In May, Jeb Bush was signing autographs after a town hall meeting in Reno, Nevada, when a 19-year-old college student challenged him. Bush had just blamed the rise of the Islamic State, better known as ISIS, on President Barack Obama’s decision to withdraw troops from Iraq. But the student, Ivy Ziedrich, a political science major at…
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Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.
ExPFCWintergreen June 13th, 2015 at 11:09
NEITHER. For f*ck’s sake, when will we knock it off with the Green Lantern Theory of the Presidency? America isn’t the center of the world and the President of the United States — Democratic, Republican, Green, Socialist, or Pat Paulsen Party — doesn’t magically control the events of history. ISIS is an organic response to decades of illiberalism in the Middle East and the “hope” that Islamism and radicalism offered in its place. Yes, the instability precipitated by the invasion of Iraq created AN opportunity for ISIS to flourish, but that’s not the same as saying it was the ONLY opportunity. ISIS is part of a larger and still undefined whole that includes Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Chechen fighters, Somali militias, radicalized Bosniac Muslims from the Yugoslav wars, Polisario fighters in Western Sahara, Moro fighters in Philippines — it’s part of a global wave of Muslim radicalization that is infinitely MORE about political Islam and governance in the Muslim world than it is about Obama or Bush or Reagan. You want to understand ISIS, study the history of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the 1940s, the history of the Arab Ba’ath Socialist Party in Syria in the 1950s, the deal made between Ibn Saud and the Ikhwan to create Saudi Arabia in the 1920s. One can no more blame an American president for ISIS than one can blame the Prime Minister of Great Britain for the Confederacy. At most, all one can reasonably say is that Bush botched Iraq and fanned the embers of ISIS and that Obama has been botching the response to ISIS.
No way out June 13th, 2015 at 11:42
Good points. This from an unabashed Obama supporter.
Dwendt44 June 13th, 2015 at 12:37
While I don’t disagree with your overview, I also note that the leaders of ISIS were largely former Saddam’s military leaders that were FIRED by Lil Georgie Bush. Had Bush kept the leaders, and funded and controlled, or at least used them, instead of showing them the door, they might have been able to direct them against Al Qaeda that was moving in once Saddam was ousted. I point fingers at Bush.
ExPFCWintergreen June 13th, 2015 at 13:10
This conflates two distinct groups of individuals. I don’t think anyone objected to the idea that senior Ba’athists were going to be ousted from whatever new government followed the toppling of Saddam. Those guys were going to lose their jobs regardless. And inasmuch as they — like our own 1 Percenters — were the privileged elite in Iraqi society, they weren’t going to take that lying down, and those are the guys who are in leadership positions in the Iraq wing of ISIS — guys from the Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard. The legitimate criticism of CPA Order No. 2 is that it disbanded the ENTIRETY of the Iraqi security services, including fairly benign mid-career conventional Army officers, simply for the “crime” of having been in the Iraqi security services. In the original plan, in fact, the regular Iraqi Army was going to be the nucleus of the post-Saddam Iraqi Army; that didn’t happen in part because of CPA2 but also because there was no Coalition infrastructure in place to make that happen, so many of those guys formed the backbone of the emerging Sunni insurgency. THAT, in my reading, was the key Bush failure — not getting rid of senior Ba’athists. It all still begs the question, of course, as to whether or not those senior officers who were Ba’athists in name only would have WANTED to serve in the new Iraqi security services given that Iraq’s political system was inevitably going to be Shi’a-centered.
burqa June 14th, 2015 at 22:10
L. Paul Bremer’s opinion on mistakes made are worth considering:
“The former U.S. official who governed Iraq after the invasion said yesterday that the United States made two major mistakes: not deploying enough troops in Iraq and then not containing the violence and looting immediately after the ouster of Saddam Hussein.
Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, administrator for the U.S.-led occupation government until the handover of political power on June 28, said he still supports the decision to intervene in Iraq but said a lack of adequate forces hampered the occupation and efforts to end the looting early on.
“We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness,” he said yesterday in a speech at an insurance conference in White Sulfur Springs, W.Va. “We never had enough troops on the ground.”
… in a Sept. 17 speech at DePauw University, Bremer said he had frequently raised the problem within the administration and “should have been even more insistent” when his advice was spurned because the situation in Iraq might be different today. “The single most important change – the one thing that would have improved the situation – would have been having more troops…”
– “Bremer Criticizes Troop Levels Ex-Administrator
Says U.S. Effort Was Hampered Early On,” by Robin Wright and Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, October 5, 2004, page A1
burqa June 14th, 2015 at 22:16
To go with my post, above, note the following and its date:
“Indeed, at the Pentagon, unexpected Iraqi resistance in the war has rekindled a debate over how much manpower will be needed to provide postwar security, commanders report.
Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, was sharply contradicted when he told Congress last month that “several hundred thousand soldiers” from around the world would be required to stabilize the country. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz called the estimate “way off the mark.”
But skirmishes and attacks on allied forces affirm the logic behind a large number, said retired Army Maj. Gen. William L. Nash, who commanded army peacekeepers in Iraq in 1991 and the Balkans in 1995. He said allied forces, now stretched thin, are not prepared for the relief and reconstruction mission.
“Public security is the enabler for all issues pertaining to humanitarian aid and reconstruction,” said Nash, who recalled revenge killings and political chaos that kept U.S. commanders scrambling in 1991. “There are insufficient forces to give that aura of security and stability.”
“”The greatest concern after Saddam falls is that security
vacuums will remain unfilled by legitimate authorities,” Mitchell [Sandra Mitchell, vice president of the International Rescue Committee] said. “If those vacuums aren’t filled by legitimate authorities, they will be filled by radicals, hardliners and spoilers who will seize the opportunity to gain power
by fear and retribution.”
She added, “We’ve received no satisfactory answer that the coalition forces will fill these vacuums. We’ve been told that policing is something still to be determined.”
– “Prolonged Iraq War May Imperil Reconstruction Analysts
Foresee More Complex Problems for U.S.” by Peter Slevin, Washington Post, March 28, 2003, page A36
ExPFCWintergreen June 15th, 2015 at 09:09
Yes, and that’s another thing to lay at Rumsfeld’s feet. He was so infatuated with the notion that it could be done “light” — like the Afghanistan “victory” had been — that he wouldn’t listen to reason. It’s also something that can be laid at Colin Powell’s feet. As Secretary of State he didn’t manage to get the Turks on board — or at least make them cooperative — and so the 4th Infantry Division, then in Turkey, couldn’t deploy into Iraq from the north. I have no doubt, of course, that W basically did whatever Rumsfeld and Cheney told him to do.
burqa June 16th, 2015 at 07:01
The Turks were trying to extort billions from us. The figure $12 billion comes to mind, but I can’t recall if it was what the Turks were demanding or what we were offering and which wasn’t enough.
Two fine books are Thomas Ricks’ Fiasco and Cobra II by Michael Trainor and someone else.
For a long time I went along with the Bush-was-a-puppet notion, but now am not so sure. He may have just already agreed in large part with what Rumsfeld and Cheney thought.
Tommy Franks bears a lot of the blame.
He had worked with Anthony Zinni on the Desert Crossing plan that had the 380,000 invasion force with 120,000 in theater reserve. Franks should have spoken up more forcefully when Rumsfeld was cutting willy-nilly, destroying cohesion.
He would call in Franks or the chief of staff and say, “Can we still win if we don’t have this MP battalion” They’d say yes. “Can we still win id we don’t have this tanker squadron?” and they’d say yes. It would complicate things, but they’d make do. The whole thing was a debacle and, as usual, it was the line grunts who had to suffer the most.
robert June 13th, 2015 at 21:31
excuse me for asking but did anyone pay attention to Syria prior to the Saddam execution.
The Syria of old that i knew of was all bark and no bite Funny how all that has changed. That leaves a long line of questions 1) where did they get ISIL ? did they dig them up from a bad sequel of tomb raider ? because i never heard of such mis guided punks prior to 2001. 2) how come iran is so quiet while this group destroys everything Muslim ? 3) why are iraq troops protecting iran borders instead of driving ISIL into iran ?
good luck with the answers
BTW gwb is most likely responsible for the creation of ISIL since that dog had no bite prior to 2001
ExPFCWintergreen June 14th, 2015 at 10:28
Yes, they did. Bashar al-Assad’s regime was on lots of peoples’ radars starting in 2000. There was the short-lived “Damascus Spring” — which predated the “Arab Spring” by years — where it seemed he was going to be less authoritarian than his father. The most significant aspect of that period was the release of hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood members from the prisons his father had put them in. Many of those individuals had been thoroughly radicalized and formed the cadres of the opposition groups that started fighting him later. He also drew much more openly close to Hezbollah during 2001, which was also widely reported in the Western media, and was thoroughly implicated in the assassination of the Prime Minister of Lebanon. Syria had plenty of “bite” in Levantine affairs — the Syrian Army occupied Lebanon from 1976 to 2005, for god’s sake.
