For him, it’s all about getting out: Robert Gates
US President Barack Obama’s policy on Afghanistan has come under attack from an unlikely quarter: his own former Defence Secretary, Robert Gates.
In his upcoming memoir, Gates writes that Obama lost faith in his own Afghan war strategy after having approved it in December 2009 and deploying 30,000 additional troops to stabilise the war-torn country ahead of the phased withdrawal beginning in mid-2011. In excerpts published in the American media, Gates speaks of Obama voicing doubts not only about Afghan President Hamid Karzai, but also the man he himself had chosen to lead the US war effort: Gen David H Petraeus.
Referring to a White House meeting in March 2011, Gates writes: “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.”
The former Pentagon chief’s book, titled “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War”, comes out at a time when the Obama administration proceeds with plans for a complete withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan by the end of this year. A Bilateral Security Agreement, envisaging continuance of a residual American force of about 8,000 troops, has not been concluded yet because of differences between the US and Karzai.
“I never doubted Obama’s support for the troops, only his support for their mission,” Gates writes, noting that the President was “skeptical if not outright convinced it would fail”.
Gates is more severe in his comments about Vice-President Joe Biden, at one point going on to say, “I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue of the past four decades”.
Reacting to the media accounts about the book, the White House said that President Obama “deeply appreciates Bob Gates’s service as Defence Secretary and a lifetime of service to our country”, but he disagrees with his views on Biden. Obama termed Biden “one of the leading statesmen of his time”, adding he “relies on his good counsel every day”.
In his book, due for release next week, Gates also criticizes the Obama White House for its “controlling nature”, commenting that the President’s national security team “took micromanagement and operational meddling to a new level”.
The brief White House rejoinder, however, responded only in passing to Gates’ comments criticising Obama’s own Afghan policy, noting: “As has always been the case, the President welcomes differences of view among his national security team, which broaden his options and enhance our policies.”
A Republican who was handpicked by Obama to continue as Defence Secretary when he entered the White House in January 2009, Gates otherwise praises Obama as “a man of personal integrity”. After Gates stepped down in 2011, Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honour.