{"id":10536,"date":"2015-08-12T15:51:15","date_gmt":"2015-08-12T15:51:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=10536"},"modified":"2015-08-13T00:29:12","modified_gmt":"2015-08-13T00:29:12","slug":"isils-rise-its-obamas-fault","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=10536","title":{"rendered":"ISIL&#8217;s rise: It&#8217;s Obama&#8217;s fault?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Jeb-Bush.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-10539\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Jeb-Bush-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"Jeb Bush\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Jeb-Bush-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Jeb-Bush-1024x683.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Jeb Bush is trying a remarkable misdirection play as he seeks the Republican Party&#8217;s presidential nomination in 2016.<\/p>\n<p>The former Florida governor sought in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library to blame former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama on the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and, I presume, in Syria as well.<\/p>\n<p>Well now. Let&#8217;s look at the record for a moment.<\/p>\n<p>The Iraq War began in March 2003 when President George W. Bush launched the invasion of that country, which at the time was governed by a Sunni Muslim tyrant, the late Saddam Hussein. (Hang with me for a moment; the Sunni reference is critical.)<\/p>\n<p>Americans were told by those high up in the Bush chain of command that we&#8217;d defeat the Iraqis easily and we&#8217;d be welcomed as &#8220;liberators.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Didn&#8217;t turn out that way.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, we defeated the so-called &#8220;elite&#8221; Iraqi forces. We drove Saddam from power. We caught him later in that spider hole, pulled him, jailed him, put him on trial, convicted him and then hanged him.<\/p>\n<p>All of this was done on Jeb&#8217;s brother&#8217;s presidential watch.<\/p>\n<p>Then came the new government. Iraqis elected a Shiite leader, who formed a Shiite government.<\/p>\n<p>Oh yes. The Sunnis hate the Shiites and vice versa. The Islamic State &#8212; aka ISIL &#8212; is a <em>Sunni<\/em> cult.<\/p>\n<p>Thus, ISIL was born &#8212; on President Bush&#8217;s watch.<\/p>\n<p>Now, though, the next Bush who wants to be president, says it&#8217;s Obama&#8217;s fault. It&#8217;s Clinton&#8217;s fault.<\/p>\n<p>Why? We didn&#8217;t maintain a sufficient troop garrison in Iraq to keep ISIL in check. I ought to mention that the <em>Bush administration<\/em> set the deadline for full withdrawal from Iraq.<\/p>\n<p>Jeb Bush now says he would send troops back into Iraq, in effect restarting a war that we shouldn&#8217;t have fought in the first place. Weapons of mass destruction? Hideous chemical weapons? The threat of a &#8220;mushroom cloud&#8221;? It was bogus.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not yet ready to declare that the pretext for war was concocted deliberately by the Bush administration high command.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s just say for now that &#8220;faulty intelligence&#8221; isn&#8217;t much of an excuse for sending thousands of American service personnel to their death in a war designed to overthrow a sovereign leader who we had kept in check through a series of tough economic sanctions.<\/p>\n<p>Jeb Bush is treading on some squishy ground whenever he mentions the words &#8220;Iraq War.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Jeb Bush is trying a remarkable misdirection play as he seeks the Republican Party&#8217;s presidential nomination in 2016. The former Florida governor sought in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library to blame former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama on the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=10536\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">ISIL&#8217;s rise: It&#8217;s Obama&#8217;s fault?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10535,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,14],"tags":[540,1899,2139,2334,2347,2362,2429,4257,4467],"class_list":["post-10536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news","category-political-news","tag-barack-obama","tag-george-w-bush","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-iraq-war","tag-isil","tag-islamic-state","tag-jeb-bush","tag-shiites","tag-sunnis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10536"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10541,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10536\/revisions\/10541"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}