Where did they get IS? That group evolved and coalesced out of several insurgent groups and fighters who’d fled Iraq for Syria during the American occupation. The fact that you never heard of them doesn’t mean they didn’t exist. The Chevrolet division of General Motors didn’t exist before 1911, but Louis Chevrolet was still in the motoring industry before that.
Iran isn’t so quiet. Iran is deeply involved — to many American policymakers, TOO deeply involved — in action against IS. Iran isn’t much concerned with the pre-Muslim history of the Middle East, so the destruction of Palmyra isn’t a real strategic concern for them.
Presumably Iraq’s troops are defending the Iraq-Iran border because that’s what border troops do. To “drive ISIL into Iran,” the Iraqi Army would have to be able to completely redirect the IS forces and drive them all the way across Iraq. That would be a good trick. IS lines of communication run west, not east. That’s not how battles work.
Concluding that Bush is “most likely responsible” because there was no IS before 2001 is like saying Woodrow Wilson “created” the Bolsheviks in Russia because their revolution was in 1917.
robert June 14th, 2015 at 17:21
thanx for the reply but im not buying it. GWB had no idea what he was getting into even after the war started. case and point…you don’t send the national guard over to fight soldiers who have this stuff down to a science ( that’s an understatement ) hell even rumsfeld is now saying democracy will never fly in this part of the world & the problem is starting to get the liberals eating this crap up thinking we will get our way over there Very disgusting !
ExPFCWintergreen June 14th, 2015 at 20:57
Actually, National Guard soldiers performed extremely well, both in the invasion and in the insurgency. The Iraqi Army itself was quite poorly trained and poorly led; the only elements that had notable skills were the Fedayeen Saddam and the Special Republican Guard. By every measure the invasion phase of the war was a success. Rumsfeld is trying to rewrite history for the sake of the 2016 Republican presidential campaign; there is ample evidence that he, in fact, was a prime mover in promoting democracy in Iraq. In a May 2003 speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, he said, “Iraq could conceivably become a model — proof that a moderate Muslim state can succeed in the battle against extremism taking place in the Muslim world today.” And then of course there’s his July 2002 memo on how America was going to “organize” Iraq’s democratic opposition groups to be sure the country was a democracy and that the Communist Party (!) couldn’t take over.
robert June 14th, 2015 at 21:37
our national guard performed well ???
did you know we suffered the most casualties in this war within the 1st 5 yrs and why ? because either the soldiers were too few or not battle ready Possibly both. When did it start going down ? when our gov got smart by sending in special forces. Ask anyone who knows about this kind of war and without a doubt most will tell you a declared war with a draft would be most advised.
might as well cut to the chase on this by saying our elected didn’t want their kids involved so why not send the job seekers in first or should i say the less fortunate who couldn’t get by without the military
ExPFCWintergreen June 15th, 2015 at 09:17
In the invasion, there were less than 7 battalions’ worth of infantry from Army National Guard units. The rest of the 29,000 Guardsmen who were on active duty at that time were logisticians, communications, and military police troops. The 124th Infantry from Florida and the 19th SF Group troops did well, as did the 115th MP Company from Rhode Island. Yes, there were lots of ARNG troops who didn’t perform to standard, but that’s the case with active duty troops as well.
burqa June 14th, 2015 at 21:55
It could be said U.S. forces performed extremely well in carrying out their orders. However, they were sent in to carry out a fundamentally flawed plan that was not going to work. It was based on false assumptions and willful ignorance of what former CIA bin Laden Station chief Michael Scheuer calls “the checkables.”
Our forces had to stand aside while widespread looting took place. Even massive weapons, ammo and explosives dumps like the one at al Tuwaitha went unguarded for 2 weeks or so.
We should not forget the haphazard way the Bush administration dreamwalked their way into that war.
“In the summer and fall of 2002, a series of warnings were
issued inside the military establishment about the right and wrong ways to approach Iraq. Most of these appear to have been ignored, mainly because the Bush administration tended not to listen to people outside a small circle of insiders. On August 26 – the same day that Cheney effectively launched the march to war with his “no doubts” speech to the VFW – a group of Army commanders and other top service officials met at the Army War College’s bucolic campus on the outskirts of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, to review, among other things, the Central Command’s middling performance in the Afghan campaign.
The meeting concluded that major errors had been committed in the conduct of that offensive, especially in the handling of the larger, strategic issues. This conclusion was meant to be descriptive of what had happened in the previous year, but it would also prove accurate in predicting what would go wrong in the handling of the Iraq war. …
… a tactical focus that ignores long-term objectives” was
especially notable at central command, said an internal Army memo…
… Franks failed to grasp in waging the Afghan war, a conceptual error he would repeat in Iraq. But the problem extended beyond that – and thus those meeting at the Army War College laid it all at the feet of Rumsfeld and the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Richard Meyers…
… “All participants at the conference from all commands complained about the problems caused by a lack of clear higher direction,” the
summary emphasized.
