President Obama’s former defense secretary said Thursday that it’s “unfortunate” and a “disservice” that the White House can’t bring itself to say U.S. troops are in combat in the Middle East against the Islamic State.
“I think that it is incredibly unfortunate not to speak openly about what’s going on,” Robert Gates said on MSNBC Thursday morning.
“American troops are in action, they are being killed, they are in combat,” added Gates, who was defense secretary to both Obama and President George W. Bush. “And these semantic backflips to avoid using the term combat is a disservice to those who are out there putting their lives on the line.”
“I have a feeling it’s got everything to do with the politics of … ‘we’ve ended combat operations in Iraq, it’s over, we’re done, we’re out of there,'” he added.
“And even Secretary Carter has said these troops are in combat. So why the White House can’t bring itself to acknowledge what everybody in the world knows is unfortunate,” he said.
The Obama administration has made a point of saying U.S. troops overseas don’t have a combat operation, although it has admitted that some can find themselves in combat situations. Officials have also defined “ground troops” as a large number of forces, and under that definition, the U.S. says it has not started ground operations in Syria.
But those explanations have been criticized as a political attempt to downplay the U.S. role overseas. When asked if U.S. troops who find themselves in a firefight are in combat, Gates replied, “I’d say so.”
Gates did say he approves of Obama’s plan not to send large numbers of U.S. forces to Iraq.
“First of all, the Iraqis aren’t going to let them in anyway, so it’s kind of a foolish debate in terms of sending thousands and thousands of American troops given an Iranian dominated or an Iranian influenced Shiite government in Baghdad,” he said. “That invitation’s not going to be forthcoming.”
But he criticized Obama for not moving quickly enough on its strategy.
“We’ve gotten to this point, it’s taken a couple of years. We, in my view, should have been at this point a year or two ago,” he said. “And the incrementalism has conveyed a lack of seriousness in tackling the problem, or an uncertainty about how to tackle it.”
