By DONNA CASSATA | AP ARABNEWS
WASHINGTON: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta pushed back on Wednesday against fresh demands for US military involvement in Syria to end President Bashar Assad’s deadly crackdown on his people.
“What doesn’t make sense is to take unilateral action right now,” Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee about advising President Barack Obama to dispatch US forces. “I’ve got to make very sure we know what the mission is … achieving that mission at what price.”
The panel’s top Republican, Sen. John McCain, said the estimated 7,500 dead and the bloodshed calls for US leadership that a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, displayed during the Bosnian war in the 1990s and that Obama eventually showed on Libya last year.
“In past situations, America has led. We’re not leading, Mr. Secretary,” McCain told Panetta.
The Pentagon chief later added that the United States is not holding back and is leading in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and fighting terrorism.
Testifying before the committee, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey and Panetta offered a cautionary note to the call by McCain to launch US airstrikes against Assad’s regime.
“This terrible situation has no simple answers,” Panetta told the panel.
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Categories: Syria, United States, War
Let’s face it. The US has made a mess of Iraq and Afghanistan (and wasted hundreds of billions of $, which they could have used instead to launch the much needed medical care ‘back home’). In Syria they are achieving the same mess simply with a few ‘Special Forces Units’. What more do they want/need?