A more specific grievance was the insistence of the
Pentagon on not using established deployment plans for units, and instead sending them out piecemeal. [71] “Headquarters have had to utilize scores of individual Requests For Forces (RFF) to build organization in key theaters instead of formal TPFDL,” another Army report on the meeting stated. Back then this complaint about messing with the painstakingly developed TPFDL … which stands for Time-Phased-Deployment List … would grow into an angry chorus in the Army during the invasion and occupation of Iraq, as it caused endless turmoil and confusion. “The pernicious effect of the grab-bag augmentations is to create headquarters staffs with little experience or cohesion,” this second report stated. “One conference participant described the situation as ‘playing the Super Bowl with a pick-up team.” Most ominously, the report warned that by overburdening under-trained staffs, the resulting turmoil especially undercut the military’s ability to develop effective long-range plans.”
– FIASCO The American Military Adventure in Iraq, by Thomas E. Ricks, (Penguin, 2006), page 70-71
ExPFCWintergreen June 15th, 2015 at 09:10
What Ricks described is true, but it was also true for Bosnia and Kosovo, as well. That sort of ad-hoc task force packaging had become the norm.
burqa June 14th, 2015 at 21:23
When Saddam ruled Iraq, dissent was not tolerated and AQI would have never arisen there.
When Bush decided toi invade, he went along with Rumsfeld’s military theories of getting the job done with the bare minimum of force, so they took an invasion plan that had 380,000 troops invading with 120,000 in reserve in theater to just invading with about 120,000.
They did not like the studies and historic examples that showed to occupy a country, a certain ratio of troops-to-citizens was needed. So they just pretended those studies and examples did not exists.
They were told in 2 major intelligence reports that if they did not go in with enough troops to occupy, that an insurgency would rise and they would not have the forces to prevent it. Their response was to pretend those reports did not exist.
They were warned by DoD that they would have about a 6-month window to get things in order, otherwise an insurgency would by then be out of control and we’d be in for a long slog. The response of the Bush administration was to pretend that wasn’t so and that they could continue to bluff and bluster their way to an alternate reality.
ExPFCWintergreen June 15th, 2015 at 09:19
The same could be said for any of the countries that went through the Arab Spring. But at the end of the day, the causal argument would have to be: no invasion of Iraq –> no IS. That’s too deterministic by an order of magnitude and it only works if one assumes that NOTHING else that has happened in the region would have happened without the invasion. Which essentially means there are no internal political dynamics in the Arab world and they’re all just sitting around waiting for the United States to essentially tell them what to do. The world just doesn’t work that way.
burqa June 14th, 2015 at 21:32
Here’s what they guy whose interrogation team got the intel to nail Zarqawi said:
“I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters
flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and
Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters
for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still
carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks
on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It’s no exaggeration to say that at least
half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of
foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The
number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never
be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of
lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans
safe is beyond me — unless you don’t count American soldiers as Americans….”
– “Torture’s the Wrong Answer: There’s a Smarter Way,” by
Matthew Alexander (pseudonym) Washington Post, November 30, 2008, page B1
William June 13th, 2015 at 13:09
” Who Is Responsible For ISIS?”
Seriously?
Michael September 10th, 2015 at 21:22
Let me break something to you people, whether you are liberal or conservative. I myself have thankfully grown intellectually enough to avoid entrapping myself within those labels. ISIS was founded in 1999. There has been conflict between sunni and shia for centuries. The Quran commands followers to spread the Islamic faith by the sword and to establish a caliphate. Neither Bush nor Obama is responsible for ISIS. ISIS is responsible for ISIS and no one else. The ideas promoted in the Quran are responsible for ISIS. Get over it and save your ignorant and Orwellian ‘islamophobe’ comments because it is a fact that the ideas within the Hadith and the Quran are what drives these people. Islam never had a reformation like Judaism and Christianity. They are following their holy book to the letter and you people need to understand this and stop being afraid to say so because you aren’t helping to bring about the much needed reformation of Islam. Yes, say its only a minority, I’m sorry but it is a majority who supports things like death for apostasy, death for homosexuality, Sharia, etc. Liberals need to get rid of the moral relativism and the instinct to blame America for everything bad in the middle east. It truly only makes you look ignorant of Islamic and middle eastern history. Conservatives need to stop blaming every President who happens to be a democrat for anything bad that happens in the middle east.