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In a speech, he also laid out a foreign policy agenda that included a greater military presence in Iraq.
WASHINGTON -- GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush on Tuesday accused President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of failing to stop the rise of the Islamic State and advocated a bigger military presence in Iraq and Syria.
In an address at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, he claimed that Obama’s troop withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 was the “fatal error” that facilitated the formation of the Islamic State, or ISIS.
“That premature withdrawal was the fatal error, creating the void that ISIS moved in to fill -- and that Iran has exploited to the full as well,” he said.
He also used the opportunity to pin the blame on Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton, who served as secretary of state during Obama’s first term.
“Where was the secretary of state in all of this? In all her record-setting travels, she stopped by Iraq exactly once,” he said. “Who can seriously argue that America and our friends are safer today than in 2009, when the president and Secretary Clinton -- the storied ‘team of rivals’ -- took office? So eager to be the history-makers, they failed to be the peacemakers.”
Bush used much of the speech to warn of what he called the growing ISIS “pandemic,” and laid out a foreign policy agenda that included a greater military presence in Iraq, as opposed to the Obama administration’s “minimalist approach of incremental escalation.”
Jake Sullivan, a senior foreign policy adviser to Clinton's campaign and a former State Department official, called Bush's speech "a pretty bold attempt to rewrite history and reassign responsibility."
On a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, Sullivan sought to rebut the notion that the Obama administration was to blame for the rise of the Islamic State. He argued instead that the world owed the group's inception to George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq in the first place.
"It is simply wrong to assert that ISIS arose in the vacuum after American troops left," Sullivan said. "ISIS grew out of Al Qaeda in Iraq. And where did AQI come from? It didn't exist before the invasion. It emerged in no small part as a result of President’s Bush's failed strategy."
Throughout his campaign, Bush has faced difficulty in distancing himself from his brother’s divisive foreign policy decisions, chiefly the authorization of the Iraq War. The Bush administration’s foreign policy arguably created much of the instability that led to the formation of ISIS, particularly its ill-advised and hastily planned decision to disband the Iraqi army in 2003, which created a fractured state and led former Sunni members of the Iraqi military to form insurgent groups that would later coalesce to form ISIS.
More: Jeb Bush Blames The Rise Of ISIS On Obama, Clinton
This is a losing issue for Jeb. He can't whitewash the facts.
WASHINGTON -- GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush on Tuesday accused President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of failing to stop the rise of the Islamic State and advocated a bigger military presence in Iraq and Syria.
In an address at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, he claimed that Obama’s troop withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 was the “fatal error” that facilitated the formation of the Islamic State, or ISIS.
“That premature withdrawal was the fatal error, creating the void that ISIS moved in to fill -- and that Iran has exploited to the full as well,” he said.
He also used the opportunity to pin the blame on Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton, who served as secretary of state during Obama’s first term.
“Where was the secretary of state in all of this? In all her record-setting travels, she stopped by Iraq exactly once,” he said. “Who can seriously argue that America and our friends are safer today than in 2009, when the president and Secretary Clinton -- the storied ‘team of rivals’ -- took office? So eager to be the history-makers, they failed to be the peacemakers.”
Bush used much of the speech to warn of what he called the growing ISIS “pandemic,” and laid out a foreign policy agenda that included a greater military presence in Iraq, as opposed to the Obama administration’s “minimalist approach of incremental escalation.”
Jake Sullivan, a senior foreign policy adviser to Clinton's campaign and a former State Department official, called Bush's speech "a pretty bold attempt to rewrite history and reassign responsibility."
On a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, Sullivan sought to rebut the notion that the Obama administration was to blame for the rise of the Islamic State. He argued instead that the world owed the group's inception to George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq in the first place.
"It is simply wrong to assert that ISIS arose in the vacuum after American troops left," Sullivan said. "ISIS grew out of Al Qaeda in Iraq. And where did AQI come from? It didn't exist before the invasion. It emerged in no small part as a result of President’s Bush's failed strategy."
Throughout his campaign, Bush has faced difficulty in distancing himself from his brother’s divisive foreign policy decisions, chiefly the authorization of the Iraq War. The Bush administration’s foreign policy arguably created much of the instability that led to the formation of ISIS, particularly its ill-advised and hastily planned decision to disband the Iraqi army in 2003, which created a fractured state and led former Sunni members of the Iraqi military to form insurgent groups that would later coalesce to form ISIS.
More: Jeb Bush Blames The Rise Of ISIS On Obama, Clinton
This is a losing issue for Jeb. He can't whitewash the facts.
