If I were serving on the front lines in Afghanistan after reading excerpts from Bob Woodward’s book “Obama’s Wars”, I would have to ask myself why?  And, the answer I would have to come up with would be to satisfy the political ambitions of the President of the United States, not to win a war for which I was trained.

I wouldn’t want to envision myself buried in a mislabeled grave at Arlington Cemetery, or lying in a bed in Walter Reed, minus my legs, while President Obama pins a purple heart on my pillow, to think that I served his purpose – a second term in the Oval office.

This is not an unrealistic picture on the basis of excerpts from Woodward’s book, and perhaps not dissimilar in many respects to what took place in Vietnam.

The most telling statement by Obama in the Wars he was fighting on two foreign fronts as well as domestically in the Oval office, was what he said, according to Woodward, to Sen. Lindsay Graham about the July 2011 troop withdrawal deadline?  Obama said, ” I can’t lose the Democratic Party.”  And saying just before that he couldn’t let Afghanistan be ” a war without end.”

According to Woodward’s meeting-by-meeting, memo account of the 2009 Afghan strategy review as reported by the Washington Post, the president avoided talk of victory as he described his objectives.

“This needs to be a plan about how we’re going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan,” Obama is quoted as telling White House aides as he laid out his reasons for adding 30,000 troops in a short -term esclation.  “Everything we’re doing has to be focused on how we’re going to get to the point where we can reduce our footprint.  It’s in our national security interest.  There cannot be any wiggle room.”

Obama told Woodward in a July interview that he didn’t think about the Afghan war in the “classic” terms of the United States winning or losing.  “I think about it more in terms of: do you successfully prosecute a strategy that results in the country being stronger rather than weaker at the end?” he said.

As a fighting member of the military, I would have trouble with a comment he made in a plan he designed himself where he said along with the strategy’s objectives, what the military was not supposed to do.  The president went into detail, according to Woodward, to make sure that the military wouldn’t attempt to expand the mission.

In other words it appeared that he was following the mission of not winning, but more interested in exiting for political reasons.

Obama campaigned on a promise to extract US forces from Iraq and focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In the book the President is quoted as being at odds with his uniformed military commanders, Adm. Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Gen. David H. Petraeus, head of US Central Command and telling them along with Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, ” In 2010, we will not be having a conversation about how to do more.  I will not want to hear, ‘We’re doing fine, Mr. President, but we’d be better if we just do more.’  We’re not going to be having a conversation about how to change (the mission) . . . unless we’re talking about how to draw down faster than anticipated in 2011.”

Petraeus saw this as a personal repudiation, Woodward writes.

There was tension, frustration and words of animosity that turned personal.  Petraeus told his own staffers that the administration was “(expletive) with the wrong guy.”  National security adviser James L. Jones privately referred to Obama’s political aides as “the water bugs,”  the “Politburo,” the “Mafia,” or the “campaign set.”  Petraeus, told an aide that he considered the president’s senior adviser David Axelrod to be “a complete spin doctor.”

It all got so bad that at one point, according to US intelligence reports, Afghan President Hamid Karzai was diagnosed as manic depressive.   Woodward quotes US Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry as saying, “He’s on his meds, he’s off his meds.”

The book does little to give the foot soldier confidence in fighting a war for the values and security of America when they see Obama politics wrapped in the American flag.

Obama’s senior advisers received advanced copies of the book and have read it and they are satisfied with the image it conveys of the president, a senior administration official said yesterday.

The White House’s official word: “The President comes across in the (Afghanistan) review and throughout the decision making process as a Commander in Chief who is analytical, strategic, and decisive, with a broad view of history, national security, and his role,” the official said in an e-mail.

Perhaps this was the Axelrod “spin doctor” Petraeus was talking about, or ” the water bugs, Politburo, Mafia and campaign set”, Jones was talking about; or the “politics” that I am talking about.

As a citizen, this report, that the White House appears to be comfortable with; does not give me confidence in our Commander in Chief; as a foot soldier fighting the war I would be demoralized and wonder about my assignment; and as the enemy, I would welcome the obvious descension and political divisiveness.