![]() ![]() ![]() A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya,” Gates told Congress in comments that were seen as delaying the Obama administration’s decision to push for the U.N. Obama could not have been pleased by comments from McChrystal advisers in the article that painted the president as intimidated at an early meeting with the general. In the end, Obama granted McChrystal most of the additional troops he sought but the lingering tensions were laid bare in an article in Rolling Stone magazine that resulted in McChrystal’s dismissal last year. Still, ties with the White House suffered from a leaked 2009 memo by General Stanley McChrystal, then commander in Afghanistan, that put pressure on Obama to approve the troop surge by arguing the war could be lost without a bigger force. Hoping to build a solid relationship from the start, Obama kept Robert Gates, a Republican holdover, as defense secretary and picked veteran Marine commander General James Jones as his first national security adviser. Obama, who has not served in the military, tried early on to ease fears in the Pentagon that he would not heed expert military advice as he pressed for conclusions to the long, costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Today there was very little enthusiasm on the part of senior officials and Defense Secretary Gates to intervene in Libya. “I don’t think there has been any White House where the Pentagon has been able to dictate everything it wants,” said Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Some of the wariness remains, but it’s not an unusual situation between the military and many presidents, including George W. In the end, he sent 30,000 extra troops, but set a firm deadline for initiating withdrawal. Tensions have run high at times between commanders and Obama, a Democrat whose opposition to the Iraq war helped him win his party’s nomination to run for president.Īs Obama assessed his options for the Afghanistan war in 2009, the White House bristled at what it saw as pressure from the military for a big troop increase. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When President Barack Obama launched the Libya campaign over the objections of top commanders, it was seen as a sign of how far his White House had drifted from the Pentagon just across the Potomac River.īut Obama’s decision to intervene in Libya, where Muammar Gaddafi remains defiant after a week of coalition air strikes, more accurately underscores the limits of Pentagon influence in any White House, along with the mutual skepticism that runs deep between U.S.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |