Afghan strategy broken, President Obama wants out

In two highly readable books, Bob Woodward first embraced in Bush at War then trounced in State of Denial George Bush’s conduct of the war on terror.  In a possible attempt to appear as an equal opportunity offender he got access to the Obama White House insiders to give an account of how the post Bush democrats dealt with the war in Afghanistan. The New York Times picks only the juiciest, horse trading details of Woodward’s “Obama’s War“:

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 a new 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.

The president concluded from the start that “I have two years with the public on this” and pressed advisers for ways to avoid a big escalation, the book says. “I want an exit strategy,” he implored at one meeting. Privately, he told Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to push his alternative strategy opposing a big troop buildup in meetings, and while Mr. Obama ultimately rejected it, he set a withdrawal timetable because, “I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.”