In a new memoir, former US secretary of defense Robert Gates asserts that US President Barack Obama grew frustrated with Washington’s policy in Afghanistan, that US Vice President Joe Biden has been wrong on nearly every foreign policy and national security issue, and that members of the US Congress subject administration officials to inquisition-like treatment.
Obama approved the strategy of putting 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan and placing US General David Petraeus in charge, even though some top advisers opposed the so-called surge that he announced in December 2009.
“I never doubted Obama’s support for the troops, only his support for their mission,” Gates writes in the book, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, which is set to be released next week by publishing house Knopf.
Recalling a meeting in the White House Situation Room in March 2011, Gates wrote: “As I sat there, I thought: The president doesn’t trust his commander, can’t stand [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai, doesn’t believe in his own strategy and doesn’t consider the war to be his. For him, it’s all about getting out.”
Gates also writes that Biden has been “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades,” although he also says the vice president is “a man of integrity” and applies the same assessment to Obama, even though he is critical at times of the president’s leadership.
In response to reports of Gates’ disdain for Biden, the White House National Security Council issued a statement on Tuesday asserting that Obama relies on the vice president’s “good counsel” every day and considers him “one of the leading statesmen of his time.”
Meanwhile, the White House said that Obama’s weekly private luncheon with Biden would be open briefly to photographers yesterday, a highly unusual invitation for the press and another sign that the US leader was not putting any distance between himself and Biden as Gates’ scathing critique drew attention.
A Republican, Gates served as defense secretary for four-and-a-half years during the last years of former US president George W. Bush’s administration and the first of Obama’s.
According to reports published about the book on Tuesday in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, during his tenure as Pentagon chief, Gates often found himself tempted to leave the post because of the adversarial treatment he received from members of Congress.
In the memoir, he said that, in private, lawmakers could be reasonable, “but when they went into an open hearing, and the little red light went on atop a television camera, it had the effect of a full moon on a werewolf,” according to an excerpt of the book printed in the Journal.
The Times reported that the former defense secretary criticizes what he calls the “controlling nature” of the Obama White House and writes that the president’s national security team “took micromanagement and operational meddling to a new level.”
The book also criticizes the Bush administration, with Gates holding it responsible for what he considers the misguided policies that squandered early victories in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to the Times.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese