Addressing delegates at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush claimed that President Barack 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," Bush declared in the speech on Tuesday night, reports The New York Times. Bush said that the early withdrawal of American troops, ordered by Obama on Hillary Clinton's advice and support has propelled the region into the chaos it is in now.
Taking the opportunity to embroil and attack Democratic presidential frontrunner Clinton, who served as Secretary of State during Obama's first term, in what he sees as a debacle, Bush said, "Where was the secretary of state in all of this? In all her record-setting travels, she stopped by Iraq exactly once. 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," reports The Huffington Post.
With promises to be "unyielding" in the pursuit to remove the "barbarians of ISIS," Bush, a former two-term governor of Florida, proposed a strategy hinging on greater military strength. "I assure you: the day that I become president will be the day that we turn this around, and begin rebuilding the armed forces of the United States," he said, according to CNN.
With this speech, Bush has attacked Clinton on an issue in which she is seen to be vulnerable, but it may turn out to be a double edged sword as it was Bush's brother, President George W. Bush, who had ordered the United States into war in Iraq in 2003 and, had ordered the commitment of additional forces there in 2006.
"This is a pretty bold attempt to rewrite history and reassign responsibility. They cannot be allowed to escape responsibility for the real mistake here. They might hope we'll all forget, but the American people remember," said Jake Sullivan, Clinton's senior policy adviser and her former aide at the State Department, in reaction to Bush's statements, reports The New York Times.
