There’s a short list of words Jeb Bush should probably go out of his way to avoid. “Quagmire” is one of them.
The National Memo reported yesterday on the Republican presidential hopeful’s latest appearance on “Fox & Friends,” where Bush shared his thoughts on defeating ISIS.
“It means a strategy — we don’t have a strategy right now. This president is incrementally getting us into a quagmire, without having a strategy to defeat ISIS. This is a threat to Western civilization, a threat to our own country. We need to be merciless in this effort.”
I mean, really, what’s a poor blogger supposed to do in a situation like this? George W. Bush’s brother, who has surrounded himself with his brother’s national security team, feels justified in complaining about President Obama “getting us into a quagmire,” without a strategy for success? Is Jeb purposely pretending the entirety of the Bush-Cheney era didn’t happen?
For that matter, given that Obama continues to oppose the deployment of thousands of U.S. ground troops to fight in Syria’s civil war — a conflict in which we’re opposed to both sides — isn’t the current policy in no way similar to “getting us into a quagmire”?
Finally, let’s not overlook the fact that ISIS terrorists are not a legitimate “threat to Western Civilization.” It takes an awful lot to bring down a civilization that’s spanned several centuries and multiple continents.
Is ISIS a credible national security threat? Sure. Is the fate of Western Civilization at stake? No.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."