Sen. Rubio says Obama's Mideast policy has backfired

US President Barack Obama’s policy in the Middle East has backfired, leaving the region more unstable than when he took office, says Senator Marco Rubio.

The Florida Republican, who is running for president, cited the fall of the Iraqi city of Ramadi to the ISIL terrorist group and its recent gains in Syria as the latest signs that Obama’s strategy to defeat the group is falling flat.

"But the problem is far bigger than that. The president’s entire approach to the Middle East has backfired," Rubio wrote in a commentary for The Washington Post, which was published online Friday.

The senator blamed the chaos in parts of the Middle East on “Obama’s disengagement from the region,” which he said was best symbolized by the pullout of American forces from Iraq in 2011.

“The vacuum created by America’s pullback has been filled by bad actors, including terrorist extremists… who have flourished in the absence of US leadership,” he wrote.

Rubio also blasted Obama’s approach in nuclear talks with Iran, saying while the administration has focused on negotiating a nuclear agreement, Tehran has "exploited US weakness and expanded its reach into Syria, Iraq and Yemen, among other countries.”

“To begin to deal with the challenges we face, we need a reassertion of US leadership in the region,” he said.

In a recent interview with news magazine The Atlantic, President Obama defended his strategy in the Middle East region. "I don't think we're losing," he said days after Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, was overrun by the Takfiri terrorists.

Since August 2014, on Obama's orders, a US-led coalition has carried out more than 6,000 strikes in Iraq and Syria with the aim of “degrading and ultimately destroying” the terrorist group.

The airstrikes, which have caused civilian casualties and damages to public infrastructure, have, to a large extent, failed to halt the advance of ISIL in both countries.

"The current coalition is suffering because our allies and friends doubt our commitment to this effort," Rubio said in his commentary.

Obama has refused to send troops on the ground, as suggested by many of his senior military advisers.

The ISIL terrorists, who were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, are engaged in crimes against humanity in the areas under their control.

Newly declassified US intelligence documents reveal the United States and some of its allies had foreseen and facilitated the rise of ISIL in Syria as a counterweight to the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

The conservative government watchdog group, Judicial Watch, has obtained more than 100 pages of classified documents from the US Department of Defense and State Department through a federal lawsuit.

According to one of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) documents, the West, Persian Gulf countries and Turkey explored “the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria” to affect their policies in the region.

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