Giuliani: Obama’s Iraq withdrawal ‘worst decision’ of 21st century

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) on Wednesday called President Obama’s troop withdrawal from Iraq “the worst decision so far of the 21st Century.”

“ISIS [the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria] is a complete product of his taking our troops out of there,” Giuliani added in an interview with Fox News’s “America’s Newsroom.” “Nature abhors a vacuum: It’s not a cliché; it’s a reality.”

{mosads}Giuliani’s comments come as the president’s efforts against ISIS come under heavy scrutiny, following Obama’s admission Monday that there is not yet a “complete strategy” for fighting the extremist group.

Obama said Iraqi leaders needed to step up their commitment to taking on ISIS. On Tuesday, Obama authorized the deployment of approximately 450 additional military trainers to aid local Iraqi forces.

Giuliani criticized Obama for not foreseeing the power void he left behind in Iraq by pulling out all U.S. combat troops after the end of the war.

“The U.S. should be embarrassed by him coming out to say he didn’t have a strategy in Iraq,” he said. “Iraq has been an issue for his entire presidency.”

“You want to know why ISIS and ISIL exists?” Giuliani asked, using an alternate acronym for the terror group. “He just told you why. … Because he doesn’t have a strategy for Iraq,” he added, referring to the president.

“It’d be like John Kennedy saying, ‘I don’t have a policy for the Soviet Union, give me three years,’ ” he quipped.

Giuliani said a U.S. military presence in Iraq might have prevented ISIS from gaining a foothold.

“[Obama’s strategy] should have been to leave behind a substantial number of American soldiers who would have picked up ISIS, ISIL at an early stage, and we would have been able to wipe them out at an early stage instead of letting the monster grow its head,” he said.

Giuliani also said the president was repeating the same mistake in other crises.

“He created a vacuum in the Middle East by not supporting the Syrian rebels,” Giuliani added. “He creates an extra vacuum in the South China Sea by aiming to reduce our Navy.”