Panetta: Obama has “lost his way”

Leon Panetta, President Obama’s former CIA director and defense secretary, said the president has “kind of lost his way” in an interview about his new book this morning. The Washington Post,

By not pressing the Iraqi government to leave more U.S. troops in the country, he “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,” Panetta told USA Today, referring to the group also known as the Islamic State.

The interview was the first of what inevitably will be a series as he promotes his book, “Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace,” which is sharply critical of Obama’s handling of the troop withdrawal from Iraq, Syria and the advance of the Islamic State.

In the book, Panetta writes that Obama has a “frustrating reticence to engage his opponents and rally support for his cause” and too frequently “relies on the logic of a law professor rather than the passion of a leader.” Sometimes, he writes Obama “avoids the battle, complains, and misses opportunities.”

“I think we’re looking at kind of a 30-year war” that will also sweep in conflicts in Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen and Libya, he told USA Today’s Susan Page.