*The one that says ‘Bad Motherf#cker’ on it.
As a young, and presumably naive Obama Administration was shaping AfPak policy way back in aught-nine, there was a lot of hooey from bloggers, pundits, the chattering class, and politicians from both sides of the aisle about who was really in charge — a neophyte Democratic President or the wiley batch of Generals backed by a behemoth and press-savvy Pentagon.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, goes before Congress this week, and with him comes this question: Who’s really in charge here, the generals or President Barack Obama?
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“The president’s decision is already being softened and made mush of,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) told POLITICO. And within the House and Senate Appropriations committees, senior Democrats – themselves veterans of past wars – have grown increasingly concerned by the political clout of a generation of younger, often press-savvy military commanders.
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“I’ve always believed that the president of the United States is the commander in chief,” said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), who was awarded the Medal of Honor in World War II. “It concerns me when I see my president, the commander in chief, having to debate with generals. They can do that privately, but he should be able to say to General A, ‘This is the way we’re going to do our business.’ … I would expect generals to advise the president but not to go public.”
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“He’s got to be very, very much on top of the type of missions and the way in which these troops are deployed,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) told POLITICO. “It’s clear to me that there are limitations. We should not be going in, clearing and holding areas where we don’t have the ability to come in immediately with Afghans.”
“If we don’t, we’re going to be digging ourselves a hole,” he said. “[Obama] has to very careful not to allow that to happen.”
Some advance snips from Jonathan Alter’s new book The Promise, President Obama, Year One provide a riveting look inside the Obama War Room, and reveal a remarkably astute Commander-in-Chief who out-manueved, out-foxed, and decisively reigned in the military leadership intent on testing his mettle.
