Woodward Book Portrays Obama Aides’ Battles

[RamboLiberal]

Source: NY Times

Some of the critical players in President 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 the journalist 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. Mr. 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. Privately, he told Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to push his alternative strategy opposing a big troop buildup in meetings, and while Mr. Obama ultimately rejected it, he set a withdrawal timetable because, “I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.”

But Mr. Biden is not the only one who harbors doubts about the strategy’s chances for success. Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, the president’s Afghanistan adviser, is described as believing that the president’s reviews did not “add up” to the decision he made. Richard C. Holbrooke, the president’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, is quoted saying of the strategy that “it can’t work.”


Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/22/world/asia/22policy.html?_r=1

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WPost:

Woodward book details Obama battles with advisers over exit plan for Afghan war

President Obama urgently looked for a way out of the war in Afghanistan last year, repeatedly pressing his top military advisers for an exit plan that they never gave him, according to secret meeting notes and documents cited in a new book by journalist Bob Woodward.

Frustrated with his military commanders for consistently offering only options that required significantly more troops, Obama finally crafted his own strategy, dictating a classified six-page "terms sheet" that sought to limit U.S. involvement, Woodward reports in "Obama's Wars," to be released on Monday.

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"This needs to be a plan about how we're going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan," Obama is quoted as telling White House aides as he laid out his reasons for adding 30,000 troops in a short-term escalation. "Everything we're doing has to be focused on how we're going to get to the point where we can reduce our footprint. It's in our national security interest. There cannot be any wiggle room."

Obama rejected the military's request for 40,000 troops as part of an expansive mission that had no foreseeable end. "I'm not doing 10 years," he told Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at a meeting on Oct. 26, 2009. "I'm not doing long-term nation-building. I am not spending a trillion dollars."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/21/AR2010092106706.html?hpid=topnews

[Tansy_Gold]

1. The truth hurts

Unreccing won't change the truth.

K & R

[nyy1998]

2. I'm sure this spiel was to help ppl buy his book(it is WaPo after all)

But I'll admit they convinced me to pick up a copy...

[EFerrari]

3. I agree. There's more than one thing going on here.

Woodward has sounded like a BushCo shill to me for years but that doesn't mean there's nothing of value in his book.

[Hubert Flottz]

4. Woodward is another BushCo sleeper cell...

Woke up just in time to trash the democrats, right before the mid term election.

[harun]

7. Hardly a sleeper. I think Obama let him in to do this work because

it shows that Progressives views are being considered in the Administration, and debated, the path is just not being followed.

More of "We want to be Progressives, but you know we just can't right now because of the big bad Republicans, the big bad Military Industrial Complex, Fox News and the big bad Corporations, etc. etc.".

So this shows they are hearing us, just not doing what we want. Make of that what you will.

[BlueMTexpat]

5. I'm neither recommending nor unrecommending this.

I think that Bob Woodward is truth-challenged generally, although I will allow that at least some of these reports ring true. Since "All the President's Men," he's had a much more inflated view of himself and his journalistic "efforts" and competence than the record supports. He's basically a sycophant with his head right up the a**es of those in power, and has to play up any dissent to the max so that he sounds objective ... and sells his books.
For the most part, his reporting reflects the rightward skew of the WaPo - a sorry travesty of what it was in the 1970s. Perhaps Woodward needs someone like Carl Bernstein to keep him honest. Their joint collaboration was by far the best.
I won't be wasting any money on this one and am telling everyone who might buy me a copy because they believe that I might like one to forget it. Books like this are what libraries are for - so we can all save money.

[underpants]

6. “Obama’s Wars” so now they are Obama's wars...gee thanks Bob

Woodward must have some serious goods on people in DC. He was Naval intelligence at one time... :shrug:

[Octafish]

8. One he gets the memo, it doesn't take long for Bob to put pen to paper.

And the new history get formed, just how his handlers want.

[Bragi]

10. Afghanistan is surely Obama's war, though not Iraq

Obama could well have ended the war in Afghanistan, but instead unwisely campaigned on escalating it, and then, sadly, did just that after he was elected. He now owns that war for sure.

