(MENAFN- Arab Times) Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush will step up his criticism of Hillary Rodham Clinton and her tenure as secretary of state on Tuesday, arguing in a speech on foreign policy the Democratic front-runner shares in the mistakes that he says led to the rise of the Islamic State.
The former Florida governor and the son and brother of two former presidents will also call for a renewed sense of US leadership in the Middle East, which he says is needed to defeat the militant group and an ideology that "is, to borrow a phrase, the focus of evil in the modern world."
"The threat of global jihad, and of the Islamic State in particular, requires all the strength, unity and confidence that only American leadership can provide," Bush will say, according to excerpts of his remarks as prepared for delivery. Bush will be addressing some of the key issues in the 2016 presidential election, national security and terrorism.
While Bush and Clinton were the biggest names going into the presidential race, lately they have been overshadowed by Donald Trump, the outspoken billionaire magnate and reality television start who has emerged as a front-runner in the crowded Republican field despite his fiery and controversial rhetoric. Clinton remains the overwhelming favorite for the Democratic nomination. In a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, Bush plans to tie the rise of the militant Sunni group to the departure of US forces from Iraq in 2011. IS occupies a large swath of Iraq and Syria, and has a presence elsewhere in the Mideast.
"ISIS grew while the United States disengaged from the Middle East and ignored the threat," Bush will say. "And where was Secretary of State Clinton in all of this? Clinton, he says, "stood by as that hard-won victory by American and allied forces was thrown away. In all her record-setting travels, she stopped by Iraq exactly once."
American troops left Iraq in Dec 2011 as required under a 2008 security agreement worked out by former President George W. Bush. Both countries tried to negotiate plans to keep at least several thousand US forces in Iraq beyond the deadline to help keep a lid on simmering tensions among Islamic sects. The Iraqi government refused to let US forces remain in their country with the legal immunity President Barack Obama's administration insisted was necessary to protect them.
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