Reports in former Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ new book, Duty, confirm President Obama’s cynicism on his Afghanistan policy, Danielle Pletka said on CNN’s The Lead Tuesday.
Pletka, Vice President of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies for the American Enterprise Institute, said that "If the President was so cynical to send troops in a surge… to Afghanistan without having any intention of actually securing victory, that’s enormously troubling."
Pletka continued, "It fills me with, apart from anything else, just great sorrow about the leadership of this country and what our allies will estimate of that leadership."
The account in Gates’ book details a situation room meeting in March of 2011, when Obama opened with a "blast of frustration" over his Afghan policy. Gates writes:
"As I sat there, I thought: The president doesn’t trust his commander, can’t stand Karzai, doesn’t believe in his own strategy and doesn’t consider the war to be his…for him, it’s all about getting out."
Pletka commented on Gates’ frustration with the Obama administration and its stubbornness, saying it was "something familiar to most of us in Washington, which is that the White House is basically uninterested in the counsel of the President’s own cabinet."