US actions in Iraq helped create the very adversary ISIS later became.

Evidence

ISIS is partly of the United States’ own making. Many of its leaders are former officers in Saddam Hussein’s army and former members of his political party (Breslow, 2014). ISIS faced the Americans anew, not as insurgents fighting the occupier of yesteryear, but as an invited obstacle on the road toward creating its caliphate. Many cynical Sunnis remarked on the irony that the present military campaign was directed against “an organization that evolved from jihadist groups fighting American occupation” (Barnard & Kirkpatrick, 2014). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2483

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2483
• XREF: connects to: US imperial operations generate the very blowback they then label terrorism