Gratuitous finger-pointing is what Iraq War advocates do. They have yet to take responsibility for what will go down as one of the most horrific foreign policy debacles in American history.

Let’s be clear: What is happening in Iraq is the fault of the George W. Bush administration and those who agitated for invasion. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, ISIS “emerged in the ashes of the U.S.-led invasion to oust Hussein.” So, no invasion, no ISIS overrunning Iraq. Minus the invasion, there wouldn’t have been Maliki’s Shiite government isolating Iraq’s Sunni and Kurdish minorities, leading to an entirely foreseeable sectarian war.

As horrible as Hussein was, he ran a secular government by Middle Eastern standards. Since the U.S. invasion, Iraq has become more theocratic. More than half a million Christians have fled the country in fear for their lives. Now we have the specter of a radical theocracy governed by sharia law wherever ISIS gains control. These are exactly the kind of fanatics the Iraq War proponents promised to eradicate. Instead, the war has spawned a new and reportedly even more barbaric enemy set on establishing a global caliphate.