Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was harshly critical of President Obama’s handling of the new ISIS war, saying the US could have sustained the 2011 Iraq occupation and started arming Syrian rebels even sooner than they did.
But perhaps the most eye-opening comment in has new book tour was that he believes the conflict is a “30-year war” that will extend across the world, including campaigns in Nigeria, Somalia, and Libya, among other places.
Panetta’s new book, entitled Worthy Fights, argues that the Obama Administration repeatedly erred by not taking more hawkish positions, including says the US should’ve invaded Syria outright in 2013 instead of making the deal for Syria to scrap its chemical weapons.
He went on to argue that the 30-year world war he envisions is a chance to “repair the damage” caused by lot launching massive wars in the previous few years, calling the lack of wars “missed opportunities.”
Vice President Joe Biden was quick to criticize Panetta, although not on the content of his hawkish comments. Rather, Biden said it was “inappropriate” for Panetta to criticize Obama at all, on anything, until after 2016, and that he should “at least give the guy a chance to get out of office.”
It is unclear how far afield, however, Panetta’s assessment of a 30-year war actually is from the Obama Administration’s own vision of an open-ended conflict, as officials have talked up the conflict lasting many years, and Obama himself said the decisions of the war were to be made by the next president “and probably the one after that.”
These depraved insiders keep topping their own world records for evil.
Idiots like this have the gall to tell us how Iran can't be trusted with nuclear weapons. Every time one these maniacs start flapping their jaws about their wet dreams of shedding innocent blood and spreading destruction all over the planet they prove beyond a doubt that there is exactly two nations that shouldn't even be allowed to have sharp objects, much less nukes. I think anyone with a brain larger than a walnut knows who these two nations are.
"Memoirs found in a Bathtub"
History's most expensive military and that's the promise? Thirty years of war? When will the people decide they have had enough of potholes, crumbling bridges and collapsing education? The US will look like Haiti before this war finishes.
You can buy better but you can't pay more….
When Panetta was in the House and, later, President Clinton's OMB director, he was known as a fiscal hawk who actually worried about the ever growing US debt. How does he now propose to pay for his 30 years war? And he still thinks that Obama erred in not striking Syria last year even though it has now been proven that the "rebels" themselves used the chemical weapons? Pathetic.
wishful thinking.
Of course in 30 more years he will be dead + thousands OF INNOCENTS. At least his children will have the WAR FACTORY STOCK to live on..GOD BLESS AMERIKA
What a fascist scumbag! Just imagine the outrage in the western press had a Russian / Chinese official had said this. 60 years since Hitler and people are back to feeling free to air such thoughts???
2 things:
1. Panetta is woefully wrong on his "30 years of war" projection. This is going to be a multi-generational conflict. And there will never be a winner – unless they redefine "winner." This is a religious-economic war on what will be a global scale enabled by the Oligarchs, Plutocrats, and Theocrats (equally Christian and Muslim). The common people will be losers. Our way of life will change so much that by the time this stupidity winds down, those of our generation will no longer recognize the world we will leave behind for our children's children.
2. I don't normally complain about the misspellings and typos in the articles…stuff happens, you know. But there has been a decided increase in the number of incorrect word choices, misspellings, and obvious cut-and-paste errors. I realize that sometimes time is an issue in getting things posted and I suspect that these articles, while by-lined by J. Deitz, may actually be compiled by interns…just a guess. But someone should read the "finished" article before publication. Spellchecker is not a sufficient alternative.
One of the obvious signs of a print publication's impending downfall is the increased occurrence of editorial failure.
Normally, I don't complain about misuse of the ellipsis and hyphen, but when a commenter can't even get an author's four-letter name right, I do.
or the US could kick the zios outta here and become friendly with the arabs
Too bad the clueless Panetta wasn't in a position of power in the Vietnam days, he could have advised Lyndon Johnson to "stick it out another 30 years", and victory will be at hand. ISIS, and all the other "terrorist threat-of-the-day", will never pose as much danger to the USA as buffoons such as this.
It's pretty easy to predict the US soldiers will be killing and dying 30 years from now, assuming the Empire is still mostly intact. After all, the US has been smashing societies every day at least since the Spanish American war started in 1898.
The US is barbaric and bloodthirsty and proud of it.
