Covering Obama Defense Secretary nominee Ash Carter's Senate confirmation hearing today, MSNBC.com writer Zachary Roth painted a picture of a man who is gliding along smoothly into his post as the new Pentagon chief. But completely omitted from his story was any mention of Carter's rambling non-answer to Sen. John McCain's inquiry as to what Carter understands Obama administration strategy for defeating ISIS to be.
"Ash Is a Smash" blared the teaser headline on the MSNBC.com splash page. "Obama defense nominee glides through hearing," added the subheader. The article itself, headlined "'Soon-to-be' defense secretary glides through hearing" portrayed Carter as being warmly regarded by senators on both sides of the aisle.
Carter may indeed be personally palatable to most senators, but as Melanie Hunter of NewsBusters sister site CNSNews.com reported today, Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain was quite displeased with Carter's rambling non-answer to his question about the Obama administration's strategy to defeat ISIS (emphasis mine):
(CNSNews.com) – Defense Secretary nominee Ashton Carter said Wednesday that the U.S. "absolutely" needs to have a strategy to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), but Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the "strategy" as Carter understands it to be doesn’t sound like a strategy at all.
"It doesn’t sound like a strategy to mean, but maybe we can flesh out your goals. It sounds like a series of goals to me," McCain said at Carter's confirmation hearing Wednesday.
"The strategy connects ends and means, and our ends with respect to ISIL needs to be its lasting defeat," Carter said when asked what he understands the strategy to be. "I say lasting, because it’s important that when they get defeated, they stay defeated, and that is why it’s important that we have those on the ground there who will ensure that they stay defeated once defeated."
"It’s different on the two sides of the border," he said. "It’s one enemy, but there’s two different contexts. In Iraq, the force that will keep them defeated is the Iraqi Security Forces. Our strategy is to strengthen them and to make them that force."
Of course, it seems that by definition, every strategy is a plan which "connects ends and means." What's more, it's tautological that the goal of defeating a military enemy is that they "stay defeated." Carter's stumbling half-minute non-answer speaks volumes, and it's highly unlikely the liberal media would have let say a George W. Bush or Mitt Romney Defense secretary nominee get away with such an easily lampoonable gaffe.
