Don’t you just love how the far right engages in selective memory when it comes to historical matters which paint their heroes in an unflattering light?

The latest conservative icon to employ this method is windbag radio host Rush Limbaugh, who appeared on the Fox News Sunday show and tried to assert that the rise of the terrorist group ISIS was all the fault of President Obama.

But first, as he sought to soften the blow of appearing like an intolerant asshat on the subject of Syrian refugees, Limbaugh said:

“Look, I have friends who are Syrians. I play golf with them, they’re great people. This is not about that, it’s not about bigotry or racism or anti-ethnics or against certain nationalities. It’s about the defense and protection of the United States of America and our Constitution, which is what is the primary job of the president of the United States.”

From there, Limbaugh pivoted to an attack on President Obama:

“And again, he just doesn’t seem to be oriented in that direction or interested in it. It’s almost as though he thinks that we’ve committed all these crimes since our founding, ‘We’re unjust and immoral and it’s time for payback, it’s time for us to find out what the rest of the world goes through everyday.’”

Crimes committed since our founding? Well, there are plenty of those. Sounds like Rush needs to read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. Even if he did, he’d probably accuse Zinn of being a Marxist.

Then Limbaugh decided to distort history to suit his own purposes with this bit of BS:

“The people leading the country today…they see us as the problem, not the solution, they think that we are responsible for some of these problems. They fall back and blame George W. Bush for what’s going on. ISIS didn’t exist when Bush left office.”

No, that would be completely untrue, Rush. See, the National Counterterrorism Center tells us that the group al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) was established in 2004 and later renamed the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which is also commonly known as ISIS.

Also, it should be noted that had the United States–under the direct leadership of Bush and Dr. Evil aka Dick Cheney–not invaded Iraq, a power vacuum would not have been created in Iraq which directly led to the creation of ISIS. But hey, why focus on the past? Because, as Shakespeare once wrote, “What’s past is prologue.”

This article was originally published by the same author at LiberalAmerica.org.