College student confronts Jeb Bush: "Your Brother Created ISIS"

[Tender Branson]

RENO, Nev. — “Your brother created ISIS,” the young woman told Jeb Bush. And with that, Ivy Ziedrich, a 19-year-old college student, created the kind of confrontational moment here on Wednesday morning that presidential candidates dread.

Mr. Bush, the former governor of Florida, had just concluded a town-hall-style meeting when Ms. Ziedrich demanded to be heard. “Governor Bush,” she shouted as audience members asked him for his autograph. “Would you take a student question?”

Mr. Bush whirled around and looked at Ms. Ziedrich, who identified herself as a political science major and a college Democrat at the University of Nevada.

She had heard Mr. Bush argue, a few moments before, that America’s retreat from the Middle East under President Obama had contributed to the growing power of the Islamic State. She told the former governor that he was wrong, and made the case that blame lay with the decision by the administration of his brother George W. Bush to disband the Iraqi Army.

“It was when 30,000 individuals who were part of the Iraqi military were forced out — they had no employment, they had no income, and they were left with access to all of the same arms and weapons,” Ms. Ziedrich said.

She added: “Your brother created ISIS.”

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/05/13/college-student-to-jeb-bush-your-brother-created-isis

[Frozen Sky Ever Why]

Mr. Bush replied: “We respectfully disagree. We have a disagreement. When we left Iraq, security had been arranged, Al Qaeda had been taken out. There was a fragile system that could have been brought up to eliminate the sectarian violence.”

I only respect this line of reasoning it is prefaced with "Even though it was a mistake to go there in the first place", and since Jeb apparently still thinks it was the right thing to do, I don't respect him at all.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Is Bush having a really bad week or am I just imagining it?

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

Further confirmation his candidacy is a joke. Romney at least saved self-deportation and severely conservative for the debates.

[justfollowingtheelections]

So he's just as bad as his idiot brother.  Next...

[pbrower2a]

If Jeb is elected President, then she might want to turn the Junior Year in France program into completion of her degree -- in France.

Profile in courage.

[bobloblaw]

Hopefully his self-destruction continues...

Hopefully. But for the wrong reason. GW Bush didnt create ISIS. ISIS didnt exist until 2012 and Hillary voted for the war also.  But Jebbie didnt have the intelligence to say so.


My prediction is that Rubio will become the Establishment candidate. It also increases the chance that Kaisch gets in.

[Ebsy]

The second coming of Dubya is upon us.

[Pyro]

Since Jeb has no problem sending young people to fight and die for this imperialist cause, he should sign up to fight himself. Or send his own children. Let's see how his perspective changes.

[NewYorkExpress]

The Kid's half right.

You don't leave the Iraqi Military with weapons and nothing to do. Either you take the weapons or you keep the military together. Dubya did the exact things that one shouldn't do with an occupied military, and while it took almost a decade, that was responsible for ISIS.

[bobloblaw]

The Kid's half right.

You don't leave the Iraqi Military with weapons and nothing to do. Either you take the weapons or you keep the military together. Dubya did the exact things that one shouldn't do with an occupied military, and while it took almost a decade, that was responsible for ISIS.

We did actually have someone else as President from 2009-12

[Cory]

She is right that disbanding the Iraqi military was a massive mistake, but Bush is right in saying that in hindsight we should've kept 10,000 or so troops there to maintain peace and enable Iraq to develop as a modern state.

They are both right. We shouldn't have invaded Iraq in the first place but it was also folly to leave when we did.

[WVdemocrat]

She is right that disbanding the Iraqi military was a massive mistake, but Bush is right in saying that in hindsight we should've kept 10,000 or so troops there to maintain peace and enable Iraq to develop as a modern state.

They are both right. We shouldn't have invaded Iraq in the first place but it was also folly to leave when we did.

^This. This exactly.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

Well, he's not wrong. Other candidates wouldn't have even engaged.

[NewYorkExpress]

The Kid's half right.

You don't leave the Iraqi Military with weapons and nothing to do. Either you take the weapons or you keep the military together. Dubya did the exact things that one shouldn't do with an occupied military, and while it took almost a decade, that was responsible for ISIS.

We did actually have someone else as President from 2009-12

President Obama wasn't President in 2004. If you want to blame Obama for anything in foreign policy, go after him on the Arab Spring, which did occur on his watch.

[publicunofficial]

Needs to take a lesson from his old man about not looking at your watch

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[King]

Needs to take a lesson from his old man about not looking at your watch

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Hey, if he wants replace Medicaid with buying everyone $1000 Apple Watches, I'm sold.

[Torie]

1. There was no clear and present  danger that required the US to invade Iraq when it did, even if it had WOMD's as assumed by most.

2. There  was no realization that the mission creep of taking Saddam out was buying into a Sunni-Shia civil war.

3. The civil war ensued with the US in the middle, until after a vast expenditure of money and lives, order was restored, in essentially a de facto partition of Iraq.

