The notion that President Obama, rather than President Bush, should be blamed for the consequences of the Iraq war has apparently been inducted into the official GOP lexicon of fake history.
While several other Republican historians have already weighed in on subject, the latest to do so is Louisiana governor and aspiring genius Bobby Jindal.
"The problems we face in Iraq today I don't think were because of President Bush's strength but have come about because of President Obama's weakness," Jindal said. "President Obama didn't listen to his military and other advisers and instead, he withdrew all of the troops without a status forces agreement, without some kind of remaining, residual ability to keep stability in Iraq."
The idea appears to be that Iraq was humming along just swell before that darn Obama ruined everything by abiding by a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) signed by President Bush.
The facts are not on their side, but there's a certain level of irrelevance to these semantics.
From my perspective, to hinge this argument on the Status of Forces Agreement is a misnomer. The fact is we would not be discussing the issue had the Bush administration not lied the country into a war to begin with and created the power vacuum that generated the likes of Al Qaida in Iraq, the Mahdi Army militia, or ISIS.
While we have this stupid debate, and while Congress refuses to pass a new Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), the president has actually taken action in Iraq and elsewhere.
The president, who was not a member of Congress in 2003 and was an outspoken critic of the war, is still cleaning up Republican messes that began over a decade ago.
The next conservative pundit or politician who brings up the issue of the Status of Forces Agreement should be asked if they believe the president should have signed an alternative agreement that would have allowed prosecution of American service members within Iraq.