Bush Points Out Foreign Policy Failures, White House Snaps Back

Former President George W. Bush spoke privately over the weekend at a closed-door fundraiser, where he finally said what he thought of President Obama’s foreign policy. His remarks were written down by an attendee, and then were written up by Josh Rogin for Bloomberg View.

Bush said that Obama’s plan to lift sanctions on Iran with a promise that they could snap back in place at any time was not plausible. He also said the deal would be bad for American national security in the long term: “You think the Middle East is chaotic now? Imagine what it looks like for our grandchildren. That’s how Americans should view the deal.”

Bush then went into a detailed criticism of Obama’s policies in fighting the Islamic State and dealing with the chaos in Iraq. On Obama’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops in Iraq at the end of 2011, he quoted Senator Lindsey Graham calling it a “strategic blunder.” Bush signed an agreement with the Iraqi government to withdraw those troops, but the idea had been to negotiate a new status of forces agreement to keep U.S. forces there past 2011. The Obama administration tried and failed to negotiate such an agreement.

Bush said he views the rise of the Islamic State as al-Qaeda’s “second act” and that they may have changed the name but that murdering innocents is still the favored tactic. He defended his own administration’s handling of terrorism, noting that the terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who confessed to killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, was captured on his watch: “Just remember the guy who slit Danny Pearl’s throat is in Gitmo, and now they’re doing it on TV.”

President Bush and President Obama, in 2008
President Bush and President Obama, in 2008
Well, any and all criticism of the Obama administration means that President Thin-Skinned MUST have a retort. In this case, it was press secretary Josh Earnest who got sent out with the oldest political excuse – it’s all Bush’s fault.

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