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I don’t know which is worse, willful/intentional ignorance or downright dishonesty.

The thing they have in common is that both do immense harm, but is one worse than the other?

What got me thinking about this is the new book, Defeating ISIS: Who They Are, How They Fight, What They Believe, by Malcolm Nance.

Nance is a respected analyst, historian, and international counter-terrorism expert and a founding member of the Terrorist Asymetrics Project on Strategy, Tactics, and Radical Ideology, a group helping the U.S. develop strategies for fighting terrorism.

In the book he says the failed invasion of Iraq created ISIS, offering unequivocal documentation of how that happened, including naming the generations of Islamic fighters that preceded al-Qaeda, those who later became al-Qaeda leaders, the formation of the Islamic State in Iraq (ISIQ) in response to the invasion, and then the ensuing internal struggles within the different terrorist organizations out of which emerged what is now called ISIS.

What is more, he actually predicted this would happen in The Terrorists of Iraq, a book he wrote in 2007.

Nance does not write as a Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative. Instead he seeks to provide the best information and analysis possible to our military and government leaders to defeat ISIS which he says is the biggest threat to global security that exists today.

Anyone who wants to understand who ISIS is, why it is, and what the world community must do to defeat it should read this book.

The problem, though, is that the political conservatives who need to won’t. They would rather speak about terroristic threats in general and ISIS in particular out of willful ignorance or downright dishonesty.

Which is why I started wondering which of the two is worse.

Take Rick Santorum for example.

On Nov. 14, 2015, speaking at a gathering of Florida Republican Supporters for his failed presidential campaign he said: “ISIS is a creation of a political decision by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to abandon Iraq — against all of our generals’ recommendations, against all of the policy recommendations.”

Or the Wall Street Journal that has run editorials insisting that President Obama abandoned Iraq because of his belief that American actions there had created a surge of anti-American sentiment, leading him into decisions that created ISIS.

Or The National Review that said the same thing, comparing Iraq to the U.S. “leaving peacekeepers in all its past successful interventions: the Balkans, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea.”

And, of course, the Fix News crew continue to repeat this mantra. I once heard Bill O’Reilly begin a commentary on ISIS by saying, “Here’s what we know. We know President Obama’s decision to pull out our troops from Iraq created ISIS.”

Blaming President Obama for ISIS is a drumbeat that can be heard almost daily across the conservative political spectrum.

But in light of Nance’s book, and files of other collaborating evidence, which is it – intentional ignorance or downright dishonesty?

Allowing for the fact that people don’t always take the time to study issues as they should, I lean toward intentional ignorance.

But they are still culpable for shooting from the hip, no pun intended.

On the other hand, it was a well known fact at the time that the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq was a 2007 agreement negotiated with former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki by President Bush, not Obama.

And I know that President Obama tried to get al-Maliki to renegotiate the agreement to allow some troops to remain, but he refused.

So that makes me lean toward political conservatives being guilty of downright dishonesty on a very critical issue that has major implications about what the U.S. should do next.

Then, again, I’m not sure it matters because it is not clear to me that intentional ignorance is any better or less damaging than downright dishonesty.

One thing I do know, though, is that we see one or both at work among conservatives on almost every important issue our nation is facing.

And you have to wonder why.