Published January 15, 2014FoxNews.com
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he always felt President Obama was respectful of senior military leaders, but at the same time was “suspicious of their motives” and seemed to feel pressure to from them to adopt their recommendations.
However, Gates said he also admired what he called Obama’s “courageous” decision to order the troop surge in Afghanistan in 2010, saying the president did so against the advice of all of his advisers because Obama believed it would work.
In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity Tuesday night the former Pentagon boss spoke at length about his time serving under Obama and President George W. Bush, on the same day his controversial memoir “Duty” hit stores.
Gates said on “Hannity” he felt there was a difference between how Obama and Bush viewed meeting with senior military leaders. Bush, he said, seemed to genuinely enjoy meeting with them, but Obama did not seem to feel the same.
“He always gave the military leaders as much time as they wanted, listened carefully, was never nasty to them,” Gates said. “But I always had the feeling with him, that first of all he was suspicious of their motives and second that time spent with them was an obligation rather than something he enjoyed…”
Gates said he felt the root of the problem seemed to be Obama felt that military leaders such as Admiral Michael Mullen, Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. Stanley McChrystal were pressuring him in public to adopt their recommendations.
“I believe that was not an orchestrated effort to pressure the president,” he said.
However, Gates said he admired Obama’s “courageous” decision to go forward with the troop surge in 2010 against the advice of all of his advisers. He responded to a widely-reported excerpt of his book, in which he said Obama expressed doubts about the strategy in Afghanistan and seemed convinced it would fail.
Gates told Hannity it is important to look at Obama’s view toward the Afghan strategy as more of an evolution. He says he believes Obama truly did believe the surge would work, but became concerned during 2010 when the civilian side of the operation in particular clearly was failing.
“Our military operations were taking longer and were tougher than anticipated and so I think he had these reservations,” he said. “I will give him credit as late as December 2010, he was still going out to the public and announcing the results of the latest review and saying we’re moving ahead we’re doing a good job, we’re accomplishing what we set out to do. But I think behind the scenes he was continually worried.”

Via Fox Nation
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