Generals in civilian posts were toughest critics of surge, Woodward writes

By Greg Jaffe
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 23, 2010

A new book by Bob Woodward on the Obama administration's Afghan war deliberations presents three generals in the White House and State Department as the military's toughest, most persistent and most skeptical critics.

President Obama, who took office with relatively little experience with the military, tapped the generals for key positions that are traditionally filled by civilians.

The selections led some critics to complain that the appointments amounted to the militarization of the administration's foreign policy. The Woodward book, however, consistently shows the three officers - retired Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, retired Gen. James L. Jones and Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute - embroiled in heated disputes with the brass.

Lute, the National Security Council's unofficial "war czar" and the sole active-duty general among the group, is portrayed as among the biggest skeptics of the military's strategy to send a surge of more than 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan in an effort to shift the momentum away from the Taliban.

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