Guest Commentary: Obama, Hillary revived ISIS

By Doug Truax

ISIS was shattered by the George W. Bush surge in 2007 and lying on the ash heap of history. That is until President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a series of stunning blunders that resuscitated the evil savages.

This is an important point not to be lost in the debate over whether Obama and Clinton "founded" or "created" the radical Islamic terror group. More important is that ISIS could be dead today but for the disastrous Obama-Clinton policies.

This is not idle after-the-fact commentary. I repeatedly made the point in 2013 when I ran for U.S. Senate in Illinois that it was a massive mistake by Obama to ideologically withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011 and create a vacuum sure to be filled by terrorists. Obama not only ignored veterans like me but top ranking military advisors in his own national security circle. It was more important for him to prove he was the "anti-George W. Bush" than to make sober national security decisions that honored soldiers who fought and died in Iraq and protected Americans at home.

With the vacuum created, ISIS overran parts of Iraq and Syria. Then, Obama-Clinton compounded the blunder by supporting so-called Syrian rebels who were sympathetic to, or aligned with ISIS.

All this fits under the umbrella of the Obama-Clinton team's incompetence and weak leadership and how it has translated into a more chaotic and dangerous world. We are safer when America exerts principled, strong leadership on the world stage. Withdrawing from that responsibility brings us closer to larger conflicts, history has taught us again and again.

Yes, editorial writers, commentators, historians and citizens -- Obama and Hillary were largely responsible for the rise of ISIS. We can quibble about the exact descriptor but not about the danger we all face because of these monumental mistakes in foreign policy.

Doug Truax is Founder and Executive Director of Restoration PAC and Restoration Action. He is a West Point graduate, Army veteran, health care entrepreneur and former Senate candidate in Illinois.