Truest statement of the week II

The underlying cause of the crisis is the shattering impact of the US conquest and occupation of Iraq, which destroyed the country as a functioning society. Faced with widespread armed resistance to the US occupation, the Bush administration deliberately fomented sectarian warfare between Shiites and Sunnis, culminating in the bloodbath of 2006-2007.
Prominent Democrats, including Biden himself, were identified with this divide-and-rule strategy for securing the gains of a criminal war. Biden is well known for having advanced in 2006 a plan for the partition of Iraq into three semi-independent parts: a Shiite-ruled south and center, a Sunni west and northwest, and an autonomous Kurdistan in the country’s northeast. The divisions within the country currently run along those lines, with ISIS in control of most of the Sunni-populated region.
The promotion of sectarian divisions in Iraq was followed under the Obama administration by the promotion of Sunni Islamic fundamentalist organizations in the war first in Libya to overthrow the government of Muammar Gaddafi, and then in Syria against the government of Bashar al-Assad. ISIS itself emerged out of these operations, financed largely with weapons and funds from the US-backed gulf monarchies. The US took action to curtail its advances only after it began to take over oil-rich regions in Iraq.

-- Patrick Martin, "US Vice President Biden travels to Iraq for crisis talks" (WSWS).