Am I my brother's (score-) keeper?

Image by Eric Draper/AP from the 2000 campaign.

J.E.B. in Politico:

Bush said that Obama “abandoned” Iraq and lamented the fall of Ramadi to Islamic State terrorists, saying that “ISIS didn’t exist when my brother was president” and that Al Qaeda was decimated under his brother.

Sorry, Jebbie, but ISIS was founded, under conditions entirely created under your brother's orders, and because of your brother's stupid and probably illegal orders, in Camp Bucca in 2004. This is really a pretty well known fact.

The rump Qa'eda organization in Afghan exile in January 2001 expanded when an Iraqi organization began calling itself Qa'eda and started military action 5 months after the invasion, in August 2003, later supplying fighters to Syria, and Qa'eda operations opened in Yemen and Somalia around 2007. A defeated and marginalized organization under the Clinton administration, Qa'eda was able to destroy the World Trade Center and much of the Pentagon and 3,000 lives in the first Bush term because George didn't want to listen to the warnings, being more interested in war with Iraq, and had expanded by the end of the second term into a fierce international force with operations all over the Middle East as well as Europe, North America, and Southeast Asia; it was hardly "decimated".

Obama abandoned Iraq, if by "abandon" you mean "carry out the Status of Forces Agreement signed by President Bush and Prime Minister Maliki on December 14 2008 in". By other more conventional definitions, no, he did not abandon Iraq. You may not approve of the way he does it (I'm not sure I approve of it myself, but my idea of what he ought to do instead is probably close to the opposite of yours, J.E.B.), but he and the US foreign and defense establishments have been continually engaged in Iraq under the conditions laid out in the SOFA since his inauguration, virtually directing the Baghdad government's wars against its enemies, with the 4200 trainers and advisers and gods only know how much money, as formally noted in the joint communiqué from his most recent meeting with Prime Minister Abadi on April 14 this year:

The President and the Prime Minister met today at the White House to reaffirm the long-term U.S.-Iraq strategic partnership based on mutual respect and common interests and their shared commitment to the U.S.-Iraq Strategic Framework Agreement.  The President expressed his strong support for the progress that the Prime Minister and the Iraqi government have accomplished since the two leaders last met seven months ago. 

His latest budget request, in February, included $7 billion for the Overseas Contingency Operations in general plus an addition $3.5 billion to combat ISIS. Not that it's necessarily going to do any good. That's a pretty big mess your brother made, starting a "preemptive" war that you've finally acknowledged was an error and that created ISIS as well as strengthening al-Qa'eda (not to mention Iran) and destabilizing the whole of West Asia from Lebanon to Pakistan in ways whose end we still cannot envisage.

You're really setting up to be a bigger liar than Romney, you know. I'm pretty sure that's not the winning strategy.

But aren't you glad Obama stuck with the decision of Nouri al-Maliki and George W. Bush that no more Americans needed to die in Iraq? Happy Memorial Day!