Trump blows an opportunity to hit Obama and Clinton on rise of ISIL

The Hill:

Donald Trump's incendiary remarks about President Obama and Hillary Clinton being the "founder" and "co-founder" of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has shifted attention away from a real vulnerability for Democrats this election season.

 National security experts say Trump is well-positioned to make a strong case that Obama and his former secretary of State have failed to stop the spread of ISIS. 

But instead, the focus has recently fallen on the accuracy and tone of Trump's inflated and personal attacks.

"It's absolutely a wasted opportunity," said Phillip Lohaus, research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

"There's a real argument to be made here on policy grounds that Obama and to a certain extent, also Secretary Clinton, were complicit or led policies that allowed a group like ISIS to become as powerful as it became. And instead, that's not what the story's about," he said.

Instead of getting calls from reporters on whether Obama's policies helped create ISIS, Lohaus said he's getting calls on whether Obama is really the "founder" of ISIS.

"Of course he's not," he said.

Experts say Trump could be making defensible arguments such as that the U.S. pulling out troops in Iraq in 2011 enabled ISIS to grow instead of making more personal accusations.

Or that Obama not enforcing the "red line" to use military force against the Syrian regime if it used chemical weapons allowed jihadist groups that opposed the regime to thrive.

"It would be accurate to say that some of the policy decision that the Obama administration has made allowed jihadist groups that had already formed to grow into what has become ISIS," Lohaus said.

"I wouldn't put it this way, but 'enabler' would probably be better?"

Aki Peritz, a senior fellow at the George Washington Center for Cyber and Homeland Security, said, "There's obviously a criticism with how the White House has handled a variety of foreign policy issues, whether it's Libya, or Syria or our current Iraq policy, or what have you, and those are legitimate concerns."

"But the fact that Trump pushes it into some sort of cartoony, villain-y place means that he is not to be taken seriously on these issues, and any legitimate Republican critique of the White House's handling of foreign policy issues gets immediately short-circuited into this funhouse mirror argument," he said.
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It is similar to the point I raise when he first started his "sarcasm" founder of ISL argument.  It is another wasted opportunity by overstating the case against Obama and Clinton he allows the media to ignore the better argument.

They would let him get away with this hyperbole when he was attacking Ted Cruz, but they will not when attacking Clinton.