So are you saying Obama didn’t campaign on ending the Iraq War?
Nope. Wonder where that came from.
And didn’t take credit for ending the Iraq War?
I don’t think he ever took credit for the agreement with the Iraqi government, but he did take credit for being one of the earliest voices of reason in the Senate, an opinion which eventually won over most Americans and led to Bush ending the Iraq War. That all seems fair to me.
But then a few years later when Islamic State is a big deal, and people are saying U.S. troops left too early, he didn’t try and make the case that the pullout was all on Bush anyway?
The pullout was all on the Bush administration (and the Iraqi government, who also demanded that timetable), and anyone who said so was simply being truthful. I’m not in any way denying that the truth can serve to advance certain political positions, and in his case it absolutely lined up to support Obama. Whether the withdrawal was really the direct cause of the success of ISIS in those years he never addressed AFAIK, focusing instead on the fact that the RW pundits were getting the facts wrong, which they were. In many ways, I feel that was always a red herring with other factors such as high oil prices and the increasingly sectarian division within Iraq being closer to the root causes. IMO, the US troops were just a lid on the Iraqi pressure cooker. The longer they stayed, the more pressure would be released when they left. And if they tried to stay forever, it would just explode.