Book depicts intense internal White House dissension, says aides doubt Obama’s Afghan strategy

Book says aides doubt Obama’s Afghan strategy

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s top advisers are depicted in a new book as arguing over much of the past 20 months about policy and turf, with some top members of his national security team doubting the president’s strategy in Afghanistan will work.

The book, “Obama’s Wars,” by journalist Bob Woodward, says Obama aides were deeply divided over the war in Afghanistan even as the president agreed to triple troop levels there. Obama’s top White House adviser on Afghanistan and his special envoy for the region are described as believing the strategy will not work.

According to the book, Obama said, “I have two years with the public on this” and pressed advisers for ways to avoid a big escalation in the Afghanistan war.

“I want an exit strategy,” he said at one meeting. Privately, he told Vice President Joe Biden to push his alternative strategy opposing a big troop buildup in meetings.

While Obama ultimately rejected the alternative plan, the book says, he set a withdrawal timetable because, “I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.”

Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, the president’s Afghanistan adviser, is described as believing the president’s review of the Afghanistan war did not “add up” to the decision he made. Richard Holbrooke, the president’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, is quoted as saying of the strategy, “It can’t work,” according to The New York Times, which obtained a copy of the book before its scheduled publication date, scheduled for next week.

Obama was among administration officials that Woodward interviewed for the book. The Times, which posted its article on its website Tuesday night, said the White House had no comment on the book. The Washington Post also reported on the book on its website late Tuesday night.

Although the internal divisions described by Woodward have become public, the book suggests that they were even more intense than previously known and offers new details, the Times said.

Biden called Holbrooke “the most egotistical bastard I’ve ever met,” and a number of administration officials expressed scorn for national security adviser James Jones, the Times said.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, thought his vice chairman, Gen. James Cartwright, went behind his back, while Cartwright dismissed Mullen because he wasn’t a war fighter.

Gen. David Petraeus, who become the Afghanistan commander this summer, told a senior aide that he disliked talking with David Axelrod, the president’s senior adviser, because he was “a complete spin doctor.”

The book recounts incidents in which Adm. Dennis Blair, then the national intelligence director, fought with Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, and John Brennan, the counterterrorism adviser.

It also reports that the U.S. has intelligence showing that manic-depression has been diagnosed in Afghan President Hamid Karzai and that he was on medication.