The left claims ISIS happened because of geopolitical bullying that the West did in that area for about a century now. The right claims ISIS happened because they are religious nutjobs fundamentally opposed to western values.<p>I think it&#x27;s not either &#x2F; or. I think it&#x27;s a messy situation with a complicated causal web. It&#x27;s more like all of the above.<p>You get Picot &#x2F; Sykes after WWI to stir up trouble in the region. And the creation of an artificial state after WWII in the region, which the West keeps sponsoring so that they dominate the area militarily. And things like the CIA coup to remove Mosaddegh from office in Iran, who ended up being replaced with a theocracy. And the relentless pressure and meddling from the West, for the purpose of maintaining an oil supply.<p>And then you get a bunch of religious nutjobs ruling various places in the area. And a religion which seems to have a particularly &quot;robust&quot; attitude towards &quot;holy wars&quot;. And then throw in the mix some climate shifts that knock out harvests and upset the price of food staples. And maybe the economists are right, too, and vast inequalities of all sorts in the area just made everything else worse.<p>If any one of the factors mentioned above was acting in isolation, nothing would have happened. But the stack, as you see, is pretty thick, and I guess something broke somewhere. It&#x27;s all of the above. It&#x27;s not one single, isolated reason.