When Ivy Ziedrich, a nineteen-year-old college student, approached Jeb Bush
on the campaign trail and zinged
him with “Your brother created ISIS!” the media ate it up and the video
went viral. Ms. Ziedrich, a member of the College Democrats, talks very
fast, and she managed to utter the following diatribe before Jeb could get in
a word edgewise:
“You stated that ISIS was created because we don’t have enough presence
and we’ve been pulling out of the Middle East. However, the threat of ISIS was
created by the Iraqi coalition authority, which ousted the entire government
of Iraq. It was when 30,000 individuals who are part of the Iraqi military were
forced out. They had no employment, they had no income, yet they were left with
access to all the same arms and weapons. Your brother created ISIS!”
Poor Jeb! Being even less informed than his ambusher, he could only “respectfully
disagree” and reiterate the neocon party line: if only we’d kept more troops
in longer ISIS wouldn’t have coalesced. “You can rewrite history all you want,”
he said, with a sigh, “but the simple fact is we’re in a much more unstable
place because America pulled back.”