If the U.S. spends the next 30 years wallowing aimlessly, and profitlessly, in an endless succession of Middle Eastern wars, one of the people you can blame is former CIA Director former SecDef Leon “The Sky is falling and it’s all Obama’s fault” Panetta. I bitched about Leon in the past for a long time under the name of “Leon Douchebag Panetta,” but now I’m revising my nomenclature because it turns out that he’s an even bigger prick out of office than in.
In a recent interview Panetta basically blamed everything that’s going wrong in the Middle East on President Obama, claiming that the president should have muscled the Iraqi government into allowing U.S. troops to remain in the country subject to a status of forces agreement that would have exempted them from Iraqi jurisdiction, something that George Bush failed to do and something that former SecDef Robert Gates said was impossible to do because the Iraqis wanted us gone. Of course, Panetta didn’t explain how the presence of large numbers of U.S. troops would enhance the stability of the regime of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, when, in all likelihood, such an arrangement would have served only to further discredit both Maliki and the U.S.
Panetta also complained, as he had before, of Obama’s failure to intervene in Syria, damaging U.S. credibility, said credibility presented by Panetta as a sort of magic elixir that causes evil-doers all around the world to do whatever it is the U.S. wants them to do. And, oh, yes, Panetta didn’t forget the biggest cliché of all, that Obama isn’t a “leader”. Oy vey, oy vey, oy vey.
In his first term, Obama basically gave the military-intelligence complex 90 percent of what they asked for. After his re-election, he probably cut that to 80 percent. Well, today’s it’s up to 98 percent, and after Panetta’s through, it will probably have to be set at 101 percent. And so, thanks to super schmucks like Leon Panetta, useless Middle Eastern wars, which have dogged us for the past 25 years, will be visited on generations yet unborn. Thanks a lot, douchebag.
Afterwords
Peter Beinert points out that Panetta’s effusions on credibility lack all credibility, while Danny Vinik notes that Leon’s prime example of Obama’s lack of leadership—the failure to exempt the Pentagon’s budget from the ravages of sequestration—is, surprisingly enough, total bullshit.
