I'm not trying to defend Baathism or anything. But Baathism wasn't a religious faction, atleast compared to ISIS or other factions trying to impose Sharia law. The attrocities done to the Kurds wasn't inspired by religion, considering both Saddam and most Kurds are Sunni. Wasn't it the US that promoted the kurds to form resistance during the Kuwait invasion which ended up with not removing Saddam, which left the Kurds alone to get massacred by the Iraqi army? And didn't the Shia insurgency fight the Americans too?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YENbElb5-xY
Now I can't be bothered reading into the entire Iraq wars just to prove the West role in the destabilization. My point is simply that even though these regions are fucked up, sending military in to depose leaders will only make things worse. I don't believe the US genuinely tried repair the country after the war. Many poor decisions were made like disbanding the police force and the army. Just like with Afghanistan, where money is being thrown to the government to build top notch power plants that aren't even used and they keep importing electricity from Uzbekistan, buying broken helicopters when they dont even have trained pilots.
*Edit* I never said the ONLY reason for the instability is the West, I said its a main contributor.
Oh I completely agree that the neocon ideologues who were put in charge of Iraq following the invasion were incompetent and completely ignorant of the true nature of Iraqis, or rather the different ethnic groups in Iraq, and that debaathification was one of the most retarded things they could have done. The point is, the terrorists didn't "appear", they were there all along. The only thing keeping them from coming to a boil was the control Saddam had over them through fear and violence.
Not sure how that removes the onus of responsability from them. Are they children? Are the dogs? Do even other muslims expect these places to fall into complete chaos unless a violent tyrant oppresses them constantly? That's definetely the impression I get when I see them blame the "west" for ISIS. As if these places are inherently power kegs, and the people living in them are just leaves blown in the wind, with no agency or responsability.
And that's ignoring the flood of wahhabist and salafist bullshit gleefully stoking these fires, coming mostly from other muslim countries, ironically mostly the "rich" ones that have been at peace for the longest.