Story highlights Trump's spokeswoman calls Afghanistan "Obama's war"

It began almost eight years before he was president

(CNN) Donald Trump campaign spokeswoman Katrina Pierson said on Saturday the US' military effort in Afghanistan "was Obama's war."

The war in Afghanistan began in 2001, following the attacks of September 11, more than seven years before Barack Obama became president. The Afghanistan fight, initiated during the presidency of George W. Bush, stands as the longest running war in the history of the country.

Pierson's comment came during an exchange with CNN's Victor Blackwell, when she was asked to explain the Republican nominee's recent assertion that President Obama is the "founder of ISIS." Trump has since called the comment sarcastic, "but not that sarcastic."

Pierson blamed the rise of ISIS on Obama and Hillary Clinton's opposition to the surge in Iraq, when she was a senator from New York.

"If you want to go way back, we can look at the troop surge, and after 2007 al Qaeda was essentially in ashes," Pierson said. "It was Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton who then destroyed the entire rollout by wanting to pull out early... That is the reason why ISIS is a global issue."

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