Ten minutes after seven on Monday night, Marc A. Thiessen, former speechwriter for President George W. Bush and well-known conservative writer and political commentator, took the stage in the Howard H. Baker Center to discuss the role of the United States in combating ISIS and other extremist organizations in the Middle East.
Thiessen, who was invited by the UT chapter of Young Americans for Freedom, an organization dedicated to promoting conservative values, critiqued the Obama administration’s military withdrawal from Middle Eastern regions and advocated for a stronger U.S. presence in Iraq and Syria in order to effectively eradicate ISIS and other extremist groups.
He began with a short anecdote connecting the almost surreal hatred and violence seen in ISIS videos to that of Nazi Germany before asking and answering the question of how and why ISIS has been able to expand to its size and gain momentum.
His answer: the absence of the United States.
After the surge in 2007, Thiessen said, the predecessors of ISIS had been driven out of power and stripped of their influence in Iraq, leaving the region pacified for the time being. It is during the American exodus from Iraq under the Obama administration, however, that ISIS was allowed to take root, Thiessen argued.
“Obama withdrew from Iraq, taking our boot off the necks of the terrorists and unplugging our intelligence and special operations capabilities we had that was able to take out their leaders, allowing them the vacuum to reconstitute themselves and regroup,” Thiessen explained.
He went on to list two other “fatal errors” on the part of the Obama Administration that allowed ISIS to form, including the administration’s failure to take decisive action in Syria and refusal to aid the Iraqi army before ISIS had taken any major population centers.
“Barack Obama came to office not to be the president who continued wars, but the president who ended wars,” Thiessen said. “So he put his head in the sand and allowed this crisis to overflow.”
None of the actions of the Bush Administration were listed by Thiessen as possible causes for the current military and political situation in Iraq.
Thiessen’s stance on Iranian involvement in the conflict and the region was also reflected in his views on torture, the need for ground troops in Iraq and the need to promote the image of an American “strong horse” to prevent the nations involved from supporting ISIS or Iran instead.
The consequences of failing to do so, Thiessen warned, could be more dramatic than many people would reasonably imagine.
“It’s only a matter of time before they bring the violence that we see on our TV screens into our country,” he said.
During the course of the lecture, Thiessen failed to address many of the shortcomings and criticisms of the Bush Administration, repeatedly quoting President Obama and referring to the liberation of the Iraqi people.
Justin Langley, a sophomore in accounting and executive member of Young Americans for Freedom, said people should take Thiessen’s background into account when looking at the arguments he presented.
“You have to take bias into consideration,” Langley said. “You have to know that he was in the Pentagon when we were attacked. So he’s going to come in with some strong feelings. But you have to be able to look at the whole picture, and analyze both ways.”
Although there was little opposition present at the lecture Monday, Diana Howell, SGA senator and member of Young Americans for Freedom, maintained that they encourage and welcome opposing viewpoints at all of their events.
“We wanted to get that opposition, we wanted to get people from all points of view,” Howell said. “That’s one of the most important points of it, is getting that dialogue on campus.”
