Item 1: Multiple SODs complaining about micromanagement from the White House and in particular, the NSC. Which means Rice.
“It was the operational micromanagement that drove me nuts, of White House and [National Security Council] staffers calling senior commanders out in the field and asking them questions, of second-guessing commanders,” former Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Bret Baier in a new Fox News special called “Rising Threats, Shrinking Military.”
Gates’ successor, Leon Panetta, took office in July 2011 and told Baier he had similar concerns with the Obama administration, despite being a long-time Democrat who served as a California congressman for many years and as Bill Clinton’s chief of staff.
Panetta complained that the president’s national security council staff had gotten so large and overbearing in recent years, creating massive inefficiency with creating foreign and defense policy.
Chuck Hagel, who replaced Panetta in February 2013, agreed that the size and role of the White House staff during the Obama presidency made it difficult to accomplish tasks and be productive.
“There were always too many meetings and always too many people in the room and too many people talking,” Hagel described. “Especially young, smart 35-year-old PhDs [who] love to talk because that’s the way you let everybody know how smart you are. So there were a lot of reasons those meetings descended into… nonsense and the hard time we had making a decision.”
Hagel focused especially on the inexperience of the president himself and his staff, describing how Obama is “one of the youngest presidents we’ve ever had, one of the most inexperienced presidents we’ve ever had. He has a staff around him that’s very inexperienced. I don’t think there’s one veteran on his senior staff at the White House. I don’t believe there’s one business person. I don’t believe there’s one person who’s ever run anything. Other than Vice President Biden, none of them have ever been elected to anything.”
Hagel added that he is not sure if Obama or his staff ever understood “the tremendous responsibility the United States has… to lead.”
Gates said he is concerned the president is suspicious of the military. He also said Obama was told by White House personnel during the debate over the war in Afghanistan that the Pentagon was trying to “box him in,” “trap him,” and “bully him,” which Gates said was never true.
“But there were clearly a number of people at the White House who believed that,” Gates said.
Item 2: This is now playing out in real time in Asia.
National Security Adviser Susan Rice imposed a gag order on military leaders over the disputed South China Sea in the weeks running up to the last week’s high-level nuclear summit, according to two defense officials who asked for anonymity to discuss policy deliberations. China’s president, Xi Jinping, attended the summit, held in Washington, and met privately with President Obama. …
The NSC dictum has had a “chilling effect” within the Pentagon that discouraged leaders from talking publicly about the South China Sea at all, even beyond the presidential summit, according to a second defense official familiar with operational planning.
So tensions are heating up. Rice is showing overt hostility to the military. And that's the attitude emanating from the White House.
Obama has gone through multiple SODs and had bad relations with every single one of them. Including the current one who was targeted by hit pieces from the WH and whose authority over Gitmo, Obama tried to ask Congress to usurp so he could free more terrorists faster. The facts are just impossible to ignore.