The Atlantic Council reports that “former Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, thinks that the Obama administration has become ‘paralyzed’ by its rhetoric that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must step down, said budget cuts have pushed the United States ‘perilously close’ to being unable to maintain its military dominance, equated the Republican presidential campaigns to an amateur talent contest, and had some advice for Donald Trump: ‘focus on uniting this country, not dividing it.’”  

“’We have allowed ourselves to get caught and paralyzed on our Syrian policy by the statement that ‘Assad must go,’” Hagel said at the Atlantic Council on January 13. ‘Assad was never our enemy. A brutal dictator? Yes.’”  

“But, he added, important lessons should have been learned from the ouster of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Moammar Gadhafi in Libya. Following Hussein’s execution in December of 2006, former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s divisive policies deepened the sectarian divide in the country and contributed to the emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). In Libya, the toppling of Gadhafi by rebels aided by a Western military campaign in 2011 plunged the country into a downward spiral of chaos from which it has yet to recover.”