So, who is most responsible for the rise of the Islamic State?

There are the obvious answers: Osama bin Laden, whose ideology spread to Iraq in the form of Ansar al-Islam two years before we removed Saddam from power; Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who founded Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the predecessor of ISIS, in the security vacuum created by the de-Baathification decision of the Coalition Provisional Authority (which was not fully coordinated within the Bush administration and was a surprise to the White House); and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the current leader of ISIS.

Outside the terrorists themselves, which is always a good place to start when parsing out blame for terrorism, those who contributed the most to the rise of the Islamic State were former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Syrian President Bashir Assad, and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are not on the list.