President Obama “missed an opportunity to show solidarity” by being absent in Paris after the terror attacks, according to Leon Panetta.
The former director of the CIA and secretary of defense told CNN on Sunday that Obama made a mistake by not sending a high-ranking member of his administration to Paris to stand in solidarity with world leaders after the Jan. 7 terror attacks in Paris that left 17 dead.
“To the credit of the White House, they admitted that they had made a mistake, and it was a mistake, because we missed an opportunity to show solidarity with the leadership — leadership in the world that is confronting this terrorism threat that we all face,” he said, adding, “So it was a missed opportunity. We should have had, if not the president, certainly the vice president or the secretary of state should have attended.”
Panetta revealed that when he was in the White House, an issue such as attending the anti-terror rally in Paris would have been presented directly to the president, who would have then “made the ultimate decision as to what happened.”
He also called the latest string of terror attacks “a more dangerous chapter in the war on terrorism,” citing attacks from numerous different directions such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and Boko Haram, among others.
“It’s a matter of time before they’d direct it at the United States as well,” Panetta said of more aggressive terror attacks.
Panetta served in the Obama administration as Director of the CIA from 2009 to 2011 and as Secretary of Defense from 2011 to 2013.
