WASHINGTON: The Obama administration has a clear plan for winding down the Afghan war, which will end this year, the White House said on Wednesday while responding to allegations that President Barack Obama was never committed to the fight, not even when he sent more troops to Afghanistan.

Former defence secretary Robert M. Gates made the allegations in his memoirs, claiming that President Obama lost faith in his own strategy, after agreeing in December 2009 to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan.

The New York Times and The Washington Post published excerpts from the memoirs on Wednesday, although the book — “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War” — will be released next week.

Mr Gates, who served as defence secretary from December 2006 to July 2011, claims that White House advisers increased President Obama’s doubts by continually bringing negative news reports about the Afghan war to him.

He recalls attending a key meeting at the White House situation room in March 2011, called to discuss the withdrawal timetable. At this meeting, President Obama accused his former commander in Afghanistan, Gen David Petraeus, former military chief Admiral Mike Mullen and Mr Gates himself “of gaming him in front of thirty people”.

Mr Obama also questioned whether he could do business with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

“As I sat there, I thought: The president doesn’t trust his commander, can’t stand Karzai, doesn’t believe in his own strategy and doesn’t consider the war to be his,” Mr Gates writes. “For him, it’s all about getting out.”

The former secretary describes President Obama’s Afghan policy as “maddeningly self-contradictory”, adding that he, his commanders and the US troops in Afghanistan “had expected more commitment to the cause and more passion for it from him”.

Unlike President Obama, Mr Gates adds, former president George W. Bush “had no second thoughts about Iraq, including our decision to invade”.

Responding to the allegations, a White House National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said President Obama has been “committed to achieving the mission of disrupting, dismantling and defeating Al Qaeda”. But he has also been committed to “ensuring that we have a clear plan for winding down the war, which will end this year.”

In the book, Mr Gates also challenges Vice President Joe Biden’s judgment on foreign policy and national security issues, claiming that “he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades”.

Ms Caitlin rejected this claim too.