US News and World Report cites the Atlantic Council for hosting a conference call with retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden on the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham:
“The reliance on air power has all of the attraction of casual sex: It seems to offer gratification but with very little commitment,” said retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of both the CIA and the National Security Agency. “We need to be wary of a strategy that puts emphasis on air power and air power alone.”
The U.S. has few good and competent friends in that Middle Eastern neighborhood, he added while on a conference call with reporters organized by the Atlantic Council.
But airstrikes are better than nothing, said Hayden, who has been critical of the administration’s slow pace in fighting the growing extremist threat in the region. As Obama pointed out in his Wednesday address, the U.S. must adapt to extremist fighters’ tactics of ignoring borders and establishing safe havens in Syria.
“The sooner we take the fight into Syria against [the Islamic State], the better off we’ll be,” he said.