Former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told a Washington audience Jan. 13 that President Barack Obama erred when he called for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria to step down early in the Syrian civil war.
While Assad is a “brutal dictator” who must eventually leave office, Hagel said, the United States should have learned from the chaos that followed the abrupt removal of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi that taking out authoritarian leaders without knowing who will take their place is not the best solution.
