Feb. 4, 2016
Peter Bergen wrote for CNN about Donald Trumps accusation that President Obama and Hillary Clinton are responsible for the rise of ISIS:
Donald Trump said on Saturday that President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "created ISIS."
Like many of Trump's charges this one doesn't hold much water. Clinton left the State Department in January 2013 and ISIS wasn't even founded until three months later.
But Trump's charge does raise an interesting question, which is how best to assign responsibility for the rise of ISIS, including the issue of how might the Obama administration's exit from Iraq at the end of 2011 have helped smooth the path for ISIS?
It began with a thug
The rise of ISIS starts with a Jordanian thug named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who founded ISIS' parent organization, al Qaeda in Iraq.It was Zarqawi who inaugurated al Qaeda in Iraq's televised beheadings with the killing of American businessman Nick Berg in 2004. And it was Zarqawi who ignited a civil war against the Shiites in Iraq the same year. These tactics and policies remain today at the core of ISIS.
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