Great. A poli sci major:
“Your brother created ISIS,” the young woman told Jeb Bush. And with that, Ivy Ziedrich, a 19-year-old college student, created the kind of confrontational moment here on Wednesday morning that presidential candidates dread.
Jihadis and the too-high Moslem public support for jihadis existed before President Bush invaded Iraq to destroy the Saddam regime and give the country (and region) a shot at an alternative to jihahi rule or autocracy by implementing democracy.
To believe our 2003 invasion created ISIS/ISIL, you have to forget that Saddam imported jihadis in large numbers before the war to bolster his regime. These Sunni Arab bully boys were intended to whip the Shia majority into line. They died in huge numbers as they were flung against our spearheads.
To believe our invasion created ISIS/ISIL, you have to forget that Saddam welcomed jihadis who fled our invasion of Afghanistan--the "good" and "necessary" war. Saddam had a long record of hosting, training, and supporting terrorism, even if Saddam and Osama did not share office space, so looking the other way while those jihadis set up shop in Iraqi territory was no shock.
To believe our invasion created ISIS/ISIL, you have to forget that al Qaeda (with the support of Iran-supported Syria) decided to invade Iraq after we liberated it and make that country their main effort rather than Afghanistan.
To believe our invasion created ISIS/ISIL, you have to forget that Saddam's insurgent boys decided to ally with al Qaeda in the belief that the Baathists could use al Qaeda as the cannon fodder to defeat the US-backed Iraqi government and regain control of Iraq. (And that alliance is evident in the most recent surge of jihadis in Iraq.)
To believe our invasion created ISIS/ISIL, you have to believe that an Arab Moslem democracy is such a violation of "authentic" Third World Islamic governance that it was natural for young Moslem men to join the jihad.
To believe our invasion created ISIS/ISIL, you have to believe that keeping the brutal Saddam and his Baath Party apparatus of domestic terror in power where they would have been allied with jihadis and other terrorists would have been superior to getting rid of the brutal dictator and creating a government in Iraq willing to fight against jihadis at our side.
To believe our invasion created ISIS/ISIL, you have to forget that we actually defeated al Qaeda in Iraq by the end of 2008, and forget that President Obama boasted of "responsibly ending" the Iraq War in 2011 and that Vice President Biden boasted that Iraq would be one of the administration's great foreign policy successes. Did they boast of an Iraq where ISIS ran rampant?
Who was president when ISIS/ISIL rose from the ashes of their defeat in Iraq by Jeb Bush's brother, anyway?
The notion that we are responsible for the rise of ISIS in Iraq is so rock-poundingly stupid that it is difficult to comprehend that allegedly sentient beings can believe that nonsense.
Ms. Ziedrich is apparently strong in the belief department. Given her age, it is almost literally true that everything she knows about Iraq she learned in kindergarten. Her analytical abilities remain deficient. Let's hope she learns more before she gets her degree. Or switches majors.
UPDATE: Islam created ISIL.
And if we don't destroy ISIL and their related jihadi brethren, ISIL will create Islam in ISIL's vision.
