I would be much more aggressive about going after those that attack our US forces.
Do you think to date that our response has been too soft?
I think it's been a little bit too selective. I mean, we hit some AMMO dumps, we hit some other targets. I want to go after those who are firing missiles at our troops and make sure they understand that when they fire a messile, they're going to die.
Like you said yesterday, I feel like Leon Panetta, lifetime Democrat, saying that while you've got a sitting US Democrat president at war more or less is pretty strong language. He's calling out Joe Biden's administration and saying, how come we're not hitting them back harder? That's former Secretary Defense under Obama Leon Panetta.
That among several topics we'd like to discuss with Jeff mccauslin, CBS News Military consultant, Jeff, how are you, sir?
Very well, guys, Happy holidays.
Excellent, any and same to you and yours. Any thoughts on leon Putete's statement there? It seems pretty pointed to us.
Well, yeah, I had to totally agree with leotidea quite frankly and concerned me that our news coverage seems to have primarily focused on what's going on in the God the Strip with his horrific there's no two questions about it. But at the same time, US forces in Syria and Iraq have been struck seventy six times. In one case there was a report that an explosive lad had drone in a US barracks and I think it was near our Biel and luckily that to pick your bomb did
not detonate, but that could have been devastating. And yes, we have done some air strikes, and yes we've done some C one thirty gunship strikes in return. But we need to do something to get this to come to a halt, and do so as quickly as possible. Otherwise we all need to realize if there was a catastrophic event in which a number of US soldiers were killed or injured, well then we would see escalation going vertical,
very very rapidly. And also we need to be concerned about the increasing of violence down the Red Sea, where in the last few days Houthi rebels have attacked three commercial ships. The USS Carnea destroyer was involved in providing them assistance and also shooting down a number of drones and as well accepted several missiles that the Hooties have fired towards Israel.
Yeah, the Political has an article with a DoD official speaking anonymously. You'd be hard pressed to find another time that US ships have been this challenged in the region. So this is as hot as it's ever been. You probably as a military guy, not not wanting to criticize the Secretary of Defense, but we played a clip of Lloyd Austin a little bit earlier where he said, we will not tolerate these kind of attacks.
Well, I think by.
Definition we are tolerating these kind of attacks, aren't we.
Well, when you get to seventy six, it sort of suggest to me that you're kind of tolerating those attacks. And we also need to be very clear with the American public, and that is these roughly thirty four hundred soldiers that are in a Rock and Syria for example, about nine hundred and Syria, about twenty five hundred in Iraq. They are there. They their mission has nothing whatsoever to
do with the ongoing hostilities in Gaza. They are there still conducting counter ISIS operations to defeat the last elements of ISIS in the case of the US forces in Iraq, oh, by the way, and they are there at the invitation
of the Iraqi government. So I think the other thing we need to do is to get pretty pretty hard for the Iraqi government and say, look, if you like our forces in your country to provide assistance and defeating Isis, which cully threatens the sovereignty of your nation, then your forces as well. Your forces as well need to be heavily involved in ensuring these kinds of attacks on Americans that are helping to defend you do not occur.
Getting back to the attacks on both commercial and military ships in the Gulf, is there any doubt in your mind that these so called Hoosi attacks are at the behest of the Iranians.
Well, there's no doubt that the iradience have provided military assistance to the Houthis. There's no doubt in many ways the Huthis are a proxy of Iran And that being said, are they there actually orchestrating this particular individual attack, and that I would have some doubt. My guess is the Iranians are clearly aware of what's going on. They sort of may have occouraged it, it may not be involved in the CID planning of a particular in the individual attack.
But we also know that elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard leadership has visited Rock in the last few days. And I always wonder when we talk about Iran, is Iran doing this ran doing that this is a bifurcated leadership, and that you have the army and the government of Iran that's one thing, then you have the Revolutionary Guards,
the Koods force doing something else. And several times we've seen over the last several years, the right hand and the left hand may not know what the other one's doing.
Right, fair enough, I'm not the expert on asymmetrical warfare that you are, but I find my self searching for a reason the houthis given you know what they are and what they're fighting for, would think, hey, I know what we ought to do, let's provoke the United States. I can't imagine they would do that on their own.
That's exactly right. And also even for the Iranians, I'm a little unsure what the Iranians think they are accomplishing by encouraging these Shiite militia groups just to strike US forces. You know, do they assume that by doing so, eventually we're just going to immediately evacuate and leave the region with a table between our legs. That's not going to happen. So in doing what they're doing right now, a really risk, really dramatic escalation, and that's why I crossed the entire region.
We need to be concerned about that as this fighting is resumed. Yes, we've seen the attacks by the houthies. Yes, we've seen the attacks by forces in Iraq and Syria. We've also seen a rapid increase in violence on the West Bank. About two hundred and fifty Palestinians have been killed on the West Bank since this war began, in conflict with Israeli defense forces and settlers. And oh, by the way, it's Beala in southern Lebanon. His recommenced rock
and artillery strikes into northern Israel. So the possibility that this war could rapidly escalate and become a more regional war still is out there, and the law of this goes on that probability, I fear raises. Well.
I've followed some of these attacks. I mean Wall Street Journal had a good article about one of them where I guess it was a drone and a bomb that lodged in the ceiling of one of our barracks and it didn't go off. Well, if it had exactly, we'd be at war with Iran, wouldn't we.
Pretty likely if you had a significant number of US casualties. There's no two ways about it. That's why things even more important that we respond in concert with our Iraqi allies, because we had a couple of cases where the Iraqis actually have complained when we did respond, even in a limited fashion, that we were doing so in their knowledge and therefore we were in some ways violating our sovereignty. Well,
I kind of get that. But on the other hand, the Iraqi government has a full responsibility to protect our forces since they're in their country, as I said before, hoping to defend that sovereignty.
CBS News military consultant Jeff mccauslan on the line, Jeff, if we can pivot to Gaza for a minute, I'm you know, I see virtually every single headline on the fighting includes, for instance, the New York Times Israeli forces enter southern Gaza's largest city as fear grows for civilians. I mean, every headline includes the concern about civilian deaths, and certainly only a monster would like civilian deaths. But to what extent does Israel have options given the shape
of the battlefield and the nature of the enemy. If you accept that their goal is righteous and that's to wipe out Hamas, I think they.
Ask some options. I mean, Tom Freeman, I thought an an article in The Times a few days ago, said, May what is you want to do is just for the moment, declare ceasefire. We will declare a ceasefire, and we'll continue that ceasefire when you released all of the hostages number one and you announced that you're going to surrender and impact dismantle Hamas, okay, and then that'll be
the end of the war. And that puts the onus, if you could say, diplomatically or politically on Hamas, Okay, you want this to continue, after all this has happened, after all these civilians unfortunately been killed in the hostilities.
That's one thing you could do. The second thing I think the Israelis could do would be take a page out of our playbook back during the surge, and that is if you talk to folks that were involved in that what we tried to do was focus our efforts militarily on a laser effort to take out the leadership of the al Qaeda and the other groups for your opposing.
But we had a political effort whereby we were trying to identify in a rocky partner, which we kind of did that we could then create a political end state. And if you will peel the population away from the terrorists group, I fear too oftentimes we talk about Palestinians
and Hamas as interchangeable nouns. Well, they're certainly not. So to find that political partner, whether it's a Pan Arab group, whether it's the UN, whether it's the Palestinian authority, if they could be resurrected that you could show as your political partner to shape an in state. They might offer the Palestinian people a better future, and in doing so you drive a wedge between them and the terrorist group Hamas.
So before we get off the phone with you, I want to nail this down so I understand your thinking on it. So in the early eighties, as you know, we had hundreds of Marines killed in a terrorist attack there in Lebanon, and Reagan said, okay, we're out of there. You don't think that would happen. You don't think that would happen if there were a whole bunch of soldiers killed in a rack or Syria or wherever. You don't think we would pull out?
Well, never say never. I mean, we certainly did that under Reagan. We certainly did that in Somalia after Blackhawks down in the Clinton administration. So there is some precedent that being said in those picure cases, I think you have to also step back and say why were those
forces there? And by the time the Marines had that terrible tragedy, they'd interviewed a young Marine corporal and he asked, somebody, what's our What is our mission here in this ongoing civil war in Lebanon outside of providing targets for Syrian artillery? What are we doing here? And so the real question what was the mission came to the forefront. Same in Somalia.
I think the mission in the Rock, which you would examine against, you know, holding ices, trying to help continue to establish a rock on a more firm putting, is a substantially greater mission than we face in those days. And also the loss of prestees on the part of the United States pulling out and therefore allowing the Iranians to declare a tremendous victory. He was, I would certainly hope we wouldn't do that in that regard and give them that kind of victory.
CBS News Military consultant doctor Jeff mccauslin, Jeff, always enlightening. Thanks a million.
Take care of guys Armstrong and Getty