Morning Bell: What is Obama President of Again?
Conn Carroll /
On December 1, 2009, when President Barack Obama announced his new Afghanistan policy after months of delay, Denise Young of Kokomo, Ind., who has a 22-year-old son serving in the war, told The Wall Street Journal what she wanted to hear from the commander in chief: “That he is going to let the generals make the decisions. They have asked for more troops. They should get them. There is safety in numbers.” Today, we learned from a sneak preview of Bob Woodward’s new book, Obama’s War, that President Barack Obama completely failed Mrs. Young.
Instead of listening to his generals, we learn that President Obama (who had zero military experience) was “at odds with his uniformed military commanders, particularly Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. David H. Petraeus,” who was then head of U.S. Central Command. When the Pentagon presented President Obama with a “low risk option” of an additional 80,000 troops that had the “best chance to contain the Taliban-led insurgency and stabilize Afghanistan,” Obama “bristled at what he saw as military commanders’ attempts to force him into a decision he was not yet comfortable with.”