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Trump Said Obama “Founded” ISIS. Hillary’s Response Is EXCELLENT

Trump Said Obama “Founded” ISIS. Hillary’s Response Is EXCELLENT

Quickly attempting to draw attention away from his recent calls for political violence against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Trump has switched out of rebellious dogwhistles back into more comfortable territory without such a tangible connection to reality – by labeling President Obama and Hillary Clinton as the “founders” of the terrorist group known as Daesh (IS/ISIS/ISIL).

Daesh’s rise was is the product of the decades of instability that have wracked the Middle East, but the most significant event that one can pinpoint is the 2003 invasion of Iraq by President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, so if anyone is going to take the blame, it should be them.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took to Twitter to respond to these ridiculous assertions.

Daesh was born in Jordan in 1999 as the Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (JTJ) by Abu al-Zarqawi in order to overthrow the Jordanian monarchy. JTJ moved into Iraq in following the US invasion – which Trump was in full support of – and began orchestrating the guerrilla campaign against the occupation forces, building a network among disparate rebel groups and bringing in foreign jihadis from Afghanistan to repel the American “crusaders” and pioneered the playbook for modern jihadis – kidnappings, IEDs, suicide bombings, filmed executions.

In 2004, Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda “franchised” the JTJ, which became Al-Qaeda in Iraq. In 2006, the AQI joined with several other Sunni jihadi groups and established the Islamic State of Iraq on October 12th. Their attempts to assert control over several cities was thwarted by the 2007 “surge,” but the dysfunction of the Noumar al-Maliki government in Baghdad and the purposeful disenfranchisement of the Sunni provinces of Anbar and Nineveh gave them the popular support needed to solidify their positions.

The outbreak of the Syrian Civil War and the establishment of al-Qaeda’s Syria affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra in 2011 prompted a divorce between al-Qaeda and the ISI. By 2014, Daesh was strong enough to take the Iraqi cities of Mosul and Fallujah, which were abandoned by a fleeing and demoralized Iraqi army, abandoning much of the high-tech weaponry that the Bush administration had given to them and giving ISI the tools they needed to declare a worldwide caliphate. Sweeping into the poorly defended plains of northeastern Syria, their territory grew unchecked until the 2014 siege of the Kurdish city of Kobani, where the heroic men and women of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), backed by American airstrikes, were able to stop them in their tracks. They’ve been on the defensive ever since.

The key to ending Daesh is to end the Syrian Civil War. They frolic in chaos, exploit instability and fear. Order will be their downfall. In the meantime, Trump has unwittingly been a huge supporter of Daesh, by playing right into their propaganda, proving that everything horrible they say about the West is true – that we hate Muslims, that Islamic and Western cultures are incompatible. We’ve got to prove them wrong this November.

Colin Taylor
Opinion columnist and former editor-in-chief of Occupy Democrats. He graduated from Bennington College with a Bachelor's degree in history and political science. He now focuses on advancing the cause of social justice and equality in America.

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