In a dubious strategy to defend his brother’s invasion of Iraq and embrace what the Washington Post calls his “great potential weaknesses,” Jeb emerged Tuesday as an ardent defender of the Iraq invasion and the massive foreign policy failure that was the Bush Doctrine.
What are the preliminary reviews of Jeb’s grand — if ill-advised — foreign policy foray?
They’re calling his defense of his brother’s misguided Iraq invasion “revisionism,” “inaccurate,” an “embrace” of his family legacy, and, most-tellingly – and alarmingly — a return to the “Bush Doctrine.”
Watch American Bridge’s new video: “Revisionist History 101 with Jeb W.Bush.”
And here’s what news outlets are saying about Jeb’s ill-advised decision to lean in hard on his brother’s Iraq invasion:MSNBC: Video: Jeb Bush Trying To Rewrite The History Of The Iraq War
This is very treacherous territory for Jeb Bush.
…
Every time Jeb Bush and Iraq appear in a headline together, or in media coverage together a lot of people are going to ask the question: “How are you talking about the end of the war, but not talking about the beginning of the war, and the policies of your brother, former President George W. Bush in promoting that war?”
CNN: Video: Jeb Bush’s Speech On Iraq Was Disappointing
Fareed Zakaria: Foreign policy, interestingly — interestingly, given who is father was — seems to be a bit of a weak spot. He had trouble answering that question about Iraq — he was asked five times. In the debates, overshadowed by the carnival of Donald Trump, was the fact that Jeb Bush was again somewhat weak in his foreign policy answers.
McClatchy: Jeb Bush offered inaccurate version of Iraq war history
Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, in his Tuesday speech that was billed as a major foreign policy address, provided a distorted version of the U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq and an incorrect account of the origins of the Islamic State.
…
Bush’s account of the withdrawal as a “case of blind haste” omitted the fact that it was his brother who’d set the withdrawal date of Dec. 31, 2011, in an agreement that he signed with the Iraqi government in 2008.
He also neglected to note that the Iraqi government strongly opposed the continued presence of U.S. forces.
…
Bush’s version of the success of the surge, launched to contain attacks on U.S. forces and minority Sunni Muslims by Iranian-backed Shiite militias, also was incomplete.
Washington Post: Op-Ed: Jeb Bush wants to bring back the Bush Doctrine
If you were thinking that Bush might be the grown-up in this field — or offer something much different from the approach that was so disastrous for his brother — well, think again. It’s looking a lot like the return of the Bush Doctrine, just with a different Bush.
…
Make no mistake: What Jeb Bush and the other GOP candidates (with the exception of Rand Paul) are offering on foreign policy is nothing more or less than a return to the Bush Doctrine. They won’t call it that, because they know that would be politically foolish; Americans may have short memories, but not that short. Maybe in their next debate, someone can ask them how their foreign policy would differ in any way from George W. Bush’s. I doubt they’d have an answer.
The Guardian: Jeb Bush to embrace family legacy on Iraq in hawkish foreign policy speech
Only this May, the Bush 2016 campaign was struggling with how to approach the close association with the foreign policy of his brother and father’s administrations, both of which led invasions of Iraq.
…
Jeb Bush shares many of the same foreign advisers as both his brother and father – including key architects of the original Iraq strategy such as Paul Wolfowitz – but many Washington neo-cons have drifted toward the more hawkish campaign of Florida rival Marco Rubio in recent weeks.
Los Angeles Times: In Jeb Bush’s foreign policy speech, George W. Bush goes missing
There was a man missing from Jeb Bush’s foreign policy speech Tuesday night at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library — the man who started the war in Iraq that Bush essentially blamed on those who inherited it, namely President Obama and his first secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The missing man was Jeb Bush’s older brother, former President George W. Bush, whose role went unspoken.
Bloomberg: Jeb Bush Faults Obama and Clinton, But Not W., for Middle East Turmoil
O brother, where art thou?
In a Tuesday speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library in Simi Valley, California, Jeb Bush criticized President Obama and Hillary Clinton as “failed peacemakers” in the Middle East who stood by as Islamic militants gained power in Iraq and Syria, but made no mention of his own brother, the man who invaded Iraq in 2003, former President George W. Bush.
Washington Post: Jeb Bush faults Hillary Clinton for ‘premature’ Iraq withdrawal
Jeb Bush struggled for several days earlier this year to say whether he would have authorized the Iraq war, a blunder that exposed his difficulty in talking about what many Americans consider the biggest failure of George W. Bush’s presidency.
…
The move poses a risk by implicitly linking him to the unpopular policies of his brother.
…
Bush’s remarks came nearly three months after he struggled for several days to explain whether he would have authorized the Iraq war based on intelligence that emerged after the conflict began.
New York Times: Jeb Bush Blames Hillary Clinton and Obama for Iraq’s Decline
With his speech, Mr. Bush found himself in a position of going after Mrs. Clinton on an issue in which many Republicans argue she is vulnerable — but at the risk of reminding voters of what Republicans see as one of his own great potential weaknesses: his last name. Mr. Bush’s brother, President George W. Bush, led the United States into war in Iraq in 2003 and, when it was going badly in 2006, ordered the commitment of additional forces there in what came to be known as the surge. His father, the elder President George Bush, ordered the nation’s first invasion of Iraq in 1990.
Washington Post Op-Ed: Jeb Bush wants to bring back the Bush Doctrine
If you were thinking that Bush might be the grown-up in this field — or offer something much different from the approach that was so disastrous for his brother — well, think again. It’s looking a lot like the return of the Bush Doctrine, just with a different Bush.
…
Make no mistake: What Jeb Bush and the other GOP candidates (with the exception of Rand Paul) are offering on foreign policy is nothing more or less than a return to the Bush Doctrine. They won’t call it that, because they know that would be politically foolish; Americans may have short memories, but not that short. Maybe in their next debate, someone can ask them how their foreign policy would differ in any way from George W. Bush’s. I doubt they’d have an answer.
Salon: Jeb’s Iraq revisionism: His idiot brother wrecked the place, but it’s all Obama’s fault
The Republican foreign policy platform of the post-George W. Bush era is built around this idea that we actually won the Iraq war before Obama came in and lost it. It’s a fabrication, and it was concocted by the same people who dreamed up the invasion in the first place so that they could dodge ownership of the disaster they created. It’s a fiction that gives false comfort to those who believe against all evidence that the United States can reshape the world through military power – a notion that almost every Republican presidential candidate subscribes to.
Jeb was a full-throated supporter of the Iraq war, and he can’t really distance himself from it given that the strategic calamity of the Iraq invasion is, for him, a family heirloom. But by rewriting a bit of history and retroactively shifting a few goalposts, he can once again preach the virtues of the Bush Doctrine while chiding Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for losing the war his brother “won.” Thus we’re left with a surreal and infuriating situation in which a member of the Bush family is accusing someone else of refusing to take ownership of our failed Iraq policy.
Published: Aug 13, 2015