A decade of anger over the Iraq war resurfaced in the 2016 US election race on Tuesday, with Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton’s campaigns trading blame about that country’s continued instability.
Jeb Bush blamed his Democratic White House rival, former secretary of state Clinton, for allowing the emergence of the Islamic State group by withdrawing troops from Iraq too fast, AFP reported.
“It was a case of blind haste to get out,” Bush told an audience in California, “and to call the tragic consequences somebody else’s problem.”
“That premature withdrawal was the fatal error, creating the void that IS moved in to fill.”
Taking a political risk, Bush even suggested it might be necessary to send more troops back to Iraq. “Right now, we have around 3,500 soldiers and marines in Iraq, and more may well be needed.”
But on Tuesday, Clinton’s campaign defended her record.
Long-time foreign policy aide Jake Sullivan, a frontrunner to become Clinton’s national security advisor if she is elected, accused Jeb Bush of a “pretty bold attempt to rewrite history and reassign responsibility.”
“They cannot be allowed to escape responsibility for the real mistake here,” he said, saying IS emerged from Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which flourished amid the occupation.
“It didn’t exist before the invasion. It emerged in no small part as a result of president Bush’s failed strategy … It gained strength by signing up former military officers from the army that the Bush administration disbanded.”
