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Obama Advisors Keep Breaking With White House On ISIS
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The list of current and former Obama administration officials who disagree with President Barack Obama’s Islamic State strategy continues to grow at a steady pace.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford broke with the White House’s claim that Islamic State is contained in his testimony to Congress Tuesday.
Dunford testified to the House Armed Services Committee in conjunction with Secretary of Defense Ash Carter. When queried about whether ISIS is contained, Dunford replied: “We have not contained ISIL (ISIS) currently.”
The response from the military’s top officer stands in stark contrast to an address by Obama in which he claims ISIS is “contained” less than a day before an attack perpetrated by ISIS operatives killed 130 in Paris.
Former Obama administration Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta claimed in October the president “lost his way” regarding ISIS and White House policies created a “vacuum” in Iraq’s ability to defend itself and that “it’s out of that vacuum that ISIS began to breed.”
Panetta’s predecessor, Robert Gates, has been particularly vocal in his criticism of the president’s handling of ISIS, telling CBS: “The reality is, they’re not gonna be able to be successful against ISIS strictly from the air, or strictly depending on the Iraqi forces, or the Peshmerga, or the Sunni tribes acting on their own.”
Former National Security Council senior director Dennis Ross wrote an op-ed in October to express his dismay with the White House ISIS policy. Ross says Obama “should be leery of continuing to implement half-measures” in his ISIS policy. He goes on to explain that from the outset of his presidency, Obama was loathe to get involved in “someone else’s civil war.” The president allegedly shied away from the evolving nature of the conflict and in turn the rise of ISIS in order to stay out in “fear of being dragged into a quagmire.”
The dissent over the White House’s ISIS policy is not limited to administration officials. Rumblings are also heard with House and Senate Democrats, most of whom are loyal supporters of Obama’s policies. Most notably, top Senate Democrat Dianne Feinstein referred to the current strategy as “insufficient” and said the situation “has not gotten better. It’s gotten worse.” Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, an Iraq War veteran from Obama’s home state of Hawaii, is particularly vocal in her criticism of the administration’s foreign policy, saying “If we’re truly focused on defeating ISIS, we’ve got to recognize the problems with the current strategy and fix that, so that we can actually accomplish this mission.”
Ross sums up the ongoing problem with the administration’s strategy poignantly: “The costs of action always determined the administration’s approach, not the costs of inaction.”
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