When politicians hit the campaign trail, they often say they're interested in hearing from “real Americans.” But sometimes, those "real Americans" ask them the kind of questions they'd rather not answer. Like yesterday, when a (pretty ballsy) college student took Jeb Bush to task at a town hall in in Reno, NV, as CNN reports.
"Why are you saying that ISIS was created by us not having a presence in the Middle East, when it's pointless wars where we send young American men to die for the idea of American exceptionalism?" Ivy Ziedrich, a political science student at the University of Nevada, asked the former Florida governor. "Why are you spouting nationalist rhetoric to get us involved in more wars?"
She added, "Your brother created ISIS."
Ziedrich is referring to when Paul Bremer, who led the U.S. forces in Iraq under then President George W. Bush, disbanded the entire Iraqi Army in 2003. The move left tens of thousands of soldiers disaffected, armed, and unemployed — which many have said contributed to the rise of ISIS.
“It was when 30,000 individuals who were part of the Iraqi military were forced out — they had no employment, they had no income, and they were left with access to all of the same arms and weapons," The New York Times reports Ziedrich said.
Jeb Bush responded that he would have to “respectfully disagree,” and commented that Ziedrich’s stance was “re-writing history.” He maintains that the rise of ISIS did not stem from the decision to invade Iraq, but from the Obama administration's withdrawal of troops that could have stabilized the region.
Earlier this week, Bush raised eyebrows when he said that, even knowing as we do now that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he'd still have invaded, as his brother, President Bush, did.