Robert Gates Memoir Alleges Obama Soured on Own Afghan Strategy

According to the New York Times, a new memoir by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates portrays President Barack Obama as a strong and independent thinker who came to share the views of those who criticized his own strategy in Afghanistan.

Though Obama initially supported a strategy of escalation in Afghanistan contrary to his advisors’ advice, Gates recounts in the forthcoming Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, by 2011 Obama was fed up with the desultory results, doubtful of General David Patraeus, suspicious of Afghan President Harmid Karzai, and worn down by negative feedback from advisors.

“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,” Gates recalls. “For him, it’s all about getting out.”

Obama deployed about 30,000 additional troops in 2009 under Secretary Gates, before initiating a withdrawal of most U.S. forces from Afghanistan under then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, a process to be completed by 2014.

The memoir also goes after the “operational” and “micromanaging” aspects of the National Security Council, and tells of clashes with Vice President Joe Biden. “I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades,” Gates claims.

[h/t New York Times]

[Image via Reuters]

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