4. The Shias were elected, and really did not want the US there, because they wanted to resume the civil war, and ethnically cleanse the Sunni some more, because they found the terms of the de-facto partition unacceptable, and there were still grudges to settle, and thus did not agree to the modest terms the US wanted about US troops not being tried in Iraq courts, so without trying too hard to bully the Shia government to back off, Obama took the opportunity to just get out, the US left and the civil war resumed. Even if the US had really bullied the Shias to stay, the US would have been in the position of trying to contain the Shias in Iraq indefinitely, and I suspect things over time would have gone downhill anyway. Resistance would have been futile, and have cost more US lives and treasure, and for what in the end?

5. ISIS then emerges as the Shia ethnic cleansing of the Sunnis resumed, in defense of the Sunni, albeit wanting total power, so also killing the Sunni tribal leaders etc wherever they could.

The moral of the story is that do your homework, and be very worried about making a regime change, that just makes things worse. The homework was not done, the genie was let out of the bottle, and now things are really, really a mess, and the US has no good policy options at all.

The above is what Jeb needed to say. But he's clueless really. He really does not understand the essence of the problem. The only option left now, is for the US to have a policy of containment, sort of like we had with the USSR, while inside the zone of destruction and despair, the hellish human tragedy will  continue unabated.

An ironic fallout of all of this, is that the remaining Christian community in the area has been destroyed. One would think the evangelical folks, etc.  would understand that fallout, but they really don't.

In sum, not by intent, or design, but as an actual causative agent, Dubya did indeed creates ISIS. The student was absolutely correct.

[SATW]

The group, in it's first form, was founded in 1999, but, yes, Bush caused the armenian genocide, the holocaust, ISIS, Vietnam, and the genocide of Native Americans

[Ebsy]

The group, in it's first form, was founded in 1999, but, yes, Bush caused the armenian genocide, the holocaust, ISIS, Vietnam, and the genocide of Native Americans

Being intentionally obtuse is so 2005.

[SATW]

The group, in it's first form, was founded in 1999, but, yes, Bush caused the armenian genocide, the holocaust, ISIS, Vietnam, and the genocide of Native Americans

Being intentionally obtuse is so 2005.

So is having an actual response to my statements, apparently

[SingingAnalyst]

1. There was no clear and present  danger that required the US to invade Iraq when it did, even if it had WOMD's as assumed by most.

2. There  was no realization that the mission creep of taking Saddam out was buying into a Sunni-Shia civil war.

3. The civil war ensued with the US in the middle, until after a vast expenditure of money and lives, order was restored, in essentially a de facto partition of Iraq.

4. The Shias were elected, and really did not want the US there, because they wanted to resume the civil war, and ethnically cleanse the Sunni some more, because they found the terms of the de-facto partition unacceptable, and there were still grudges to settle, and thus did not agree to the modest terms the US wanted about US troops not being tried in Iraq courts, so without trying too hard to bully the Shia government to back off, Obama took the opportunity to just get out, the US left and the civil war resumed. Even if the US had really bullied the Shias to stay, the US would have been in the position of trying to contain the Shias in Iraq indefinitely, and I suspect things over time would have gone downhill anyway. Resistance would have been futile, and have cost more US lives and treasure, and for what in the end?

5. ISIS then emerges as the Shia ethnic cleansing of the Sunnis resumed, in defense of the Sunni, albeit wanting total power, so also killing the Sunni tribal leaders etc wherever they could.

The moral of the story is that do your homework, and be very worried about making a regime change, that just makes things worse. The homework was not done, the genie was let out of the bottle, and now things are really, really a mess, and the US has no good policy options at all.

The above is what Jeb needed to say. But he's clueless really. He really does not understand the essence of the problem. The only option left now, is for the US to have a policy of containment, sort of like we had with the USSR, while inside the zone of destruction and despair, the hellish human tragedy will  continue unabated.

An ironic fallout of all of this, is that the remaining Christian community in the area has been destroyed. One would think the evangelical folks, etc.  would understand that fallout, but they really don't.

In sum, not by intent, or design, but as an actual causative agent, Dubya did indeed creates ISIS. The student was absolutely correct.

Pope John Paul II pleaded with GWB not to invade Iraq.

[WVdemocrat]

The group, in it's first form, was founded in 1999, but, yes, Bush caused the armenian genocide, the holocaust, ISIS, Vietnam, and the genocide of Native Americans

Being intentionally obtuse is so 2005.

So is having an actual response to my statements, apparently

Bush was directly responsible for creating an environment in which groups like ISIS can thrive. Neither he nor Obama understood the power vacuum in Iraq, and that is why ISIS exists today. Bush disbanded the Iraqi military (that's where he really messed up), and then Obama cut and run. The unstable political environment in Iraq following our invasion (caused by the power vacuum we created) is what allowed ISIS to gain a foothold.

[CountryClassSF]

Low information-ite

[SATW]

The group, in it's first form, was founded in 1999, but, yes, Bush caused the armenian genocide, the holocaust, ISIS, Vietnam, and the genocide of Native Americans

Being intentionally obtuse is so 2005.

So is having an actual response to my statements, apparently

Bush was directly responsible for creating an environment in which groups like ISIS can thrive. Neither he nor Obama understood the power vacuum in Iraq, and that is why ISIS exists today. Bush disbanded the Iraqi military (that's where he really messed up), and then Obama cut and run. The unstable political environment in Iraq following our invasion (caused by the power vacuum we created) is what allowed ISIS to gain a foothold.

Fair enough. Glad to see someone else realizes that this isn't a single President's problem.