Gates snipes at Obama
Country Singer sends us a link from the Washington Post wherein they report that former Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates has written a book that says what we’ve been saying around this blog for years;
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.
Well, f’n duh. I don’t like Gates – I didn’t like him when he was the SecDef and I don’t like him now, and it’s mostly for exactly these reasons. Gates was in the position where he could shape policy and convince the president that he was 8TFU, instead he was Good Time Charlie, glad-handing the culprits who sent troops to their deaths, and he waits until now to speak out. Gates enabled this administration to undermine our success in Afghanistan and he was the architect of the current race for the exits.
And then on the way out the door, Gates took shots at the troops’ pay and benefits as well as those of retirees. Sorry, Gates, but you own this failure in Afghanistan right along with Obama, Panetta and Hagel. Live with it and quit making like it’s not your fault. Peddle that shit elsewhere.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden
Ok … summed up in one word:
D’oh!
“I never doubted Obama’s support for the troops, only his support for their mission.”
I see. So, that means what? That he really didn’t have a Marine hold an umbrella for him? That he is backing pay raises for active duty personnel and reducing healthcare costs for retirees? That he is personally writing notes to the families of the Fallen and calling each? Or does it mean that he does his thing at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier each November 11th and that’s that?
So Gates thinks sending us to our deaths in a mission you don’t believe in is not mutually exclusive to supporting the troops being sent? I can imagine the handshake while getting on the plane “Good luck trooper. I’m pretty sure my strategy sucks, you won’t accomplish anything worthwhile, and I’m going to keep sending you and thousands of your friends back into the grinder. But don’t worry, I support you!”
The only autobiographies like this I own are gifts from other people. I refuse to spend my own money on them. They’re all multi-million dollar self aggrandizment projects. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Myers, Franks, Wolfowitz, and Bremer all have books on the shelf saying “it wasn’t my fault.” Well then whose fault was it asshole?
What a pussy.
Fuck that guy forever. In fact he represents everything wrong with higher in the military today. Can’t find their balls while in to do anything but say yes, suddenly finds balls once out to redirect criticism of a shitty tenure.
Why hasn’t Amos been fired? That guy is the worst shit to happen to the Marine Corps since that ghost that appeared which has been trying to get it’s gear back by stealing everyone else’s gear.
Finally. Someone who agrees with me about Gates. I got so sick and tired on all the Gates love I kept reading from folks who should know better. Now Gates comfrims himself what anybody who cared to pay attention knew. He was a political hack who saluted and force fed the military whatever shit sandwich any administration chose to dish out.
Excerpt from the WaPo piece: “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.”
And Gates sat there while his department and most senior subordinates were bad-mouthed and thrown under the bus and did nothing. Gates admits the war was considered pointless by the President but he signed on to keep it going.
According to the article the book is full of “I got angry but kept my mouth shut” ancedotes from Gates while national security policy was decided by a bunch of idiots.
Pffft. So if “by early 2010” Dear Leader “doesn’t believe in his own strategy” blah-blah-blah, what did you do as SECDEF to help him believe? If you thought he was abandoning or undermining the Afghan campaign “strategy” why didn’t you resign in protest? Gates is just another useless, gutless political hack.
Why didn’t Gates say something about all this sometime prior to November 2012, when it might have made some difference? Waiting until Obama is safely reelected, and then unloading on him, is classic closing the barn door after the horse is gone.
WH probably more worried about the other “Bob”…Bob Woodward might lean left, but the guy is prickly & doesn’t like staying on the reservation…has really gotten under the skin of the Lion-0 admin in last few years.
I think that, when no one was looking, someone changed the oath of office for military officers to “…solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the President of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, including political opponents, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same….” That must be it.
Gates is another Robert McNamara. He was okay with everything while he had his big office, military todies, and nice paycheck. Now, he’s critical of the worthless policies that sent many a good man and woman to their needless deaths.
May the cheeks of his ass fuse shut!