Iraqi leadership, such as it is, thinking it’s helpless to devise solutions on its own, depends entirely on the US to “wave a wand” and make things all better.

[A] State Department briefer portrayed the central Iraqi government as desperate for the Americans to solve the problem for them. “All of them look to us for answers and solutions and like a magic wand,” the briefer said. “There’s a lot of that.”

And this:

[S]oon after ISIS overran Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, the Kurdish military force known as the Peshmerga swiftly moved to seize control of Kirkuk, the strategically important city with enormous reserves of oil that the Kurds have long viewed as their historic capital in their quest for full autonomy.
…
“Just look at where the Peshmerga is now compared to where they were two weeks ago,” the [same] State Department briefer instructed reporters. “… Some facts on the ground can be created that might not be reversed.”

This is some of what comes of an attempt to lift a tribal society, reduced by a generation of barbaric tyranny, into nationhood when that attempt is cut short before the task is seriously begun. The environment created by Saddam Hussein’s butchery and madness required answers handed down from the outside just to stabilize the situation and begin to repair emotional, economic, and infrastructure damage. The task of erecting a nation—the political requirements, the societal needs, the things that must be interactively taught, not handed down from on high—had barely begun when the US left Iraq in toto.

Iran, on the other hand, while willing to “help” the existing Iraqi government does not want US involvement at all. Iran wants a puppet state west of the Shat al-Arab and the Hawizah Marshes and not the sovereign nation that might result from US aid to Iraq in this crisis. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei [Supreme Leader of Iran] had this to say on the matter:

We strongly oppose the intervention of the US and others in the domestic affairs of Iraq. The main dispute in Iraq is between those who want Iraq to join the US camp and those who seek an independent Iraq.

The US aims to bring its own blind followers to power.

Iran wants to halt the Iraqi efforts to erect a nation in place of a tribal polity buried under the ashes of Saddam’s barbarity. Iran will “take care of” Iraq and the Iraqis.

The assumed purpose for the terrorist organization’s invasion is to seize Iraq as part of the Caliphate the terrorists claim to be restoring. This may be true. However, there are other purposes that may be in play, also, if not instead.

One such purpose would be to destabilize Iraq while exposing the paper tiger that President Barack Obama’s United States has become. This purpose envisions ISIS shooting the place up, exacerbating along the way extant sectarian violence, and then withdrawing into Syria, if not into strongholds in northwestern Iraq. Keeping captured weapons, while demonstrating ISIS’ reach, to their economic betterment from…supporters…of the drive for the Caliphate.

And there’s this:

[ISIS has] obtained significant numbers of tanks, trucks, and US-origin Humvees in recent military operations in Iraq and those arms are being shipped to al Qaeda rebels in Syria[.]

Now one branch of Syrian rebels has several examples of our weaponry.

Oh, and this, admittedly a bit of a stretch as an ISIS purpose: Iranian forces are now operating in Iraq. The enemy of my enemy bit.

Hmm….