Bob Gates Takes the First Shot Across the Bow at the Obama Presidency

If there remained any question about President Barack Obama being a lameduck, Bob Gates has answered in the affirmative. In his memoir, to be published next week, Gates, who served from 2006 to 2011 under Obama and his Republican predecessor George W. Bush as US Secretary of Defense, takes the first heavyweight shots at Obama, writing that Obama had major doubts about his decision to commit more troops in the war in Afghanistan, believing it would ultimately end in failure. The former defense secretary sharply criticizes Obama's approach to a number of defense-related issues, especially Afghanistan, according to a Bob Woodward review of "Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War" in The Washington Post on Tuesday. Gates wrote that Obama was "skeptical if not outright convinced it [the administration strategy] would fail," according to the Post. During a meeting in March 2011 to discuss the withdrawal timetable, the NYT says Gates recalls that Obama also expressed doubts about the commander he had chosen, General David Petraeus, and questioned whether he could work with 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,....For him, it's all about getting out." However, Gates believed the president was an admirable thinker who often made decisions "opposed by his political advisers or that would be unpopular with his fellow Democrats," according to the Times report that says Gates supports his evaluation by pointing to Obama's approval of the mission to attack the compound in Pakistan where Osama bin Laden was believed to be hiding as, "one of the most courageous decisions I had ever witnessed in the White House." Gates also describes Obama as "a man of personal integrity." But, Gates goes into detail about the difficulties he had in working with the President and the administration, saying it ultimately led to a rift that became personally wounding and impossible to repair," according to the Post. He says that after an initial honeymoon period with Obama's inner circle, he found himself in ongoing policy battles with top aides, the Times writes. Gates forcefully attacked Vice President Joe Biden, who he accused of "poisoning the well" against the US military leadership, Tom Donilon, Obama's national security adviser, and Douglas Lute, the Army lieutenant general who managed Afghan policy, the NYT reports. Gates also says, according to the Times, that at one point in September 2009 he considered quitting : "I was deeply uneasy with the Obama White House's lack of appreciation - from the top down - of the uncertainties and unpredictability of war,....I came closer to resigning that day than at any other time in my tenure." Gates also describes his outrage at other points during his time under Obama. "All too often during my 4 1/2 years as Secretary of Defense, when I found myself sitting yet again at that witness table at yet another congressional hearing, I was tempted to stand up, slam the briefing book shut and quit on the spot. The exit lines were on the tip of my tongue : 'I may be the Secretary of Defense, but I am also an American citizen, and there is no son of a bitch in the world who can talk to me like that. I quit. Find somebody else'," he writes, according to the Wall Street Journal. He adds, however, that the main source of his frustration throughout his tenure, was the difficulty of achieving anything of consequence due to the gridlock in Washington : "Getting anything consequential done was so damnably difficult - even in the midst of two wars. I did not just have to wage war in Afghanistan and Iraq and against al-Qaida; I also had to battle the bureaucratic inertia of the Pentagon, surmount internal conflicts within both administrations, avoid the partisan abyss in Congress, evade the single-minded parochial self-interest of so many members of Congress and resist the magnetic pull exercised by the White House, especially the Obama administration, to bring everything under its control and micromanagement," he writes according to the WSJ. "Over time, the broad dysfunction of today's Washington wore me down, especially as I tried to maintain a public posture of nonpartisan calm, reason and conciliation." Gates also detailed his views on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, with whom he said he shared a common view of national security issues. Gates praised her in his memoir as "smart, idealistic but pragmatic, tough-minded, indefatigable, funny, a very valuable colleague, and a superb representative of the United States all over the world," according to the Post. Nonetheless, he revealed that even though Clinton supported the Afghan surge, she had confided to Gates that she opposed the Iraq surge, ordered by former President George W. Bush, for political reasons, a position, the Post notes highlight her image of taking decisions on a purely partisan basis, if she runs for president in 2016. "Hillary told the president that her opposition to the [2007] surge in Iraq has been political because she was facing him in the Iowa primary….The president conceded vaguely that opposition to the Iraq surge had been political. To hear the two of them making these admissions, and in front of me, was as surprising as it was dismaying," Gates writes, according to the Post. While Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton saw the Obama administration as deeply “controlling” national security issues, Gates said in his book, criticizing the controlling nature of the Obama White House and its determination to take credit for every good thing that happened while giving none to the career folks in the trenches who had actually done the work, "which offended Secretary Clinton as much as it did me.” Bob Woodward said Gates at times writes reverently about Clinton, found her "smart, idealistic but pragmatic, tough-minded, indefatigable, funny, a very uable colleague, and a superb representative of the United States all over the world.” The White House took exception to Gates’ descriptions. According to the White House, it is well-known that as a matter of principle and sound policy, President Obama opposed going to war in the first place, opposed the surge of forces, and then ended the war in Iraq as president,” a White House official wrote in an email. “Any suggestion to the contrary is simply wrong.” As for Clinton's record, while a Senator, she voted for military action in Iraq in 2003, but during the 2008 primary she took a more dovish approach amid fierce criticism of the war from the left. Very telling about Bob Gates' persona is that at the end of this memoir, Gates says he is to be buried in Arlington Cemetery's Section 60, the final resting place of many American soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. "The greatest honor possible would be to rest among my heroes for all eternity," he writes, according to the Times. Republicans swiftly responded to Gates' sentiments in the memoir, in particular, his assessment of the tensions over Afghanistan. GOP Senator John McCain told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that Obama always talks about Afghanistan in terms of withdrawal. The White House was swift to play down any suggestions by Gates that Obama's private views on Afghanistan were not in keeping with his policy positions. In a statement released Tuesday, Caitlin Hayden, the National Security Council spokeswoman, said, "deliberations over our policy on Afghanistan have been widely reported on over the years, and it is well known that the president has been committed to achieving the mission of disrupting, dismantling and defeating Al Qaida, while also ensuring that we have a clear plan for winding down the war, which will end this year." According to early reviews, Gates holds the Bush administration, in which he also served as Secretary of Defense, responsible for what he considered misguided policy that squandered the early victories in Afghanistan and Iraq. ~~~~~ Dear readers, it's unusual for a policy-level cabinet member to criticize any sitting US President. That Bob Gates, usually the epitome of decorum and courtesy, chose to "go public" while three years remain in the Obama presidency is indicative of Bob Gates' serious concerns about how military decisions are being made by the Obama administration and where tbose decisions may lead - both on the field of action and in the post-Obama political arena. His shots across the bow at Joe Biden may be Gates' effort to clear Biden from the 2016 candidate field. That Obama called in photographers to cover his weekly lunch with his Vice President today may also be an early indication of Obama support for Biden in 2016 - and the ever more cooling relationship between Obama and the Clintons may be the reason. Bob Gates will make the TV rounds to support his book. His remarks will surely shed more light on this extraordinary memoir.