Bush advocates ‘more muscle’ in approach to ISIS

DAVENPORT - Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush accused President Barack Obama on Thursday of 'running out the clock” until the end of his term in the fight against the Islamic State, saying a more muscular approach could defeat the extremist group and 'change the dynamic” in Syria.

Bush was featured at a national security forum at St. Ambrose University, where he also defended aspects of brother George W. Bush's prosecution of the Iraq War.

The forum drew about 300 people for a nearly hourlong discussion between Bush and a moderator, Associated Press journalist Ken Dilanian. And it came just two days after Bush gave a foreign policy speech in California, where he blamed the president and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the rise of the Islamic State.

Bush said U.S. troops were pulled out of Iraq too soon, leaving chaos.

On Thursday, he said the president has had an incremental approach toward the Islamic State tied to his own exit from the White House.

'This is all an exercise in just get it past January of 2017,” Bush said.

The former Florida governor added that he believes the fight against the extremist group can be won and that it would have a broader effect on the region.

'I don't think that this is a decades-long struggle, and I think we need to be much more muscular in our approach than this,” he said. 'And frankly, it would change the dynamic in Syria if we showed more success in Iraq as well.”

Bush, whose brother and father both were president, took several questions about the Iraq War.

It's a topic he struggled with earlier this year, at first defending the decision to go into Iraq, then later calling it a mistake.

At the forum, he said there were things done in Iraq that were wrong, such as dismantling the country's army after the initial invasion. But he also said, 'taking out Saddam Hussein turned out to be a pretty good deal.”

Bush added that the 2007 surge was an act of courage and a great military victory that left a fragile but secure Iraq.

He called it an attempt to 'rewrite history” to say, as some Democrats have, that the U.S. exit from Iraq was ordained by the timeline his brother agreed to with the Iraqi government.

Bush said Thursday the agreement could have been renegotiated.

The ex-governor also said he didn't see a way to handle foreign prisoners other than putting them at Guantanamo Bay.

'This is not a torture chamber,” he said.

Doug Peyton, a Davenport activist who attended the forum, said he has been 'anti-Republican establishment” and considered Bush part of that establishment.

He said, however, that Bush's performance at the forum gave him a new perspective.

'I was impressed with his mastery of the situation, and I'm going to give him a second look,” Peyton said.

Democrats sought to portray Bush's foreign policy ideas as a continuation of his brother's policies.

'If Jeb Bush's idea of leadership is to return to the policies that made the world a more dangerous place while criticizing those who tried to clean up the mess, then he will lead us back into a position where we will be weakened at home and abroad,” U.S. Rep. Dave Loebsack, Iowa's lone Democrat in Congress, said in a statement.