Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sunday President Obama should not have laid down his infamous “red line” about chemical weapons use in Syria, especially since he didn’t maintain it.
Commanders in chief “should be extraordinarily careful about issuing ultimatums or drawing red lines, because when a president of the United States does that, the rest of the world must know it is fatal to cross it — that when the United States makes a threat, it is not an empty threat,” Gates said during an interview that aired on CBS.
Obama warned Syrian President Bashar Assad in 2012 that the U.S. would intervene militarily if he unleashed chemical weapons on civilians in his bid to maintain power.
“That said, I don’t think he should have ever made the threat in the first place,” Gates continued. “I would have counseled him against it.”
To the larger issue of whether the U.S. should deploy ground troops to Syria, Gates said he agrees with his former boss on that score.
“Should we send significant numbers of American combat forces into Syria? I would say ‘absolutely not,'” Gates said. “And I agreed with him on that point.”
