Jeb! Tries To Polish Family Legacy, Doesn't Realize It's A Turd

Juan Cole at the University of Michigan (Go Blue!) has some facts that set the record straight on John Ellis "Jeb!" Bush's recent revisionist Iraq War wanderings:

Jeb Bush very unwisely went after Hillary Clinton last night on the grounds that her Iraq policies gave us Daesh (ISIS, ISIL). [snip]

One of the arguments Mr. Bush made was that while his brother, George W. Bush, didn’t get everything right, he did have a brilliant moment with the 2007 troop escalation or “surge,” which put the world right. Then that horrible Obama crew, including Mrs. Cinton, came along and screwed things up by withdrawing from Iraq in 2011.

First of all, saying that W. didn’t get everything right in Iraq is like saying that Custer didn’t get everything right at the Little Bighorn. Bush’s Iraq misadventure was the biggest foreign policy screw-up in American history. Didn’t get everything right, indeed.

Second, Jeb Bush’s narrative about the “surge” is mythical history unconnected to reality. See my Engaging the Muslim World for the real story.

In brief, here is what happened.  (our emphasis)

Cole then proceeds to masterfully dismantle Jeb's ! faulty neocon history, once again calling into question whether Jeb! is the "smart Bush" (one always has to remember, it's all relative). 

Jeb! has recently been on a campaign to out-Trump Rump in the belligerent know-nothing department. On torture.  On the Iran nuclear deal.  On relations with Cuba.  Jeb! is starting to sound like Dumbya on steriods.  But when your "investors" have lined your campaign coffers with tens of millions of dollars and you're at 5 percent in Iowa, you need to start flailing away and hope that you're appealing to someone, somewhere.

Problem is, a Bush trying to sound smart about Iraq is a guaranteed Fail. 

Neocon Republicans And The "Who Lost Iraq?" Fast Shuffle

Several perceptive folks have noticed, particularly in the aftermath of John Ellis "J.E.B." Bush's week-long floundering on brother Dumbya's Iraq catastrophe, that Republicans are cowardly trying to turn the issue of ISIL's recent gains (after a series of setbacks) in Iraq into an indictment of President Obama (and, of course, Hillary Clinton) to divert attention from the Republican originator of the mess (and his "smarter" brother):

After more than a decade bearing the political burden of Iraq, Republicans are making a dogged effort to shed it by arguing that the Islamic State’s gruesome ascent is a symptom of Obama’s foreign policy, rather than a byproduct of the 2003 invasion they once championed.

Chaos in the city of Ramadi, which this week fell under the control of Islamic State militants, has only intensified the Republican outcry.

Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog noticed the corporate "mainstream media" is already engaged in tying the recent loss of Ramadi to ISIL into a narrative about the pain veterans of the Iraq War feel over seeing the city fall.  Mind you, not that the whole bloody mess originated in the first place because of the lies of Likudnik chickenhawk neocons.  More evidence, if any were needed, that the "mainstream media" is the perfect foil for Republican revisionists because it has the perspective of Mr. Magoo and the attention span of a mayfly.

Charles P. Pierce noted Steve's catch and had this to say:

...The only way for the people who shook their moneymakers for the war in 2002 to justify their continued place in our politics is to use ISIL to replace the aluminum tubes and hope that enough people don't notice what a grotesque fast shuffle this is. That will clear the way for the candidates on the Republican side -- Rubio, Graham, Jeb (!), and, most recently, Chris Christie -- who want to revive the old neocon hoo-rah while distancing themselves from its savage consequences. It looks very much like "Who lost Iraq?" may replace the disastrous decisions of the Avignon Presidency in this campaign, and that a good chunk of the Republican field will be perfectly happy to allow that to happen. For all the talk of the president's fecklessness from the chickenhawk choir, what those candidates are about right now is the worst kind of cowardice.

That Republicans are trying to turn recent events in the Middle East into a "Who lost Iraq?" narrative is beyond obscene, especially, as Pierce notes, with the same Republican neocons (Sen. "Huckleberry Butchmeup" Graham, Sen. Marco "Glug Glug" Rubio and "J.E.B." Bush adviser Paul Wolfowitz) ready and willing to repeat the same disastrous mistakes all over again, with a new generation of someone elses children. That whirring sound must be George Santayana spinning in his grave.

UPDATE:  Ruben Bolling sums it up also (click on image to enlarge):

(Attribution: Ruben Bolling)

Cartoon of the Day

(click to enlarge)

It's Dumbya's "I broke it, you fix it" gift that keeps on giving, as ISIS/ISIL terrorizes much of Iraq, and Kurdish Peshmerga defend their land while a new government forms in Baghdad.

BONUS:  Eugene Robinson has a column reminding anyone who needs to be reminded (and there are many) how and why we got to the place we're in.

(cartoon:  Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Gocomics.com)