Secretaries of Defense Robert Gates and Leon Panetta

9/18/13

Secretaries of Defense Robert Gates and Leon Panetta:

Former Secretaries of Defense Robert Gates and Leon Panetta were on the air today criticizing President Obama’s handling of events regarding Syria.  There was somewhat of a variable in how they were handling their criticism.  Both felt that President Obama made a mistake when he made his red line warning in August 2012 that Bashar Al-Assad would incur consequences if he was to use chemical weapons against his people.  Secretary Gates felt that while sending the warning was a mistake he felt that the President has to be very careful of unintended consequences if he follows through with any kind of punitive action as he threatened.  Gates cited the lessons to be learned about getting involved in Libya.    Unlike Panetta, he was not in favor of any kind of an attack on Syria.  Secretary Panetta seemed to be more concerned that the President, once warning the way he did, has to maintain his credibility and do what he said he would do.  To him, maintaining credibility was more important than any other consideration without considering the consequences.  I guess we can be thankful that Secretary Panetta is “former” Secretary of Defense.  In an earlier broadcast they were both critical of the President going to Congress to get its support for a strike.  But is the criticism for the right thing?  It’s understandable that the President is in a state of confusion about what he should do right now.  Little did he know the box he was going to put himself in when he didn’t think before speaking in August 2012.  It was then, while campaigning for reelection, that he made the bold statement that Assad would be “crossing the line” if he used chemical weapons against his people.  To pose a threat means it must be acted on if the adversary does cross in order to provide no doubt about the person’s credibility that makes the threat.  Secretary Panetta would have been better served by settling for just criticizing the President for having not put more thought in before speaking when he made the threat rather than to be pressuring him to take action simply to be showing that he meant what he said.  The lesson President Obama is learning the hard way is that he could not have been able to see the dilemma he was going to be in with the state of circumstances that are present at this time.  While Bashar Al-Assad’s atrocities against his people might be equal to to the worst monsters that have held power in the Middle East, the forces that are arrayed against him are showing signs of being worse than him.  Only a week or so ago Assad’s forces rescued the Christian town of Maaloula, where “Christians and Muslims have lived peaceably together for centuries and the people still speak Western Aramaic.” (Internet)  Rebel forces had taken temporary control of the town and were threatening to do public beheadings of any Christians that did not convert to Islam. 

I believe the most sensible decision President Obama can come to now is to simply “eat crow” and forget about his need to establish credibility for making the bold statement he made when he couldn’t possibly foresee what the circumstances would be if and when Assad would use sarin gas against his people.  I don’t agree with the political pundits that say that a do nothing approach will embolden Iran and Russia to act as they please and that it will accelerate Iran’s program to develop the nuclear bomb.  There are certain lines that need no bold talk to know they must not be crossed and which would compel the United States to take action no matter what would lie ahead.  It goes without saying and every nation must know, starting with Russia, that we cannot allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons in view of the way they continuously threaten to wipe Israel off the map.  Once emboldened enough to strike Israel we would surely be drawn into the fight whether we’d like it or not.