Don’t Get Fooled Again

Jeb Bush Is Poised to Follow In His Brother’s Foreign Policy Footsteps

In case you had forgotten that expected presidential candidate Jeb Bush would promote many of the same failed policies that his brother George W. Bush did, Jeb did a good job of reminded us of that this week. In an interview with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly on Monday night, Jeb said he would have authorized the Iraq War knowing what we know now.

Soon after the interview, Bush tried to walk back the comment to Kelly saying he had misinterpreted the question, “I thought we were talking about ‘given what people knew then, would you have done it?’.” The next day, he dodged the question again on Sean Hannity’s radio show, blaming faulty intelligence and praising his brother’s leadership. Just today, he said hypothetical questions about the Iraq war are a “disservice” to troops. (Actually, if there had been more questions leading into the Iraq War, we may have been able to save thousands of lives.)

However, the issue is not solely whether Jeb Bush misunderstood the question. The oft-forgotten fact is that the Iraq War was not dictated by intelligence. Rather, as ThinkProgress Editor-in-Chief Judd Legum writes, “the [Bush] administration cherry-picked, manipulated and ignored intelligence to support their predetermined outcome.” A bipartisan report of the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded as much.

Later in his interview with Megyn Kelly, Jeb Bush said, “News flash to the world, if they’re trying to find places where there’s big space between me and my brother, this might not be one of those.” That shouldn’t be too much of a news flash for anyone who has been paying attention to Jeb’s position on foreign policy. Here are a few facts to prove there is little to no space between the Bush brothers:

• Of Jeb’s campaign’s 21 foreign policy advisors, 17 came from George W.’s administration. His circle of foreign policy advisers has been drawn almost entirely from his brother’s team.

• Jeb called the 2007 Iraq troop surge “hugely successful.” In the first major foreign policy speech of his campaign, Jeb praised the 2007 troop surge saying, “It was one of the most heroic acts of courage politically that any president’s done because there was no support for this. It was hugely successful and it created a stability that when a new president came in, he could’ve built on.”

• Jeb told fundraisers that his brother is his top advisor on Israeli and Middle East issues. Speaking to a group of Manhattan bankers in early May, Bush said “If you want to know who I listen to for advice, it’s him.”

• Jeb supports mass surveillance by the NSA that was authorized by his brother. He called the continuation of mass surveillance the “best part of the Obama administration.”

BOTTOM LINE: Despite the fact that Jeb Bush has tried to distance himself from his name, he seems poised to stumble along in his brother’s foreign policy footsteps. So the next time you hear his rhetoric leading you in a different direction, don’t get fooled again.

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