and Iraq and cosy up to the Western powers that protect it? “We will all be told to regard the new armed ‘caliphate’ as a ‘terror nation’,” Fisk said

Finally, we will be invited to regard the future as a sectarian war when it will be a war between Muslim sectarians and Muslim non-sectarians. The “terror” bit will be provided by the arms we send to all sides.

NTJ/HH