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Former Department of Defense Chief Expects '30 Year War'

posted by LaminatorX on Monday October 06 2014, @10:25PM   Printer-friendly
from the Peace-of-Westphalia dept.

Hugh Pickens writes:

Susan Page writes at USA Today that Leon Panetta, former head of the CIA and Secretary of the Department of Defense, says Americans should be braced for a long battle against the brutal terrorist group Islamic State that will test U.S. resolve. "I think we're looking at kind of a 30-year war," says Panetta, one that will have to extend beyond Islamic State to include emerging threats in Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere. Panetta also says that decisions made by President Obama over the past three years have made that battle more difficult — an explosive assessment by a respected policymaker of the president he served. Not pushing the Iraqi government harder to allow a residual US force to remain when troops withdrew in 2011, a deal he says could have been negotiated with more effort "created a vacuum in terms of the ability of that country to better protect itself, and it's out of that vacuum that ISIS began to breed." It is no surprise to Panetta that the assessment in his new book "Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace" is drawing White House ire. "Look, I've been a guy who's always been honest," Panetta says. "I've been honest in politics, honest with the people that I deal with. I've been a straight talker. Some people like it; some people don't like it. But I wasn't going to write a book that kind of didn't express what I thought was the case."

 
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  • (Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday October 07 2014, @07:49AM

    by tibman (134) on Tuesday October 07 2014, @07:49AM (#102904)

    I've always thought of politics as history in the present. Most of it doesn't make the books though.

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  • (Score: 2) by Alfred on Tuesday October 07 2014, @01:38PM

    by Alfred (4006) on Tuesday October 07 2014, @01:38PM (#103023) Journal
    This is my variation, not a FTFY because your original was also sadly correct.

    Most of it doesn't make for good books though.

    • (Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday October 07 2014, @03:47PM

      by tibman (134) on Tuesday October 07 2014, @03:47PM (#103109)

      haha, nice. Makes me wonder if there are some terrible history books out there. The Tory and Labour deliberated for 18 hours over the topic. Voices were raised, someone threw a napkin at a Tory speaker. In the end they tabled the discussion and left the nation without a policy regarding the official biscuit for tea-time. The Tory on the pointy end of the napkin throwing ran for re-election the following year on a platform for biscuit regulation and lost his seat.

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