Former Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates served in both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. His professional and academic credentials, credibility and integrity are above question. Therefore, his views on then Vice President Biden are particularly instructive.
Here are excerpts from Gates’ book, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (New York: Knoft, 2014.)
1. Joe Biden the person. Joe is simply impossible not to like… Joe is a man of integrity, incapable of hiding what he really thinks, and one of those rare people you know you could turn to for help in a personal crisis. Still, I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades… [Adm. Mullen, JCS to Gates] “You know you agreed with the vice president today?” I said I realized that and was therefore rethinking my position… While Biden had been in Congress a lot longer than Vice President Cheney, both were very experience politicians, and I found it odd that they both so often misread what Congress would or would not do. [pp. 288-289]
2. Obama’s distrust of military re Afghanistan surge. I believe then—and now—that this distrust was stoked by Biden, Donilon, Emanuel, and some of Obama’s other advisors joining the chorus… The distrust may also have been attributable in part to the lack of experience with military affairs—particularly, in this case, training and logistical timelines—among the senior civilian White House officials from the vice president on down. [p. 338]
3. Biden focus during Afghanistan surge. I left the meeting discouraged less about the skepticism regarding more troops than about the total focus on the politics. Biden was especially emphatic about the reaction of the Democratic base. (His remarks reminded me of Cheney’s focus on the Republican base when discussing detainee interrogations and Guantánamo.) Not a word was mentioned about doing whatever it took to achieve the goals of the president had so recently set or to protect the troops. [p. 349]
4. Biden and the press. We heard regularly from members of the press that Biden, Jones, Donilon, McDonough, Lute, Emanuel, and Axelrod were “spilling their guts” regularly—and disparagingly—to reporters about senior military leaders, Afghanistan, and the decision-making process. [p. 370]
5. Distrust and insulting. [ During a meeting with President Obama regarding number of troops for surge] … there was an exchange that’s been seared into my memory. Joe Biden said that he had argued for a different approach and was ready to move forward, but the military “should consider the president’s decision as an order.” “I am giving an order,” Obama quickly said. I was shocked[emphasis added.] I have never heard a president explicitly frame a decision as a direct order. With the American military, it is completely unnecessary… And now that I think about it, I don’t think I ever heard anyone else say it. Obama’s “order,” at Biden’s urging, demonstrated, in my view, the complete unfamiliarity of both men with the American military. That order was unnecessary and insulting, proof positive of the depth of the Obama White House’s distrust of the nation’s military leadership. [p. 383]
6. Negative information. The rift on Afghan policy would linger for the rest of my tenure as secretary. Biden, Lute, and others in the White House who had opposed the decision would gather every negative bit of information about developments in Afghanistan and use them to try to convince the president that they had been right and the military wrong. That began before the first surge soldier set foot in Afghanistan. [p. 385]
7. Lack of support for President Obama’s decisions. As I’ve said, the president had made a tough decision on the surge in Afghanistan in November 2009, and he had, for all practical purposes, made me, Mullen, Petraeus, and McChrystal swear a blood oath that we would support his decision. Unfortunately, Biden and his staff, the White House staff, and the NSS apparently had not taken the same oath of support. From the moment the president left West Poin, they worked to show he had been wrong, that the Pentagon was not following his direction, and that the war on the ground was going from bad to worse. [p. 474]
8. Rolling Stone. [On June 22, 2010 Rolling Stone published an article on General McChrystal which appeared dismissive of the Administration and civilian leadership. Gates met with president Obama to discuss the article] Before the meeting, Biden called and, I thought rather defensively, said, “I didn’t rile him [Obama] up last night, I just asked him if he’d seen the article.” Biden told me that McChrystal had called him to apologize for the comments in the article. I went in to see the president a little after three p. m. on the twenty-second. The first words out of his mouth were “ I’m leaning toward relieving McChrystal.” He went on to say, “Joe [Biden] is over the top about this.” (So much for Biden’s credibility). [pp. 487-488]
9. Biden orderson Libya. At a principals’ meeting on Libya the evening of March 2, Donilon told me the president wanted me to provide an air bridge from Tunisia to Egypt to move the Egyptian refugees. Biden then jumped in and said, “No, the president orders you to do the bridge.” I’d had enough of Biden’s “orders.” “The last time I checked, neither of you are in the chain of command,” I said. If the president wanted to deploy U.S. military assets, I made clear, I needed to hear it from him directly, not through the two of them. [p. 515]
10. Biden eggs on the distrust of the military. [Gen. Petraeus had been appointed as Commander in Afghanistan. At a meeting on timetable for Afghan drawdown, Obama said he felt he was “being gamed.] I was pretty upset myself. I thought implicitly accusing Petraeus (and perhaps Mullen and me ) of gaming him in front of thirty people in the Situation Room was inappropriate, not to mention highly disrespectful of Petraeus… The president doesn’t trust his commander, can’t stand Karzai, doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the was to be his… Biden continued to egg him one, and his staff missed no opportunity to pass him inflammatory news clips and other information raising questions about Petraeus and the senior military leaders… I called Donilon two days later to express my concern that the vice president was poisoning the well with the president with regard to Petraeus and Afghanistan. I said I thought Biden was subjecting Obama to Chinese water torture, every day saying, “the military can’t be trusted,” the strategy can’t work,” it’s all failing,” “the military is trying to game you, to screw you.” I said we couldn’t operate this way. [p. 557]
11. Biden attacks the integrity of the military. [During talks about withdrawal from Afghanistan] Donilon was so concerned that Biden convinced the president to withdraw the entire by April or July 2012 that he helped me get a private session with Obama a few days after my return from Afghanistan… Biden was relentless during those few days in pushing his view and in attacking the integrity of the senior military leadership. A White House insider told me he was telling the president, They’ll screw you every time. Biden was said to be pushing Donilon really hard, accusing him of being “too fucking even-handed.” I considered that a high compliment for a national security adviser. Tom continued to be deeply suspicious of the military, but he wanted to do what was in the best interests of the president and the country. [pp. 563-564]
12. Biden’s strategy. I pushed hard for the troops requested by McChrystal… If our troops, combined with larger and more capable Afghan force, could provide security for much of the population, then the other improvements would follow over time. If there was one useful from Iraq, I thought, it was that security for much of the population, could, indeed, must, precede other progress. This is why I could not sign on to Biden’s counterterrorism strategy: “whack-a-mole” hits on Taliban leaders where not a long term strategy.
I offer no views as the comments speak for themselves; let the reader decide.
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