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Panetta Blames Obama for Rise of Islamic State
by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700
Copyright
September 22, 2014
All Rights Reserved.
Blaming President Barack Obama for the rise of the
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS], former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta
[July 1, 2011 – February 27, 2013], refused to admit his role in ending the Iraq
War Dec. 15, 2011. Speaking on
CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Panetta insists that he and former Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton wanted to arm Syrian rebels in the fight against Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad. Panetta
conveniently forgets before Obama ended the Iraq War, he tried to negotiate a
continued troop agreement for leaving U.S. forces in Iraqi. Former Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki refused to grant the necessary legal immunity
agreement to keep U.S. troops on Iraqi soil after Dec. 15, 2011. Panetta said he agreed with Clinton
and U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) that wanted to arm Syrian rebel groups to
help topple al-Assad’s Alawite Shiite government.
Even if Obama agreed to arm Syrian rebels, it would have made no
difference repairing the incompetent Iraqi military, replete with so much
infiltration and corruption that it couldn’t defend Iraqi territory. Before Panetta left office Feb. 27, 2013, he claims he urged Obama to arm Syrian rebels,
despite concerns that the weapons would fall into the wrong hands. “I think the president’s concern,
and I understand it, was that he had a fear that if we started providing
weapons, we wouldn’t know where those weapons would wind up,” Panetta told CBS. What Panettta didn’t say was that he
had no strategy other than arming potential terrorists. McCain too met in Turkey with Free
Syrian Army leader Gen. Salim Idris in 2013, also seeking arms from the U.S. Idris at the time used ISIS as a
defacto militia to fight al-Assad.
“My view was you have to begin somewhere,” said Panetta, without any solid
reasoning.
Arming Syrian rebel groups seeking to topple al-Assad in a Sunni
sectarian war against al-Assad’s Shiite minority would not have stopped ISIS
from seizing territory in Iraq. No
Syrian rebel group, including al-Qaeda’s Al Nusra Front, was battling ISIS,
other that focusing efforts on toppling al-Assad. Russian President Vladimir Putin
begged Obama to not support Syrian rebels that could upend any stability in
Syria. While Putin has his own
interests in Syria, including his Tartus Mediterranean naval base, his
opposition to toppling al-Assad directly relates to what happened in Iraq. Once the former Bush White House
launched the Iraq War March 20, 2003, it opened the floodgates to Islamic
extremism in Iraq. No Bush
administration official admits the mess they created, giving groups like ISIS
the opportunity to seize larges swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria.
Panetta says nothing about al-Maliki’s refusal to accept American troops
in Iraq after the Iraq War’s Dec. 15, 2011 end date. Obama didn’t oppose in principle the
idea of keeping U.S. forces on Iraqi soil.
Iraq refused to allow the U.S. to continue basing forces after the war’s
end. “I think that would’ve helped. And I think
in part, we pay a price for not doing that in what we see happening with ISIS,”
said Panetta, insisting he backed arming Syrian rebels. Panetta doesn’t say how arming
Syrian rebels would have stopped ISIS in Iraq, since al-Maliki lost control of
his military, largely through infiltration by insurgent Sunni groups. Even recently, Secretary of State
John Kerry insisted that a more inclusive Iraq government would have stopped the
Sunni insurgency. Kerry knows that
ISIS is an outlaw group that doesn’t care about he ethnic composition of the
Iraq government.
Panetta should pay attention to today’s report that Iraq’s new
“consensus” Prime Minster Haider al-Abadi opposes deployment of any foreign
ground forces in Iraq. Even losing
30% of Iraqi territory, al-Abadi opposes U.S. ground forces. Al-Abadi confirmed his “rejection of any ground intervention in Iraq,” paying lip service
to militant groups operating on Iraqi soil.
It’s difficult for any Iraqi leader, given the terrorist groups operating
in Iraq, to admit he backs keeping U.S. forces in Iraql. Whether his public remarks come with
a nod-and-a-wink is anyone’s guess.
Al-Abadi knows that he can’t get rid of ISIS without U.S. ground intervention. When the U.S. launched air strikes
Aug. 7 to protect the ancient Yazidis from ISIS genocide, al-Abadi remained
silent. Whether al-Abadi cares for
the Yazidis or not, the U.S. has its own national security to deal with in Iraq.
Playing fast-and-loose with
the facts, Panetta stabs Obama in the back to save his own hide, at least when
it comes to his legacy in Iraq. Arming Syrian rebels would not have stopped ISIS one step in Iraq and only led, as Putin
insists, to more chaos in the region.
Toppling al-Assad promises to unleash a new tidal wave of Islamic extremism in
Syria. Since toppling Saddam Hussein
April 10, 2003, Iraq has become a hotbed of terrorism, something spreading to
Syria. Picking up U.S. weapons from the
Iraq military and other Syrian rebel groups, ISIS has become a formidable force
in Iraq and Syria. “And I think the
American people need to know it’s going to take a long time” to deal with ISIS,
calling Iraq “a tragic story.” Panetta knows that arming Syrian rebels would not
have stopped ISIS, only aided-and-abetted the same al-Qaeda terrorists that
brought down the World Trade Center Sept. 11
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