Iraq, not so much, though the continued high level of presence he is leaving there is exactly what the Bushites, and the military, wanted. For me, though, Iraq is still Bush's war.

[SomeGuyInEagan]

15. Agreed. Afghanistan is now Obama's war.

50,000 troops still in Iraq - though not peacetime activity like those in Germany - is following 60+ years of U.S. policy. Bad policy, but still its what we do. It keeps the U.S. weapons industry going, which in reality is just a jobs program that will never be cut.

Our military is stretched so thin right now. We are in trouble if we really need it.

[saigon68]

18. It will bankrupt amerika

And its well on its way to doing that

[Bragi]

9. Woodward is no Bush shill

Sorry folks, but I've read two of his books on the Bush WH and its wars, and Woodward is no Bush shill.

As for his research uncovering divisions in the Obama WH over Afghanistan, I am quite sure from the public record that this is the case.

Let's not blame the messenger here.

[No Elephants]

14. OK, he's a Republican shill. Republicans started trying to distance themselves from Bush during his

second term.

From his wiki:

"Woodward believed the Bush Administration's claims of Iraqi WMDs prior to the war. During an appearance on Larry King Live, he was asked by a telephone caller "Suppose we go to war and go into Iraq and there are no weapons of mass destruction," Woodward responded "I think the chance of that happening is about zero. There's just too much there."<11>

[Joe Bacon]

11. I still remember when Media Whores Online named him "Whore Of The Year"

I ignore anything that press whore writes. I still remember when he loved to kiss Bush's ass, just like his fellow presstitutes at the Whoreshington Post.

[cadmium]

12. whatever one thinks of the peice,

of Woodward, or of the war, one thing is always true. It is very hard for a president to deal with a hostile defense establishment. This book provides great insights from James Carroll whose father was first general of Air Force: http://www.amazon.com/House-War-James-Carroll/dp/0618187804

[SomeGuynTexas]

13. "We can absorb a terrorist attack." says the President?

We've come a long way from "Yes we can!" to "We can absorb a terrorist attack."

Dear (insert deity of choice here), what was he thinking?

Exactly where can we absorb a terrorist attack?

Chicago?
Detroit? (sorta looks like the aftermath of one now)
Los Angeles?
Miami?
Denver?
Tennessee?
The South?
The North?
West of the Cascades?

One wonders...

"Woodward quotes Petraeus as saying, "You have to recognize also that I don't think you win this war. I think you keep fighting. It's a little bit like Iraq, actually. . . . Yes, there has been enormous progress in Iraq. But there are still horrific attacks in Iraq, and you have to stay vigilant. You have to stay after it. This is the kind of fight we're in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids' lives."

When a professional warrior you hand picked to be your guy tells you its raining, you'd better bring an umbrella.

Good Luck Mr. President...you'll need it.

[TomCADem]

16. Generals in civilian posts were toughest critics of surge, Woodward writes

Source: Washington Post

A new book by Bob Woodward on the Obama administration's Afghan war deliberations presents three generals in the White House and State Department as the military's toughest, most persistent and most skeptical critics.

President Obama, who took office with relatively little experience with the military, tapped the generals for key positions that are traditionally filled by civilians.

The selections led some critics to complain that the appointments amounted to the militarization of the administration's foreign policy. The Woodward book, however, consistently shows the three officers - retired Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, retired Gen. James L. Jones and Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute - embroiled in heated disputes with the brass.

Lute, the National Security Council's unofficial "war czar" and the sole active-duty general among the group, is portrayed as among the biggest skeptics of the military's strategy to send a surge of more than 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan in an effort to shift the momentum away from the Taliban.


Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/22/AR2010092206232.html?hpid=topnews

[gateley]

17. I wonder what made him decide to go with Patraeus's request since it doesn't

sound as though he wants to stay there one more second longer than necessary.

I know Patraeus has already asked for more troops, but I don't think Obama will do that again. I hope.

[w4rma]

19. Very good. Perhaps Obama should bring some progressives into his circle of advisors, however?

They might come up with actual solutions that work!