Sad state of affairs when Hillary is part of the Varsity Team.
Via Weekly Standard
Last week brought a reminder of what the United States has lost since Bob Gates and Leon Panetta left the Obama cabinet. Both are straight shooters with a centrist, hardheaded sensibility.
Panetta has been making headlines with his criticism of Obama on 60 Minutes for pulling out of Iraq too soon (“I really thought that it was important for us to maintain a presence in Iraq”) and not doing more early on to aid the Syrian opposition (“we pay the price for not doing that in what we see happening with ISIS”).
Meanwhile, Gates has been critical of Obama for prohibiting U.S. “boots on the ground” to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria: “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,” he told CBS This Morning. “So there will be boots on the ground if there’s to be any hope of success in the strategy. And I think that by continuing to repeat that [the United States won’t put boots on the ground], the president, in effect, traps himself.”
In retrospect, it is clear, the first Obama term—when Gates was at Defense (followed by Panetta), Panetta at CIA (followed by General David Petraeus), Hillary Clinton at State, Admiral Mike Mullen at the Joint Chiefs, and retired General Jim Jones at the National Security Council—was a golden age (by Obama standards) when there were grown-ups more or less in charge of U.S. foreign policy. […]
Ah, for those good ol’ days. Today, by contrast, U.S. foreign policy is shaped by Joe Biden, Chuck Hagel, John Kerry, Susan Rice, and John Brennan, among others, with deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes the most frequently quoted spokesman. It tells you something that the most hawkish of the lot is Kerry, but he has dissipated much energy and credibility in futile efforts to jumpstart the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. His major achievement to date is to broker a power-sharing accord in Afghanistan between Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah that may or may not hold together.