Jimmy Carter & Leon Panetta.

Former President Carter ripped President Obama on the ISIL( Islamic State ).Watching Obama's foreign policy unfold, particularly in the Middle-East, has been gut wrenching, the flip flopping on policy is the source of Mr. Obama's problems .A president who presided over the fall of the Shah of Iran and the capture of American embassy staff in Tehran, a global oil crisis, and Soviet incursions in Afghanistan, West Africa, and Central America is now taking full advantage of Barack Obama’s fumbles. Carter, a president whose approach to foreign affairs was once an interchangeable synonym with weakness, has taken to berating Obama over his own displays of impotence and vacillation in defense of America’s interests overseas.  Hearing Jimmy Carter criticize Obama is a big thing , but it shows how support for  (1)> President Obama is eroding . In an interviewed published Tuesday in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the 39th president said the Obama administration, by not acting sooner, allowed ISIL to build up its strength. *** Carter said “[W]e waited too long. We let the Islamic State build up its money, capability and strength and weapons while it was still in Syria,” he said, using an alternate name for the terrorist group. “Then when [ISIL] moved into Iraq, the Sunni Muslims didn’t object to their being there and about a third of the territory in Iraq was abandoned. This week has been noting but startling revelations,

 Former CIA Director and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s critical book on the Obama administration might be the Achilles heel .  In his book Panetta says he argued behind the scenes for a small number of troops to be left to continue training Iraq's military. To no avail. "Those on our side viewed the White House as so eager to rid itself of Iraq that it was willing to withdraw rather than lock in arrangements that would preserve our influence and interests,” he writes. It was politics at its best.What damaged the Iraqis and our own interests most when we pulled out was the dismantling of the intelligence systems, operations and activities that our military had put together over the years. Clandestine networks put together with the loyal Sunni tribes had infiltrated the enemy effectively, and the Iraqi special operations forces who had been trained by and operated alongside our special operations teams were capable of continuing the targeted operations with the support and assistance of the residual element we could have left. There is another issue that also prevails on who our nations leaders are handing the foreign policy. After sacrificing over 4,600 American lives and almost $2 trillion over nine years, we were out, leaving behind a still fractured country and a leader we had supported since he took office in 2006 and over whom we still had a modicum of influence. In August 2014 , the White House leaked a classified special forces operation to rescue American hostages in Syria. The reason: political cover. The cost: so far, unknown.But this much, we know: The politicized leak of this operation cut through the fog of war to let our enemies know exactly what happened that day in the desert, and because of that, future attempts to free American hostages will be more difficult to plan, farther between, and more dangerous to carry out. Panetta also handed out a clue , much to being President Obama's stubbornness on his part ( or weakness ) he was warned In coming out swinging at the White House’s (2)>  “inner circle” for failing to secure an agreement with the Maliki government,Panetta makes us wonder who this small group of people are who have set our country on a difficult and long course that will cost us more money and lives. And we must wonder about a president who rejects advice from the very military and civilian leaders who are sworn to serve him and the American public. Panetta gives us some insight. I have  argued before that the "blame " just is not the "president" alone as far as an indecision maker , but his whole cabinet of his  is making him look incapable of leading the nation , but on foreign policy it might be what Jimmy Carter is saying when he means “It changes from time to time,” he said of the president’s Middle East strategy. It looks obvious for anyone to cast stones first at the President . ( may be ).

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

***During the end of the 2008 presidential campaign, Sen. John McCain charged that then-Sen. Barack Obama “didn’t know the difference between a tactic and a strategy.” The current U.S. military mission in Iraq is evidence that McCain was right. Airstrikes by themselves without a larger goal or objective are a tactic, not a strategy. What are we trying to achieve? The threat posed by the Islamic State far exceeds the localized conflict taking place in northern Iraq, on which the administration has been hyper focused. But few in the administration seems to either understand or care. It’s a reflection of the lack of experience, over-politicization of national security matters, and trying to control everything at the White House. (1)> The list of Democrats who have spoken out against Obama’s handling of ISIL now include both living former Democratic presidents, both of his former secretaries of defense, and a possible future president and former secretary of state, not to mention several members of Congress. (2)>members of the president's inner circle had obviously not discussed a key question they both knew they would be asked speaks to the same problem  The White House seems unable to convey to an anxious and angry electorate that has just lived through one of the most unsettling decades , the idiocy, connivery and outright incompetence of the Obama administration is coming to light …