![]() ![]() Resources and senior-level attention were diverted from Afghanistan. President Bush always detested the notion, but our later challenges in Afghanistan-especially the return of the Taliban in force by the time I reported for duty-were, I believe, significantly compounded by the invasion of Iraq. ![]() leadership….There are limits to what even the strongest and greatest nation on Earth can do-and not every outrage, act of aggression, oppression or crisis should elicit a U.S. On the right, the failure to strike Syria or Iran is deemed an abdication of U.S. On the left, we hear about the “responsibility to protect” civilians to justify military intervention in Libya, Syria, Sudan and elsewhere. On liberal internationalism and neoconservatism: I saw most of Congress as uncivil, incompetent at fulfilling their basic constitutional responsibilities (such as timely appropriations), micromanagerial, parochial, hypocritical, egotistical, thin-skinned and prone to put self (and re-election) before country. Domestic political considerations would therefore be a factor, though I believe never a decisive one, in virtually every major national security problem we tackled. With Obama, however, I joined a new, inexperienced president determined to change course-and equally determined from day one to win re-election. ![]()
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