Panetta wanted Obomba to withhold reconstruction aid as a means of forcing the Iraqi's to allow us to continue to kill with impunity. This tool actually wrote that in his book. They don't even have to pretend to be moral anymore.
There is no way to get necons out of power once they seized it. Finances of the country are under their control, and they can pretty much say anything they want. A horse can be a senator these days — they just do what the rulers tell them. The only way out is for individual states to stand up for the freedom of trade with the world, something necons have cleverly managed to control and have us in dependence of financial/stock market speculation. Once states assert rights to trade freely with the world, without corporate control of its centers of power, economy of a state will recover. That can open up the issues of endless wars that favor only small group of society, and a way to get out of taxation for wars, as well as participation in them — to individual state judgment. Group of states can go that way as well. Unfortunately, it appears that even State governors are falling prey to necon agitation — like Louisiana governor and his "get more aggressive in the world". Necons are sprading their tentacles down to state levels, and after that, they will have total control,
Nothing better to spend money on. Nothing more positive or constructive to come out of a "peaceful" nation addicted to war profits.
Nothing worse than a people who meekly accept this diktat.
Dick Cheney said as much about Al Q'aeda (ISIS Version 1.0) not too long ago. So they can keep renaming, re-arming and bombing this group today and the media will call them the equivalent of our founding fathers or some other idiotic jargon, maybe we are in the 10th year of this 30 year war that the mighty military can't finish off for another 20 years – and here we are thinking we get what we pay for.
The dogs of open-ended war will not stop – opposition is afraid of economic strangulation, military annihilation – you can bribe and blackmail the places you can't kill everybody, but don't expect a pat on the back for prolonging conflicts rather than talking to all sides and resolving issues thru dialogue.
At least with the Depression Era generation of leaders, talking heads and pundits, you had some semblance of sanity, stability and a concern for a wider spread of prosperity…also for posterity. Must be they remembered growing up during the hard times and truly knowing what it was like to have nothing and next to nothing and struggling to survive…
Now all you get with the succeeding generation of losers is endless war, nihilism and greed multiplied a thousandfold. Cut throat scumbags with no morals, no concern for the future, just immediate gratification and profits, screw as many people as possible hard and fast, before they die. And F*ck everyone else (all human beings) not on the payroll or in the know. They act with impunity because the authorities are all bought. Justice seems like dim speck of light in a black night, fading, fading…
A disgusting and embarrassingly sad slide backwards.
30 years, ….really?
How much you wanna make a bet the United States completely collapses just as the Soviet Union collapsed long before 30 years is over.
Frankly I think that is exactly the end game of these vile bastards.
Didn't Cheney say something similar?
30 years of war profiteering against an enemy with limited means of fighting back! It is the perfect spot to wage perpetual war because its across the world. The war destroys America's wealth and society but will probably rarely claim a life.
Never go full Rome-tard.
Flogging a book is as good an excuse as any for near-treason, eh Panetta.
Unfortunately, the US economy is entirely dependent on military spending and would collapse without it.
So Panetta's remark is status quo thinking, and has been repeated by others. The last administration to recognize the problem (as a problem) and both plan a different national economy and attempt to take preliminary steps towards change was the Kennedy admin – and he was rather abruptly fired from his job.
We are led by immoral human beings who only talk about the things they themselves will not do.
To paraphrase a recent Robert Parry article, if Obama had succumbed to pressure from the interventionists one year ago by launching devastating attacks against the military of the Syrian Arab Republic, then we would now be seeing al Nusra or ISIS in power in Damascus. How would the violent elimination of the oldest Christian community in the world look on Sam Power's list of humanitarian rescue operations she supported? Would Panetta be leaping forward to apologize for that genocide, as well as that of Alawites, Druze and anyone who believes in separation of "church" and state, freedom of conscience or female equality in Syria?
Panetta is pimping for his future job with the MIC. Thirty years? Baloney. Two years, tops. After 14 years, the American voters are quite finished with this war bullshjt. Yeah, they don't like ISIS/ISIL/IS, but that doesn't mean they will tolerate more war. Two years from now, Rand Paul will go up against either a Democrat peace candidate or "Hag of War" Hillary, and one or another peace candidate will win.
You have more faith in the American people than I do, jeff davis.
The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they need not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare. The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.
~George Orwell, 1984
We need to seriously get rid of Republicans and Democrats from govt. They are the two party dictatorship.