Woodward Reveals the Secrets of Obama’s War

“I have two years ahead of me, to either get rid of the Taliban or lose the Democratic Party,” Obama should’ve said the second he took office in January 2009. This prediction is reported in the last book that Bob Woodward will publish next week in the United States, Obama’s Wars (published by Simon and Shuster), and could quickly prove itself true. Almost two years into his term, the Taliban are far from being defeated, and, in the beginning of November during midterm elections, America risks not renewing its confidence in its president, nor in the Democratic Party that supported him.

Woodward, who, with Carl Bernstein, revealed the Watergate Scandal that resulted in the resignation of Richard Nixon, describes in this book (of which large extracts have been published in his former newspaper, The Washington Post) a president of the United States rather pathetically tugged between his vice-president and his military staff. When the military asked for 40,000 men from the reserves, Joseph Biden warned him: “If you accept, we’ll be stuck in a new Vietnam.”* Obama conceded to 30,000. But to the great displeasure of the Pentagon, he gave a six-page memo which he had dictated himself to the participants of the first Defense Counsel at the White House, and that gave July of 2011 as the withdrawal date for the first American forces in Afghanistan. “Some blessed bread for the Taliban,”* a member of the military staff commented, “because we’re telling them, in advance, when this part ends.”* It’s everything that the president of the United States persists and signifies in his writing: “All that we will do must have the sole objective of diminishing our presence in this country.”*

Nothing in his bargaining or computations is scandalous in and of itself. They’re even part of the normal discussions that a responsible politician should have with his military leaders. The problem for Obama is the impression that he’s giving throughout the pages of Woodward’s book: that of a president who is hesitant, weak-willed and not very sure of himself. And in any case, doesn’t really conform to the stature of “Commander in Chief” that every president of the United States must assume if he wants to be respected by his troops and his voters.

*Editor’s Note: These quotations, accurately translated, could not be verified.