Bob Woodward of the Washington Post has been quoting former Defense Secretary Robert Gates:
“At a pivotal meeting in the situation room in March 2011, Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates says that Mr. Obama opened with a blast of frustration over his Afghan policy — expressing doubts about Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander he had chosen, and questioning whether he could do business with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai.”
” ‘As I sat there, I thought: The president doesn’t trust his commander, can’t stand Karzai, doesn’t believe in his own strategy and doesn’t consider the war to be his,’ Mr. Gates writes. ‘For him, it’s all about getting out.’ ”
I was getting disillusioned with President Obama, but now, in part at least, my former favorable opinion is restored.
Good for you, Mr. President. I suspect a majority of people felt, and feel, the same way. The war in Afghanistan was always going to be an ill-considered mess. How much it was pushed and promoted at the start by people with a vested interest in war I don’t know, but it was planned by the ignorant. Suffice to say, Obama felt, as the first black President, that he couldn’t scuttle out, but had to forestall the “weak president” charge with the so-called “surge”. But he had no generals capable of handling it. Recent history has been a story of the inability of the huge, muscle-bound military to actually win a war and secure a territory. Moreover, an outrageously dodgy individual was installed as Afghan President for no very good reason apart from the fact that he looked good in his tribal costume.
No wonder Obama was frustrated. The shock is that Robert Gates wasn’t. Frustrated, I mean. His loyalty seems to be to the generals rather than to the president who appointed him and who was elected by a majority of Americans.
Epicurus hated war, and so do his modern followers. It so seldom turns out well, and its consequences are seldom foreseen. Just as the Boer War signaled the weakness of the British Empire, Iraq and Afghanistan will go down as the beginning of the eclipse of American hegemony. And this categorically is not the fault of Obama.
Why haven’t the US military learned the lessons of Malaya and how to deal with insurgencies? Why do they think that the answer to everything is more money and more men? Why can’t they win, given their huge advantage in manpower and materiel?
So many questions, but the American public is brainwashed into the usual “these brave men risking their lives for their country” trope. It would be interesting to know how many senior generals have led men in close combat and endured any form of hardship. Certainly, there have to be questions concerning the old suspicions about generals always fighting the last war.
My reservations about the military were formed when I noticed that the regular, senior officers never left camp, but sent 18 and 19 year old, inexperienced soldiers out into harms way to face bombs and ambushes. Are all militaries the same? Why should we respect them? Answers, please!
Talk about Obama distrusting the advice given by the more publicity-seeking generals, how about not believing Gates’s conflicting statements in his memoir on military policy? Yesterday, I spent $12 for a Kindle pre-order of his book because I want to examine an ugly contradiction which appears in most of the excerpts pimped by the press releases.
That is, the NYT, WaPo, WSJ, and Financial Times focused most attention on Gates’s dissing Obama for skepticism about Pentagon generals’ advice. At the same time, the former defense secretary lavishes praise on Hillary Clinton, and treads softly if at all, on criticism of Bush.
After this public attack on the president, Gates swings into a color-me-pure critique of the militarization of U.S. foreign policy. He’s right about the latter but does he believe his own words when he goes after even Obama’s very limited efforts to scale back that militarization?
Although I continue to have the most serious reservations about President Obama’s policies in key areas, on the issue of the recent military developments in Afghanistan (and in Syria, as well) his actions have been rational and, eventually, truthful. Gates, on the other hand, spent his entire career supporting the exact pattern he claims to decry: militarization of foreign policy.
Gates’s agenda in staying on as Secretary, Defence, was surely to ensure continuity of the Bush and Republican policies….Obama’s reluctance to go along (although far too often he has done so) is what is behind Gates’ apparent frustration….the book is about ensuring that Republican historians judge him fairly! (on behalf of S. Lateef)
So Gates is worried that he is persona non grata with the tribe and his career is over?