Bob Woodward: Obama's Wars

Lyndon B. Johnson, 

South Vietnam, 1966

In December 2009, Michael Lindenberger wrote “Obama's Afghanistan decision evokes LBJ's 1965 order on Vietnam buildup” for The Dallas Morning News. In 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson took ownership of a war he, like Obama, had inherited. Gen. William Westmoreland wanted more troops in Vietnam, and after a protracted debate within the White House, Johnson sent them. Over the next three years, he would send hundreds of thousands more and launch a carpet-bombing campaign against North Vietnam. Johnson's presidency – and many argue, Johnson himself – were destroyed long before America could finally, 10 years later, quit Vietnam. Obama's decision to send 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan has reawakened those memories of Vietnam's early days, and brought unsettling comparisons from an array of historians who have spent their careers studying Johnson. "I'll tell you, the more that I stayed awake last night thinking of this thing, the more I think of it, I don't know – it looks like to me we're getting into another Korea," Johnson said in 1964 during a tape-recorded conversation with national security adviser McGeorge Bundy. "It just worries the hell out of me. I don't see what we can ever hope to get out of it, once we're committed." McGovern, who campaigned hard for Johnson, said he had expected Johnson to pull back after gaining the presidency in his own right in 1964.

“I think this is a dreadful mistake on President Obama's part. It makes me sad. I am for him. I worked for him, and I still think he is a brilliant man. But it looks to me like Vietnam all over again.”

- Senator George McGovern, 2009

In September 2010, Peter Baker wrote “Woodward Book Says Afghanistan Divided White House” for The New York Times. Some of the critical players in President Obama’s national security team doubt his strategy in Afghanistan will succeed and have spent much of the last 20 months quarreling with one another over policy, personalities and turf, according to the new Bob Woodward book. The book, “Obama's Wars,” by the journalist Bob Woodward, depicts an administration deeply torn over the war in Afghanistan even as the president agreed to triple troop levels there amid suspicion that he was being boxed in by the military. Mr. Obama’s top White House adviser on Afghanistan and his special envoy for the region are described as believing the strategy will not work.

“I have to say that. I can’t let this be a war without end, and I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.”

- President Barack Obama to Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, when asked about whether or not his deadline to withdraw was “firm”

“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.”

- Barack Obama, telling White House aides as he laid out his reasons for adding 30,000 troops in a short-term escalation

In September 2010, Steve Luxenberg wrote “Bob Woodward book details Obama battles with advisers over exit plan for Afghan war” for the Washington Post. President Obama urgently looked for a way out of the war in Afghanistan last year, repeatedly pressing his top military advisers for an exit plan that they never gave him, according to secret meeting notes and documents cited in a new book by journalist Bob Woodward. Frustrated with his military commanders for consistently offering only options that required significantly more troops, Obama finally crafted his own strategy, dictating a classified six-page "terms sheet" that sought to limit U.S. involvement, Woodward reports in "Obama's Wars," to be released on Monday. According to Woodward's meeting-by-meeting, memo-by-memo account of the 2009 Afghan strategy review, the president avoided talk of victory as he described his objectives.

“It got to the point in the spring, after a top-secret update to the president in the Situation Room at the White House, the president left the meeting and told his aides: What makes us think that given the description of the problem, that we're going to design a solution to this?”

- Bob Woodward, author of Obama's Wars

More senior staff changes: Out goes the general from The Economist: Full print edition

In comes the pol: WHEN fighting two wars, trying to stop Iran building nuclear weapons and facing a continuing danger of terrorist attacks, few things matter more than cool decision-making in the White House. That is why the departure last week of General James Jones (above), Barack Obama’s national security adviser, has prompted frenzied analysis. Was he planning to leave anyway? Or was he pushed because Bob Woodward disclosed in his latest book that the former NATO commander had a low opinion of the president’s inner circle of political advisers, calling them, among other things, the “politburo” and “the Mafia”? The answer seems to be: a bit of both. As Mr Obama said in a fulsome Rose Garden send-off, General Jones had never intended to stay for a full term. On the other hand, the leaks in Mr Woodward’s “Obama’s Wars” show that deep tensions have existed inside the president’s national-security team. In part this was a clash of personalities. Most generals believe in a chain of command, and General Jones appears to have resented the fact that some of those who worked for him had better access to the president than he did himself. He forced one such underling, Mark Lippert, out of the White House altogether. But another, Tom Donilon, has now been promoted to become national security adviser in the general’s place. ...

Check out the full Economist story here. See also: The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008

The Tuesday, October 5, 2010 Charlie Rose Interview, Hour (sit down, chat, or whatever Rose calls these) with Bob Woodward

He doesn't want to over dramatize anything; he also doesn't want to under dramatize anything. That's the gist of this sit down. They're obviously pals, and Rose is working, and so is Woodward to an extent, but, really? Is that it? Chock it up to a bad relationship. Rose was pressing for something a little more definitive from the bottom line takeaway from the whole book, and it's basically: that The White House and the Military are of different ilk, obviously, and they don't get along, and they don't see eye to eye, and haven't, and won't, and that's that. Pepper in a bunch of exciting and fancy details about what the Oval Office smells like at 11:59 PM, or what 4 yards beyond "Employees Only" sign at the Pentagon looks like, and you've got the book. It took 45 minutes to get to what Woodward would have done, had he even imagined himself imagining that he could imagine a decision as to which we he might have gone, about the decisions that were made, amongst the actors in this story. It's an interesting read, no doubt about it. But really: it's fancy gossip. What is this, supposed to be influential at some strategic level? I get it; there's texture, there's enough narrative here to make a movie, and Ron Howard should do it. I get it. Watch that whole interview here. You can buy it for a few bucks on Amazon, but why would you?

The Thursday, July 16, 2009 Charlie Rose Conversation with Bob Woodward of The Washington Post

CHARLIE ROSE: And so you said once in a recent interview that you
were searching for the center of gravity about him.

BOB WOODWARD: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: What does that mean?

BOB WOODWARD: That means what’s going to define him.

First of all, he’s had no real crisis. He’s inherited all the crises
of the Bush administration, as he says repeatedly, "Not of my making, this
is not of my making." But he doesn’t have or has not yet had his own
crisis. And he’s then going to be defined by that crisis.

Read that full transcript here. See also: The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008, Bush At War, Charlie Rose - Bob Woodward / Bradley Graham (July 16, 2009)