Why Claiming Obama Founded ISIS Is Idiotic

Donald Trump saying something stupid is about as newsworthy as the sun rising, but he outdid himself on Wednesday by claiming that President Obama founded ISIS.

Whether Trump meant that Obama actually founded ISIS (which is insane) or that Obama’s policies led to the rise of ISIS (less insane but equally ignorant) is no matter. Either interpretation is dumb and dangerous. Both are incredibly wrong and provide even more evidence that Donald Trump is completely unfit to hold the office he seeks.

Way back in 1999 — a time when President Obama was nothing more than Illinois State Senator Obama — a crazy dude in Jordan named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — let’s just call him Abu because, duh, Aladdin — started a small jihadist movement. We invaded Iraq in 2003, caused all kinds of madness there, and a bunch of foreign extremist groups — including Abu and his crew — moved on in.

Abu and his clan were extreme enough to join up with al-Qaeda in 2004. By 2006, Abu’s squad controlled territory in Iraq and began calling itself the Islamic State in Iraq (or ISI). Later that year, Abu was killed when he caught a bomb from the good ol’ US of A.

ISI lost its leader and — eventually — its territory but soldiered on with a few hard core members that survived its defeat. One of those hard core members was Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — lets call him Abu the Second — who is the current leader of ISIS.

The moral of this short terrorist history is that ISIS was either founded in 1999 or 2003. Tough to blame that one on Obama. Sorry, Donald.

Strike one.

Okay, so maybe Trump didn’t mean that Obama actually created a foreign terrorist group that wants to destroy the nation he leads — which would be quite stupid. Maybe the Orange Buffoon meant that our 2011 withdrawal of troops in Iraq allowed ISIS to regain its terrorist mojo. Certainly, a much more reasonable idea but still not accurate.

In 2010, Iraq’s Prime Minister got the big head and stripped all his political opponents of their power, brought in his homies to run the army and murdered protesters.

Quick digression — am I the only one who doesn’t have a hard time imagining Trump taking similar action if he actually became our president? Yikes. Anyway, back to the story.

The Prime Minister did some reconstruction of the Iraqi state that favored the Shia majority over the Sunni minority. This didn’t win him any points with the Sunnis who believed the PM and his new Iraqi state illegitimate. Safe to say, things in Iraq were not going well.

About the same time, Syria struck up a civil war so Abu the Second (current ISIS leader) sent some of his terrorists to Syria. The unrest in Iraq allowed Abu the Second’s crew to recruit members and the Syrian civil war allowed them access to weapons, funding, battle experience, etc. The group grew in Syria and eventually dubbed itself the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria — that’s ISIS, dudes.

So for ISIS to theoretically be Obama’s fault then you have to believe that leaving our boys in Iraq would have either stopped the Syrian civil war or kept the Iraqi Prime Minister from going all Donald Trump on everyone.

Even if we hadn’t withdrawn from Iraq, how exactly would we have stopped ISIS from gaining momentum in Syria? Additionally, the withdrawal in 2011 was actually the result of an agreement signed by George W. in December 2008. Obama actually tried to renegotiate the deal to keep troop in Iraq but it didn’t work. The renegotiation would have had to have been approved by the Iraqi government and that wasn’t happening. Iraqis wanted us out of there. Obama’s hands were tied by the deal W.’s administration agreed to.

The moral of this short terrorist history is that US troops probably couldn’t have stopped ISIS’s growth in Iraq and even if they could have there was nothing they could have done to stop its growth in other nations.

Strike two, Don Don.