Why it’s stupid to say George W. Bush ‘created ISIS,’ even if you’re just a dumb college kid

The media is all abuzz with a whiny college idiot who accosted Jeb Bush on the campaign trail with a stupid notion whipped up in the fever swamps of the left. They just can’t get enough of this video, but they cut off Jeb’s answer, because he actually gives a good one:

And here’s a transcript of the exchange:

“Governor Bush,” she shouted as audience members asked him for his autograph. “Would you take a student question?”

Mr. Bush whirled around and looked at Ms. Ziedrich, who identified herself as a political science major and a college Democrat at the University of Nevada.

She had heard Mr. Bush argue, a few moments before, that America’s retreat from the Middle East under President Obama had contributed to the growing power of the Islamic State. She told the former governor that he was wrong, and made the case that blame lay with the decision by the administration of his brother George W. Bush to disband the Iraqi Army.

“It was when 30,000 individuals who were part of the Iraqi military were forced out — they had no employment, they had no income, and they were left with access to all of the same arms and weapons,” Ms. Ziedrich said.

She added: “Your brother created ISIS.”

Mr. Bush interjected. “All right. Is that a question?”

Ms. Ziedrich was not finished. “You don’t need to be pedantic to me, sir.”

“Pedantic? Wow,” Mr. Bush replied.

Then Ms. Ziedrich asked: “Why are you saying that ISIS was created by us not having a presence in the Middle East when it’s pointless wars where we send young American men to die for the idea of American exceptionalism? Why are you spouting nationalist rhetoric to get us involved in more wars?”

Mr. Bush replied: “We respectfully disagree. We have a disagreement. When we left Iraq, security had been arranged, Al Qaeda had been taken out. There was a fragile system that could have been brought up to eliminate the sectarian violence.”

He added: “And we had an agreement that the president could have signed that would have kept 10,000 troops, less than we have in Korea, could have created the stability that would have allowed for Iraq to progress. The result was the opposite occurred. Immediately, that void was filled.”

He concluded: “Look, you can rewrite history all you want. But the simple fact is that we are in a much more unstable place because American pulled back.”

Mr. Bush turned away. The conversation was over.

Whatever you think about Jeb Bush (I definitely don’t want him to be our candidate), to slap him with “George W. Bush created ISIS” is utterly idiotic. Even the leftist morons at Politifact had to admit that you couldn’t blame the creation of ISIS on the Bush administration when the equally stupid Chris Matthews made the claim:

Matthews said Cheney de-Ba’athisized the Iraqi government and created ISIS. We find that Cheney played a key role in de-Ba’athification and in creating the circumstances that led to the formation of ISIS. Former Ba’athists provide important military ISIS leadership, as they did in the first few years after the invasion when they joined forces with the group that preceded ISIS, al-Qaida in Iraq.

However, many of those same Ba’athists later turned against al-Qaida in Iraq. They shifted back into the orbit of what became ISIS due to the repressive policies under Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki.

The causal link is too distant to say Cheney created ISIS. His decisions contributed to the group’s formation, but not more than that.

We rate the claim Mostly False.

What they fail to note is that Obama bears much more of the blame. When George W. Bush left the office he specifically told Obama that the one thing he wanted him to not do is abandon Iraq. And at the first convenient time he could, that’s exactly what the idiot-in-chief did, letting the nation collapse under the attack of the Ba’athists. Many military experts have stated that if we had kept just a small contingent of military in Iraq we could have kept ISIS from taking control and spreading their Islam-inspired horror throughout the Middle East.

But that’s why the media is just adoring this girl – she says the stupid things they know aren’t true but can be leveled against Jeb Bush from the mouth of a college kid because no one expects them to say anything smart anyway.


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