Some of the critical players in US President Barack Obama’s national security team doubt his strategy in Afghanistan will succeed and have spent much of the last 20 months quarreling with one another over policy, personalities and turf, according to a new book.
The book, Obama’s Wars, by Bob Woodward, depicts an administration deeply torn over the war in Afghanistan even as the president agreed to triple troop levels there amid suspicion that he was being boxed in by the military. Obama’s top White House adviser on Afghanistan and his special envoy for the region are described as believing the strategy will not work.
The president concluded from the start that “I have two years with the public on this” and pressed advisers for ways to avoid a big escalation, the book says.
“I want an exit strategy,” he implored at one meeting.
He told US Vice President Joe Biden, privately, to push his alternative strategy opposing a big troop buildup in meetings, and while Obama ultimately rejected it, he set a withdrawal timetable because, “I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.”
But Biden is not the only one who harbors doubts about the strategy’s chances for success. Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, Obama’s Afghanistan adviser, is described as believing that Obama’s review did not “add up” to the decision he made. Richard Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, is quoted saying of the strategy that “it can’t work.”
Woodward, the longtime Washington Post reporter and editor, was granted extensive access to administration officials and documents for his account, including an interview with Obama.
The New York Times obtained a copy of Obama’s Wars before its publication by Simon & Schuster next week.
Although the internal divisions described have become public, the book suggests that they were even more intense and disparate than previously known and offers new details. Biden called Holbrooke “the most egotistical bastard I’ve ever met.”
A variety of administration officials expressed scorn for retire Marine General James Jones, Obama’s national security adviser, while he referred to some of the president’s other aides as “the water bugs” or “the Politburo.”
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, thought his vice chairman, General James Cartwright, went behind his back, while Cartwright dismissed Mullen because he “wasn’t a war fighter.”
US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates worried that Jones would be succeeded by his deputy, ThomasDonilon, who would be a “disaster.”
General David Petraeus, who was overall commander for the Middle East until becoming the Afghanistan commander this summer, told a senior aide that he disliked talking with David Axelrod, the president’s senior adviser, because he was “a complete spin doctor.”
Beyond the internal battles, the book offers fresh disclosures on the nation’s continuing battle with terrorists. It reports that the CIA has a 3,000-man “covert army” in Afghanistan called the Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams, mostly Afghans who capture and kill Taliban fighters and seek support in tribal areas.
Past news accounts have reported that the CIA has a number of militias, including one trained on one of its compounds, but nothing the size of the covert army.
As for Obama himself, the book describes a professorial president who assigned “homework” to advisers but bristled at what he saw as military commanders’ attempts to force him into a decision. Even after he agreed to send another 30,000 troops last winter, the Pentagon asked for an additional 4,500 “enablers” to support them.
Obama lost his poise, according to the book: “I’m done doing this!”
To ensure that the Pentagon did not reinterpret his decision, Obama dictated a six-page, single-space “terms sheet” explicitly laying out his troop order and its objectives, a document included in the book’s appendix.
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