The Generals Have No Clothes: The Untold Story of Our Endless Wars by William M. Arkin

Author:William M. Arkin [Arkin, William M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781982131012
Google: DvztDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2021-04-12T23:00:00+00:00

chapter eleven

CIVILIAN CONTROL OF THE MILITARY

Barack Obama’s lack of national security credentials and his absence of military experience didn’t seem to be a factor with the voting public in the 2008 election. Like Bill Clinton, who had defeated two World War II veterans in 1992 and 1996, Obama handily beat a war hero, retired Navy captain John McCain, to become president. Still, ongoing terrorist threats to the United States, and the ascendancy of the national security establishment itself, made the new president feel he needed to prove that, despite his lack of personal knowledge of combat, he had national security covered.

Obama chose retired Marine Corps general James L. Jones to be his national security advisor. “Gentleman Jim,” as Jones was nicknamed, was in some ways a perfect match for the rookie president: wonky and understated, with a reputation for being respectful to everyone. But Obama hadn’t even met Jones until two weeks before he was elected. According to the account by journalist Bob Woodward, Jones “was astounded that the president-elect would give such a position of responsibility and trust to someone he hardly knew.”

Then came retired Navy admiral Dennis C. Blair, a former Rhodes Scholar, described by some as one of the smartest men ever to wear the uniform. Obama asked Blair to be his director of national intelligence. Blair had met Obama only once, and he too was “astonished” that the president-elect would select him to lead the entire intelligence community.

For Secretary of Defense, Obama implored Robert Gates, the very epitome of the national security establishment, to stay on from the Bush administration. Gates had been telling everyone who would listen that wartime was no time for a learning curve, opining that the first presidential transition in war since 1968 augured grave threats. But he also wrote that he had only met the young Illinois senator once and, being a Republican, had barely “crossed paths” with most Obama insiders. Consequently he thought himself an odd choice to join the new president’s cabinet.

Leon Panetta, whom Obama asked to be CIA director, also didn’t know the president. But he was a Washington fixture and an experienced manager, and Obama told him that only a savvy insider like him would be able to “restore” the credibility of an agency that he thought had “badly damaged America’s standing in the world” through its post-9/11 pursuits of torture and secret prisons.

With perhaps the exception of Panetta, who had served as Bill Clinton’s White House chief of staff, all of the appointments represented defensive moves. Obama reasoned that his quartet of heavy hitters would show America’s enemies that there would be no major disruption but also that he could be trusted on national security. Obama told Gates that he wanted “continuity and stability” on national security, particularly so that he could focus on economic recovery from the 2008 market collapse. The president thought that retired general Jones would “give him someone outside the Pentagon to deal with the secretary of defense and the generals on a more or less equal footing.

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