To be Republican is to loud and wrong and loudly wrong whenever possible. The noise is so wrong and so loud and kept up for so long that weak minded people (the national media for example) sometimes mistake the persistence for legitimacy. Volume for validity. So if you hear one of your liberal minded friends fall prey to to thinking that Obama “has his share of blame” for Iraq – quickly correct them.
Bush enabled the current Sunni power in Iraq by invading Iraq under false pretenses, and with no plan for the occupation.
Bush elevated Osama bin Laden and Bin Laden’s dreams to legitimacy.
Bush removed Saddam Hussein, Bun Laden’s key enemy in the region and Iraq’s tenuous factional stability. And,
Bush bequeathed military and political power to radicalized Sunni’s that would have been unthinkable prior to our handing over arms by the crate load, and tens of millions of dollars for “rebuilding” that was delivered in duffel bags off the back of trucks.
The man to blame for what’s happening in Iraq is not President Obama—it’s President Bush., the U.S./U.K. invasion of Iraq — under deliberately fraudulent pretenses – had a great deal to do with enabling the current emergence of a Sunni terrorist military power in Iraq, but it goes much deeper than that. The recent success of ISIS — the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria — is exactly what Osama bin Laden had hoped that the 9/11 attacks would lead to. And thanks to Bush’s spectacularly foolish responses, bin Laden’s dream has come true.
Before 9/11, bin Laden was a terrorist and could only dream of becoming the “holy warrior” he imagined himself to be. When Bush chose to respond to 9/11 as an act of war, rather than a crime, he gave bin Laden the gift he had always wanted, just by conferring that status.
First, by invading Afghanistan, Bush validated bin Laden’s claim that what was happening was a religious war between Islam and the Christian West. Then, by invading Iraq and deposing his most prominent ideological foe, Saddam Hussein, Bush gave bin Laden a second gift—a much stronger position of influence throughout the region.
But the invasion also fractured Iraq’s tenuous factional stability, and was followed by a whole series of bad decisions making matters even worse. (There was a seeming exception to this pattern, the vaunted “surge,” but as Middle East specialist Stephen Walt tweeted on June 14, “Clear now that Iraq ‘surge’ in 2006-07 failed. Had 2 goals: reduce violence & promote political reconciliation. Achieved 1st but not 2nd.”) As a result, the success of ISIS and the threatened disintegration of Iraq gives bin Laden’s ideological descendants a third gift—a level of military and political power they could never have dreamed of, much less achieved, on their own.