During the 2016 campaign and beyond, President Donald Trump has suggested former President Barack Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq was ultimately to blame for the rise of ISIS. Is this assessment accurate or fair?

In 2008, President George W. Bush signed a Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq that set the American timeline for military withdrawal to complete by 2011. That same year, then-Senator Obama stated "Iraq is a dangerous distraction [in the war on terror]" and that "now is the time for a responsible redeployment of our combat troops that pushes Iraq's leaders toward a political solution, rebuilds our military, and refocuses on Afghanistan and our broader security interests."

Honoring the US-Iraqi agreement and his own campaign promises, Obama completed the withdrawal of US forces (with the exception of small numbers of advisors remaining) by December of 2011. This left a fledgling new Iraqi state with a low sense of national unity and a woefully unprepared military of its own to maintain control of a turbulent nation. Iraq’s inability to do so left ample opportunity for non-state actors, like anti-government insurgents and jihadist groups like Jama’at al-Tawhid wa'al-Jihad, the precursor to ISIS, to operate with little resistance and expand their control.

As this situation worsened, ISIS eclipsed and incorporated many other jihadist groups, eventually attaining unparalleled territorial size, military strength, and economic resources, presenting an unprecedented threat to the region and the world for its ability to defeat its neighbors militarily and its extraordinary ability to execute terrorist attacks the world over. While ISIS’s Syrian and Iraqi territorial holdings near total capitulation (while its allies in West Africa and its enclaves in Yemen become further entrenched), the question remains: Is its rise ultimately Obama’s fault for ending the American occupation too early?

To answer this, one must reflect on the state of American support for the war at home around 2008-2009. President Bush’s post-9/11 invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan had reached dismal approval ratings with an overwhelming 75% of the electorate supporting the withdraw from Iraq. This record low of support for the war even surpassed the Vietnam War, with only 55% of Americans believing that all troop should be withdrawn in 1971. Thus Obama's anti-occupation stance gave him an edge electorally and led him to a solid victory over Senator John McCain.

While hindsight allows us to assert with a high degree of confidence that the US should have continued to secure Iraq until its own military was developed enough to enforce national stability, is it really fair to lay the blame on Obama for this misstep? In a Constitutional Republic founded on democratic principles, do our elected representatives have a responsibility to adhere to the will of the electorate, or should they only do so when the people are "correct"? The American withdrawal from Iraq is a perfect example of voters getting precisely what they asked for, but when things went south, it was, of course, the elected official's fault: Obama’s foolhardy, inexperienced caliber of leadership that led the Middle East straight into chaos and turmoil.

Voters need to take responsibility for their actions just as much as elected officials. When the vast majority of the people wanted the US occupation of Iraq to end, and the President ended it, both parties bare the cross of responsibility for what happened next. A Democratic system can only function if voters feel connected to what their surrogates in Washington, D.C. are doing. If President Trump wants to blame President Obama for allowing the conditions in which ISIS carved its Caliphate out of Iraq and Syria to develop, he also has to blame the 75% of Americans that wanted him to do so.

If you're the type of person that hates wearing seat belts, so you vote for a candidate that supports banning seat belts in cars, and they somehow manage to ramrod that through the legislative process, you then have no right to be enraged when fatalities in car crashes skyrocket.