Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta criticizes President Obama’s managerial style in a new interview with CNN.
On Obama’s managing style, Panetta said: “He relies on the logic of his presentation, with the hope that, ultimately, people will embrace that logic and then do what’s right.
“You know what? In 50 years, my experience is, logic doesn’t work in Washington,” Panetta continued. “You gotta basically go after people and make them understand what they have to do. And that means you create a war room. You go after votes. You have to push people.”
He said President Obama never made a decision on whether to arm Syrian rebels, when his administration debated the issue last year.
{mosads}”To a large extent it wasn’t that the president kind of said, ‘No, we shouldn’t do it,'” Panetta said of arming Syrian rebel groups.
“The president kind of never really came to a decision as to whether or not it should happen,” he said. “I think it basically sat there for a while and then got to the point where everybody just kind of assumed that it was not gonna happen.”
Panetta, along with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, argued for arming the Syrian rebels.
Obama has now authorized airstrikes against Islamic militants in Iraq and Syria, as well as sent U.S. military advisers to Iraq, but Panetta criticized Obama’s decision to rule out using U.S. ground troops in combat.
“I take the position that, when you’re commander in chief, that you oughta keep all options on the table,” he said. “We’re conducting airstrikes. But to make those airstrikes work, to be able to do what you had to do, you don’t just send planes in and drop bombs. You’ve gotta have targets. You’ve gotta know what you’re goin’ after. To do that, you do need people on the ground.”
Panetta, who also served as CIA director under Obama at the time of the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound, has been critical of the president in a series of interviews surrounding the release of his book, Worthy Fights.
He did offer some support for Obama’s first term — during which he served.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Panetta said. “I think he was very strong in terms of the war on terrorism. And he made some tough decisions. But there were these decisions that basically never were confronted that I think, in many ways, contributed to the problems we’re facing today.”