Republicans think they can get voters to forget who's really responsible.
Republicans think they can get voters to forget who's really responsible.
Republicans, led by George W. Bush, made a giant mess of Iraq, destabilizing the country in ways
leading directly to the formation of the extremist group known as the Islamic State, ISIS, or ISIL. But Republican presidential candidates prefer to ignore their party's responsibility for the ongoing conflict in Iraq, because they think a nasty extremist group is a good way to gain some fear-based votes in 2016 and that they'll be able to shift blame to Democrats by then.
Jeb Bush is going around arguing that Obama should have kept 10,000 troops in Iraq, because he should have been able to bully the Iraqi government into accepting that:
The Obama administration asked for more troops to remain on the ground, but negotiations with the Iraqi government did not ensure that U.S. military personnel would be granted immunity.
Jeb Bush argued that Obama "could have kept the troops in and he could have had an agreement," adding "the United States had enough influence to be able to deal with the immunity issue."
But most of the Republican candidates aren't even getting that specific.
They're just posturing.
“They want to bring back a 7th-century version of jihad. So here’s my suggestion: We load up our bombers, and we bomb them back to the 7th century,” former senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania said at the recent Iowa forum.
Santorum has to win the "over-the-top rhetoric" category, but Scott Walker is strong in the "ignoring history" category:
“President Obama and Secretary Clinton hastily withdrew troops, threw away the gains of the surge, and embarked on a broader policy of pivoting away from the Middle East,” Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), a likely 2016 candidate, wrote on his Facebook page last week.
That's a very smooth translation to Republican-speak of "President Obama and Secretary Clinton observed the George W. Bush-negotiated withdrawal plan and the wishes of the Iraqi government."
The Republican bet is that they can scare voters about ISIS and pin the blame on Obama, wiping out the memory of the role of the invasion of Iraq in destabilizing the region and creating the conditions for the formation and rise of ISIS. They probably can scare voters—but it'll be tough to scare enough people to overcome opposition to more years of war and to Republican domestic policies.
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