In this clip from the Daily Show, Jon Stewart slams the Republican echo chamber’s attempts to pin the rise of ISIS on President Obama’s honoring of the troop withdrawal agreement that was signed during President Bush’s final weeks. He rightly blames the swell of ISIS recruits on Bush and the Coalition Provisional Authority’s decision to disband the Iraqi army during the first few weeks after the invasion. Left without a job or any viable opportunity, the ex-Baathist Sunni officers and soldiers that were disenfranchised under the exclusionary government of the Shiite and threatened by the uprising of Shiite militias, Nouri al-Maliki found a home and a cause with the hardline Sunni ISIS group.
Stewart then tears into the Republican complaints that President Obama refused to arm the Syrian rebels against the Alawite regime of Bashar al-Assad, citing a CIA report that found that arming insurgents only rarely makes a substantial difference, with the exception of the arms distributed to the Afghan mujahadeen in the 1980s in their fight against the Soviet Union- only to see them morph into the Taliban a few years later. “AND THATS THE SUCCESS STORY?!” demands Stewart.
Stewart brutally exposes the Republican war-hawks for their lies and their misinformation campaign to try to draw us back into war in the Middle East. We can’t let our nation make the same mistakes again.
Watch it here: