Astutely recognizing that this question was unresolved as the legislation was passed, Arizona Republican John McCain asked at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on September 16, 2014, “will we repel Bashar Assad’s air assets that will be attacking [the rebels]?” The then-Pentagon chief replied, “Any attack on those that we have trained and who are supporting us, we will help ’em.” In his recent Foreign Policy interview, Hagel astonishingly admitted that he improvised on the spot and came up with that highly consequential policy declaration on his own. “We had never come down on an answer or a conclusion in the White House. I said what I felt I had to say. I couldn’t say, ‘No.’ Christ, every ally would have walked away from us in the Middle East.”

If this is actually what happened, it is an extraordinary case of strategic negligence by the White House. Whether and to what extent the United States would provide direct military support to the Syrian rebels who the Pentagon overtly trained and equipped was a major component of the anti-Islamic State strategy that President Obama had announced just six days earlier. Either Obama had not personally decided before he made his speech or he had left it unresolved or unclear by the time Hagel and then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey testified before the Armed Services Committee. Whether due to negligence or neglect, this was not a policy declaration that any secretary of defense should have made up on the spot. It is one thing for the White House to consciously leave matters unresolved publicly to retain flexibility as a situation unfolds, but this instance of inadequate policy coordination and indecisiveness suggests that the Obama administration had not even made a decision internally. This is another damning anecdote that reflects on the Obama administration’s poorly conceived and implemented approach to the Syrian civil war and rise of the Islamic State.

This post appears courtesy of the Council on Foreign Relations.