Not really. ISIL and the various other groups from whence they came had no material presence until the Syrian uprising, which was part of the Arab spring. They

Not really. ISIL and the various other groups from whence they came had no material presence until the Syrian uprising, which was part of the Arab spring. They were a small band of angry nobodies before that. During the Syrian uprising, those groups coalesced and came to power, taking territory, getting funding, bringing in foreign fighters. Even if they had origins elsewhere, 'they came to be' during this time, in Syria. Iraq materially comes into the picture later, when Obama withdrew American forces form Iraq, which enabled then Iraqi PM Malaki to purge government of Sunnis, deepening the rift between Sunni/Shia, as you mentioned. Then ISIL effectively came into Iraq - as the local Sunni tribes in Iraq turned their back on their own antagonizing government, and allowed ISIL in. If Obama had of left 10K troops in Iraq, behind the wire, giving him enough leverage with the Iraqi PM so as to be able to contain the Sunni/Shia animosity (as they had done up until that time) - then there would have never been any ISIL incursion into Iraq and the state would have remained intact. Whatever we think about the 2003 invasion, there is no amount of 'US competence' which would completely disable small groups of dudes from forming some degree of insurgency. Any country invading any other always faces this kind of opposition. Without Manning's cables, there wouldn't have been an Arab Spring, without that in Syria, none of us would have ever heard of ISIL. I'm not promoting or defending Manning, just indicating the course of events.