Consistent with the New York Instances, a new memoir with the aid of former Security Secretary Robert Gates portrays President Barack Obama as a strong and independent thinker who got here to share the views of individuals who criticized his own strategy in Afghanistan.

alThough Obama at first supported a technique of escalation in Afghanistan contrary to his advisors’ recommendation, Gates recounts in the coming near near Responsibility: Memoirs of a Secretary at Conflict, by 2011 Obama was once fed up with the desultory outcomes, uncertain of Common David Patraeus, suspicious of Afghan President Harmid Karzai, and worn down via terrible remarks from advisors.

“As I sat there, I thought: The president doesn’t belief his commander, can’t stand Karzai, doesn’t believe in his own strategy and doesn’t imagine the battle to be his,” Gates recalls. “For him, it’s all about getting out.”

Obama deployed about 30,000 extra troops in 2009 underneath Secretary Gates, ahead of initiating a withdrawal of most U.S. forces from Afghanistan underneath then-Protection Secretary Leon Panetta, a process to be accomplished by means of 2014.

The memoir additionally goes after the “operational” and “micromanaging” factors of the Nationwide Safety Council, and tells of clashes with Vice President Joe Biden. “I feel he has been flawed on nearly every major foreign policy and nationwide security difficulty during the last 4 many years,” Gates claims.

[h/t New York Occasions]

[Picture by the use of Reuters]

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