BARACK OBAMA was forced into a major damage-limitation exercise yesterday after a new book by veteran investigative reporter Bob Woodward painted a startling portrait of the strained relations between the White House and top US generals.
Divisions within the US administration during an Afghanistan policy review last year which led to 30,000 more personnel being sent to the war zone and the setting of a July 2011 deadline for a withdrawal have been well reported. What is new is the level of personal acrimony that apparently accompanied that debate.
In Obama's War, published next Monday but leaked early to the New York Times,Mr Woodward claims the infighting was ferocious, and punctuated by remarkably snide and bitter remarks.
On one occasion, Gen David Petraeus, the US commander in Afghanistan, is quoted as saying, in reference to Mr Obama’s administration: “You f***ed with the wrong guy.” Another damaging section of the book reveals that Mr Obama needed the withdrawal deadline for domestic political reasons, to keep the Democratic party happy.
The revelations leave the US president vulnerable to fresh attacks by Republicans just as he and the Democrats are struggling in the polls ahead of congressional mid-term elections in November.
The Republicans seized on the president’s remark about the need for a deadline, and said party politics should not be dictating national security policy. “That’s what it’s all about folks, politics, pure politics,” a Republican national committee spokesman, Doug Heye, said. The book threatens to damage already strained relations between Washington and Afghan president Hamid Karzai, and with Pakistan.
Yesterday the White House did not dispute Mr Woodward’s account, other than to correct a few minor points.
It stressed, however, the extracts were selective and claimed that, when the book is read as a whole, Mr Obama emerges as a president who is “analytical, strategic and decisive”.
Among the other revelations are that Mr Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, said the Afghan policy “can’t work”. Vice-president Joe Biden is said to describe Mr Holbrooke as “the most egotistical b****** I’ve ever met”.
Mr Karzai is alleged to be suffering from manic depression and taking medication. Mr Woodward quotes Karl Eikenberry, the US ambassador, as saying: “He’s on his meds, he’s off his meds.”
The book also claims the CIA has set up a 3,000-man Afghan paramilitary unit for covert cross-border operations, including assassinations, against al-Qaeda and Taliban havens in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
It says US intelligence told Mr Obama that Pakistan was not a reliable partner in the Afghan conflict. The president is quoted as saying: “We need to make clear to people that the cancer is in Pakistan.”
There was angry reaction to the book from Afghanistan, where the palace in Kabul denied Mr Karzai has mental health problems. A close Karzai aide said the revelations would undermine a much improved relationship between Mr Karzai and the Americans.
“It adds fuel to the fire of our enemies. Can you imagine the laughter of Mullah Omar [the Taliban leader] over there, reading this?” the aide said.
But Abdullah Abdullah, foreign minister in Mr Karzai’s first cabinet turned opponent in last year’s presidential election, said Mr Karzai’s alleged mental problems had caused problems for the country. “It has affected the situation because it affects his decision-making.”
In Pakistan, senior officials said Mr Woodwards claims were out of date. “That was 2009 and this is 2010. Things have come a long way since then,” said Pakistan foreign office official Abdul Basit.
Blake Hounshell, managing editor of the Washington-based foreignpolicy.com, said the book would create enormous headaches for the White House. "If you thought the Rolling Stonearticle that got General Stanley McChrystal fired was damning, you ain't seen nothin' yet," he said. – (Guardian Service)