" There is no doubt that the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003 created the seedbed from which ISIS sprang. And there is also no doubt that the failure to leave a residual American force in Iraq in 2011, combined with the outbreak of civil war in Syria, allowed the group to flourish and spread on two sides of an increasingly meaningless border. To dismiss the group as “un-Islamic” or “not a state” is wishful thinking and, ultimately, counterproductive and dangerous. "

― Daniel Silva , The Black Widow (Gabriel Allon, #16)