Russia has not changed its course when it comes to Syria because there has been no physical pressure to make it do so, and President Barack Obama wants to keep it that way, while Secretary of State John Kerry has been forced to follow a "Monty Python" line, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden said Thursday.
"We've talked about this before, about our lack of leverage on Russian behavior and poor Secretary Kerry is out there," the retired general, now a principal in the Chertoff Group, told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program, said of Syria and the continued violence in Aleppo.
"I'm reminded of a line from Monty Python: 'Go away or I will be forced to taunt you a second time.' That's pretty much all of the tools he has left in the kit."
And, he said, that's because Obama wants it that way.
"I'm convinced many senior advisers early in the game, when this was easier and would have been more effective, have recommended a more aggressive pattern," Hayden said.
However, he did not agree with a question from show host Joe Scarborough, who asked if Obama wants, in his final year in office, "to be the overseer of the continued genocide in Aleppo, in Syria."
"Is that what he wants in his museum?" said Scarborough. "Complete abandonment not only of Aleppo, but Syria and the responsibility of hundreds of thousands of deaths on him?
"Of course he doesn't want it, [but] that's going to be the legacy," said Hayden. "That's going to be the legacy. He's not going to dramatically change course. I don't think anyone expects that. And you see the inevitable, carrying out of the lack of America putting its thumb on the scale the way the Russians have already put their thumb on the scale.
There have been parallels in which scores of people have died before the United States intervened, Hayden noted, including in Bosnia and Croatia, where "we're there but very late to the game, and a quarter million people were killed."
"The genocide in Rwanda, we were there and we were late and separated warring factions and provided some relief, but we did not intervene early enough," said Hayden.
In a few months, when there is a new president and administration, the situation could change, but Hayden, who backs Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, said he does not know what will happen if GOP nominee Donald Trump wins.
"There's no real coherence other than we're going to be really tough, and frankly, he doesn't seem to be very sensitive to the emotional needs of any of our allies," Hayden said of Trump.
If Clinton wins, Hayden said, he expects her to "buy back trust."
"She will be more forward leaning in this," said Hayden. "She was more forward leaning in the administration. She's mentioned safe zones [and] she's mentioned no-fly zones, both of which are much harder to do now."
Hayden also discussed the official report showing a Malaysia Airlines plane that was shot down over Ukraine had been hit by a mobile missile launcher that had been moved into eastern Ukraine from Russia, saying if he were advising a president after that happened, he'd say the incident needs a response.
Further, he thinks Russian President Vladimir Putin is enough of a realist to know that since nobody is pushing back, he has incentive to push such attacks further until the new president takes office.
"I'll be very straightforward," said Hayden. "We should have given the Ukrainians defensive weapons a long time ago. Just kind of go out and say we just made this decision. We're going to give them anti-tank muscles. That's the way it's going to be."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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