Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates RIPS Barack Obama’s Leadership in “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War” … Obama Douted, “Outright Convinced It” [the Surge Mission] Would Fail”

Commander in Chief?

Really, Barack Obama, the so-called Commander in Chief sent 30,000 of America’s bravest and treasured resources into harms way in the Afghanistan surge and did not even believe in the mission? Robert Gates writes in “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War,” the president was “skeptical if not outright convinced it would fail.” 

Why would some one commit troops to a mission that one did not believe in? This is enormously troubling. Was it merely political?

Barack Obama: Commander in Chief or President Photo-Op?

In a new memoir, former defense secretary Robert Gates unleashes harsh judgments about President Obama’s leadership and his commitment to the Afghanistan war, writing that by early 2010 he had concluded the president “doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the war to be his. For him, it’s all about getting out.”

Leveling one of the more serious charges that a defense secretary could make against a commander in chief sending forces into combat, Gates asserts that Obama had more than doubts about the course he had charted in Afghanistan. The president was “skeptical if not outright convinced it would fail,” Gates writes in “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War.”

Obama, after months of contentious discussion with Gates and other top advisers, deployed 30,000 more troops in a final push to stabilize Afghanistan before a phased withdrawal beginning in mid-2011. “I never doubted Obama’s support for the troops, only his support for their mission,” Gates writes.

A Damning must see VIDEO – lack of regard of others by the Obama White House

VIDEO – CNN: Et tu Bob? Fmr. Defense Secretary slams Obama on Afghanistan in new memoir

More damning excepts at Doug Ross.

At a March 3, 2011, National Security Council meeting, Gates writes, the president opened with a “blast.” Obama criticized the military for “popping off in the press” and said he would push back hard against any delay in beginning the withdrawal.

According to Gates, Obama concluded, “?‘If I believe I am being gamed . . .’ and left the sentence hanging there with the clear implication the consequences would be dire.”

Gates continues: “I was pretty upset myself. I thought implicitly accusing” Petraeus, and perhaps Mullen and Gates himself, “of gaming him in front of thirty people in the Situation Room was inappropriate, not to mention highly disrespectful of Petraeus. As I sat there, I thought: the president doesn’t trust his commander, can’t stand [Afghanistan President Hamid] 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.”