Looking at the news of the day the appearance of Laura Ingraham on Fox has been a big deal. Ingraham connected the Iraqi no fly zone, started by Bush Sr. and maintained by Bill Clinton, with the sorry state of modern Iraq... which presidential leapfrogging observation is notable to be sure.
But the Fox guests went even further in absolving Bush Jr. of blame in the matter. They did not just ignore his role in invading Iraq and getting us stuck in a years-long bloody quagmire. They ignored the fact that Bush Jr. is the one responsible for arranging the final withdrawal, which arrangement was overseen by President Obama.
Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin, however, argued that Iraq was in shambles because President Barack Obama had pulled troops out of the country.
"The greatest failure of this president has been to recede from the scene, and chaos does ensue when the United States does not stand up to its allies, doesn't move swiftly when we had the chance to get Assad out of there," she insisted. "If we hadn't pulled out of Iraq, it might be stable now."
There are none so blind as those who refuse to see. Ingraham see's the trouble in Iraq as a function of the Democratic president that preceded Bush Jr. Rubin perceives the Iraqi difficulty as a function of the Democratic president that followed Bush Jr. To be a mainstream conservative the blame for whatever occurs in Iraq can not be placed upon George Bush Jr., implausible as the justifications that shift blame from Bush Jr. may sound.
This is like conservatives refusing to acknowledge that the terrorist attacks on 09/11 happened under Bush Jr. They point out that terrorism has happened under Obama, but pretend that Bush kept us safe. Or they (laughably) start the clock to measure presidential effectiveness at citizen safety keeping on 09/12. Conservatives refuse to see terrorism, including the deadliest terror attack in modern world history, if it happened while Bush was president, but harp on Obama for terrorist attacks that have cost a pittance of the loss of life under Bush Jr.
It is the modern day equivalent of one of Aesop's most famous fables: 6 blind men, each touching a different part of the elephant and describing the wrong thing. The main difference between the modern conservative and Aesop's fable are that the blind men of Aesop's time were actually blind, where todays conservative is just willfully obtuse. "When I consider Iraq it is plainly Clinton's fault." "When I look at Iraq it is clearly the fault of President Obama."
They only appear to be blind because they refuse to acknowledge the obvious.