U.S. President Barack Obama targeted the former President George W. Bush's era for the emergence of Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) through arguing that its growth was an "unintended consequence" of the Iraq invasion in 2003. In an interview with Vice News Obama said the rise of ISIS can directly be linked to U.S. excursion into Iraq. "Two things: One is, ISIS is a direct outgrowth of al-Qaida in Iraq that grew out of our invasion. It is an example of unintended consequences which is why we should generally aim before we shoot," Obama said.
Obama said he is confident the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition 'will slowly push back ISIS out of Iraq,' but added that the end of ISIS will not be the end of extremism in the region. "What I'm worried about" he said, "is even if ISIL is defeated, the underlying problem of disaffected Sunnis around the world – but particularly in some of these areas including Libya, including Yemen – where a young man who's growing up has no education, has no prospects for the future, is looking around and the one way he can get validation, power, respect, is if he's a fighter. That's a problem we're going to have, generally. And we can't keep on thinking about counterterrorism and security as entirely separate from diplomacy, development, education."
U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition began aerial strikes against the group in September after an American captive was beheaded. U.S. also helps Iraqi security forces to recapture the cities that were seized by the group last summer.
Last November Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, in an interview with Daily Sabah Editor-in-Chief Serdar Karagöz, underlined the fact that the leaders of ISIS were outraged due to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 as the group's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was born in Abu Ghraib prison. Davutoğlu said "despite repeated denials, the international media continues to try to portray Turkey as having links to ISIS, accusing them of trying to weaken the Turkish government," and added that ""None of the ISIS leaders came from or passed through Turkey. I'm asking you, where did al-Baghdadi come from? He came from Abu Ghraib. He came from Iraq."
