Obama: White House at war

In true Woodward style, it paints a picture of an administration packed with feuding egos and a President under intense pressure from competing camps all vying to dominate the debate writes Washington Producer Job Rabkin. It may not be Watergate but it is certainly explosive.

The main focus of Obama’s Wars is the debate over what to do about Afghanistan. Woodward details the intense pressure put on the President last summer by his generals to send some 40,000 extra troops there, despite the lack of a clear exit strategy.

“I’m not doing 10 years,” he told Secretary of Defence Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at a meeting in October 2009. “I’m not doing long-term nation-building. I am not spending a trillion dollars.”

Woodward says the president was furious at attempts by military commanders to bounce him into a decision he was not happy with. Even after the President had agreed to a “surge” of 30,000 extra troops, the Pentagon demanded another 4,500 “enablers” as support staff.

The president apparently lost his infamous cool. “I’m done doing this!” he vented. Obama was so concerned the military would circumvent his decision, he dictated a six page “terms sheet” which lay out in no uncertain terms his troops order and its objectives. The document is reproduced in the book.

This needs to be a plan about how we’re going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan. Barack Obama

Those arguments left Obama at odds with his top military men, especially Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the joint Chiefs of Staff, and General David Petraeus, then head of Central Command. The rows between them emerged in the course of two dozen closed-door secret strategy sessions and almost 40 private conversations between the President and his cabinet, aides and intelligence officials.

At one such meeting, Obama told an aide: “This needs to be a plan about how we’re going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan… Everything we’re doing has to be focused on how we’re going to get to the point where we can reduce our footprint. It’s in our national security interest. There cannot be any wiggle room.”

The President was keenly aware of the political problems of ramping up the war in Afghanistan. From the start, he concluded “I have two years with the public on this” Woodward says. He privately asked Vice President Biden to push an alternative strategy opposing a troop surge.

And although he rejected that approach, he personally set a timetable for withdrawal. In a conversation with Republican senator Lindsey Graham after the announcement, he said: “I can’t let this be a war without end, and I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.”

The storm over what to do in Afghanistan often got personal. Woodward says Obama’s national security adviser, Jim Jones, referred to the president’s political aides as “the water bugs”, “the Politburo,” “the Mafia” and “the campaign set”.

General Petraeus, who felt excluded from the clique, called the President’s Senior Advisor, David Axelrod “a complete spin doctor”. He told his own aides over a glass of wine on a flight in May that the administration was “f***ing with the wrong guy”.

Some of the personal rivalries and dislikes within the administration were already well known. But Woodward reveals just how intense they actually are. Vice President Joe Biden called Richard Holbrooke, the president’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan “the most egotistical bastard I’ve ever met.” But he admitted “he may be the right guy for the job.”

Barack Obama: US president – special report

The book also details the ongoing frustrations felt at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue about Afghanistan’s leader Hamid Karzai, and lingering fears about his ability to hold it together. Woodward cites US Intelligence reports which say Karzai is a manic depressive who is prone to outbursts at any time. “He’s on his meds, he’s off his meds,” US Ambassador to Kabul Karl Eikenberry told him.

Woodward was given extraordinary access to key figures, as he was during the Bush administration. Some wry watchers in Washington have suggested those that gave him good detail came out well, while those who were less cooperative and not painted in a flattering light.

Politico, the Washington insiders’ website, put it this way: “Instead of thinking, ‘I’m talking to Bob Woodward: I’d better be careful’ some sources tend to think, ‘I’m talking to Bob Woodward. I’d better tell him something good.”

More substantial are some of the revelations about what the US is actually doing in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Woodward reports that the CIA has a 3,000-man “covert army” in Afghanistan called Counter-terrorism Pursuit Teams. Made up mostly of Afghans, Woodward describes them as elite well trained units that capture and kill Taliban fighters in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Previous reports have suggested the US was using local militias, but nothing on that scale.

The administration has also kept in place or expanded 14 intelligence orders, or findings, issued by George Bush, which give legal cover for the CIA’s covert actions across the globe.

We can absorb a 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. Barack Obama

And the US has developed a new capability to intercept communications, which dramatically increases the speed with which it can take action. “They talk, we listen. They move, we observe. Given the opportunity, we react operationally,” then Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell told the President just days after he entered the White House.

So what about Obama himself? He gave Woodward an extensive interview in July, which itself is revealing about the pressures of the job. Woodward portrays a president who is professorial, assigning his aides with “homework”, but also under strain from a barrage of warnings about potential terror threats against the US and the difficulty of preventing them.

Obama told Woodward: “We can absorb a 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.”

That comment has already ignited a firestorm of criticism on the right. Lynn Cheney, daughter of the former vice president Dick Cheney, immediately claimed the President is “unwilling to do whatever it takes” to prevent terror attacks, talking about an “alarming fatalism” at the White House.

Altogether though it seems the Beltway verdict is that Obama comes out of it all in relatively good shape. Mike Allen of Politico calls the book “a net positive for Obama, portraying him as thoughtful, decisive, seeking advice, and knowing what he knows and what he doesn’t.”