Obama Moves to Muzzle Top Military Commanders

Monday, October 5, 2009 7:42 PM

By: David A. Patten

Sources tell Newsmax the Obama administration is muzzling its top military leaders, and keeping them from publicly airing their views on how to fight the war in Afghanistan.

The administration's primary target: top Afghanistan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal, whose speech in London last week apparently caught administration officials off guard.

In fact, The Daily Telegraph reported that Obama's advisers were "shocked and angered" by McChrystal's speech.

"This is a food fight in the war room, and it's getting ugly," observed Pulitzer Prize winning correspondent and Manhattan Institute scholar Judith Miller, regarding the sharply contrasting views being aired within the administration over how to fight the war.

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In his speech, McChrystal defended his request for 40,000 more soldiers to wage a counter-insurgency campaign in Afghanistan, warning "a strategy that does not leave Afghanistan in a stable position is probably a shortsighted strategy."

Without mentioning Vice President Joe Biden by name, McChrystal said the vice president's proposal to scale back the objectives for the war would lead to "chaos-istan."

Shortly after those remarks, McChrystal was summoned to a face-to-face meeting with President Obama aboard Air Force One in Copenhagen, where Obama was making his ill-fated attempt to support Chicago's bid to host the 2016 summer Olympic games. Obama's National Security Adviser, Jim Jones, described their discussion as an exchange of "very direct views."

On Monday, in an obvious reference to McChrystal, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told the Association of the U.S. Army that "It is imperative that all of us taking part in these deliberations -- civilian and military alike -- provide our best advice to the president candidly but privately.â€