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Former US defense chief (Hagel): Obama 'hurt credibility' by not bombing Syria in 2013
Source: The Guardian
Former US defense chief: Obama 'hurt credibility' by not bombing Syria in 2013
Chuck Hagel questions lack of follow-through on promise to bomb Assad regime
over its use of chemical weapons: ‘I’ll let history judge if it was the right decision
David Smith in Washington
Thursday 14 January 2016 15.53 GMT
Barack Obama’s credibility was hurt after he promised to bomb the Syrian regime if it used chemical weapons but then failed to follow through, his then defense secretary has said.
Chuck Hagel said he spent 30 August 2013 preparing Tomahawk cruise missile strikes against Bashar al-Assad, who had unleashed sarin gas on his own people in a Damascus suburb. Obama had said such a move would cross a “red line” – but then, possibly influenced in part by the British parliament’s vote against airstrikes, he ordered his Pentagon chief to abort.
“I think it did hurt the credibility of the president of the United States,” Hagel told the Atlantic Council thinktank in Washington on Wednesday. “When a president of the United States says something, it means something.
“We Americans, I think, kind of take that for granted: ‘Well, the president said this, so what?’ It isn’t that way around the world. When a president of the United States says something, especially about foreign policy or about another leader of another country, that means something, and we have to understand that that means something, and the president and the White House has to understand that means something.”
The decision not to attack did, however, enable a diplomatic deal brokered by Russia in which Assad agreed to surrender his poison gas arsenal and production equipment to international chemical weapons inspectors. Hagel praised the hi-tech US military effort to then destroy the chemical agents.
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Chuck Hagel questions lack of follow-through on promise to bomb Assad regime
over its use of chemical weapons: ‘I’ll let history judge if it was the right decision
David Smith in Washington
Thursday 14 January 2016 15.53 GMT
Barack Obama’s credibility was hurt after he promised to bomb the Syrian regime if it used chemical weapons but then failed to follow through, his then defense secretary has said.
Chuck Hagel said he spent 30 August 2013 preparing Tomahawk cruise missile strikes against Bashar al-Assad, who had unleashed sarin gas on his own people in a Damascus suburb. Obama had said such a move would cross a “red line” – but then, possibly influenced in part by the British parliament’s vote against airstrikes, he ordered his Pentagon chief to abort.
“I think it did hurt the credibility of the president of the United States,” Hagel told the Atlantic Council thinktank in Washington on Wednesday. “When a president of the United States says something, it means something.
“We Americans, I think, kind of take that for granted: ‘Well, the president said this, so what?’ It isn’t that way around the world. When a president of the United States says something, especially about foreign policy or about another leader of another country, that means something, and we have to understand that that means something, and the president and the White House has to understand that means something.”
The decision not to attack did, however, enable a diplomatic deal brokered by Russia in which Assad agreed to surrender his poison gas arsenal and production equipment to international chemical weapons inspectors. Hagel praised the hi-tech US military effort to then destroy the chemical agents.
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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/14/chuck-hagel-barack-obama-hurt-credibility-pledge-bomb-syria-chemical-weapons
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