Who Is More Responsible for the Rise of ISIS? Bush or Obama?

Who Is More Responsible for the Rise of ISIS? Bush or Obama?

09/17/14

Robert W. Merry

The Presidency, Foreign Policy, Counterinsurgency, Iraq, United States

Much has gone wrong in the Middle East through the years of our last two presidents, not least the rise of ISIS.

The challenge posed to the Middle East, and ultimately to America, by the group calling itself the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) has unleashed a U.S. debate of profound implications for the country’s policy making. Reduced to its essence, it can be articulated with this question: Who is more responsible for the rise of ISIS, George W. Bush or Barack Obama?

Those who pin the blame on Obama offer an argument that goes something like this: When Bush left office, he left behind an Iraqi state that was functioning and stable, thanks largely to the president’s 2007 “surge” of troops that ended a Sunni insurgency threatening to tear the country apart. All that was needed was for Obama to leave a residual U.S. military force in the country to maintain internal stability and counter any threat that might arise from Islamist radicals.

But (continuing the blame-Obama argument) the new president never appreciated the crucial importance of resolve and force in preserving global peace, for he believed that a large portion of global anti-Americanism stemmed from overly aggressive actions on the part of the United States. As the Wall Street Journal put it in a recent editorial:

“Recall that Mr. Obama won the Presidency by arguing that the U.S. had alienated the world and Muslims by recklessly using force abroad. We had betrayed our values by interrogating terrorists too harshly and wiretapping too much. Our enemies hated us not because they hated our values or our influence but because we had provoked them with our interventions.”

And so, added the Journal, Obama withdrew from the Middle East, particularly from Iraq, and avoided new entanglements, such as in Syria after its leader, Bashar al-Assad, came under attack from a powerful insurgency. It suggested also that the president has offered only weak responses to the ongoing aggressiveness of Russia, Iran and other U.S. adversaries in hopes that “the anti-American furies would subside and the world would be safer.”

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http://nationalinterest.org/feature/who-more-responsible-the-rise-isis-bush-or-obama-11296