Obama's Wars: New Woodward book shows Obama fighting his generals on Afghanistan

Obama's Wars:
New Woodward book shows Obama fighting his generals on Afghanistan

Wed Sep 22, 2010, 11:48 am ET

By John Cook, The Upshot

New Woodward book shows Obama fighting his generals on Afghanistan

Bob Woodward's latest insidery, veil-piercing tome on the inner workings of the White House delves into Barack Obama's decision-making process on Afghanistan, and reports that Obama essentially crafted his own exit strategy in the face of calls from his generals to extend U.S. commitments indefinitely. According to excerpts published in the Washington Post today, Woodward depicts Obama repeatedly demanding that his war council devise a way to get out of Afghanistan — only to be answered by what he regarded as plans for incremental expansion. "This needs to be a plan about how we're going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan," Obama told his aides, according to Woodward. "Everything we're doing has to be focused on how we're going to get to the point where we can reduce our footprint."

By contrast, Woodward quotes Gen. David Petraeus, who now heads the war effort there, calling for a generations-long presence: "I don't think you win this war. I think you keep fighting. ... This is the kind of fight we're in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids' lives."

Woodward describes Obama repeatedly pushing back against Petraeus and Gen. Stanley McChrystal's plans for adding 40,000 or more troops to the conflict, eventually coming up with his own strategy for a short-term surge of 30,000 troops. Woodward writes that Obama didn't trust the military's commitment to execute the White House-approved strategy for a 2013 withdrawal. Indeed, Woodward reports that the president distributed a six-page "term sheet" to his national security team laying out the plan in detail.

In an attempt to head off "mission creep" and expansion of the conflict, Obama specifically laid out what he would not permit the military to do under the plan. Like a judge at a jury trial, Obama polled each member of the team on the term sheet, forcing them to speak up if they had any questions or disagreements.

The book also details conflict and mistrust among the members of the national security team, with National Security Adviser James L. Jones dismissing Obama's political aides as "the Politburo" and Petraeus calling David Axelrod a "complete spin doctor." It also claims that Afghan president Hamid Karzai has been diagnosed as a manic depressive, with the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Karl W. Eikenberry quoted as saying, "He's on his meds, he's off his meds."

The book also reports on the mobilization of a secret 3,000-man CIA-run paramilitary army of Afghan nationals called the Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams, which ventures across the border into Pakistan to pursue al-Qaida and Taliban targets. Woodward recounts a classified exercise in May, which found that the national security apparatus is "woefully unprepared to deal with a nuclear terrorist attack in the United States." In an hour-long interview with the president himself, Woodward quotes Obama as saying that America "can absorb [another] terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever ... we absorbed it and we are stronger."

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