The Biden Plan
NYT:
WASHINGTON — President Obama is exploring alternatives to a major troop increase in Afghanistan, including a plan advocated by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to scale back American forces and focus more on rooting out Al Qaeda there and in Pakistan, officials said Tuesday.
Sorry, I got nothing.
Well, there’s this:
In looking at other options, aides said, Mr. Obama might ultimately just be testing assumptions — and assuring liberals in his own party that he was not rushing into a further expansion of the war — before ultimately agreeing to the anticipated troop request from General McChrystal. But the review suggests the president is having second thoughts about how deeply to engage in an intractable eight-year conflict that is not going well.
I dunno. Maybe floating the Biden thing out there is a way of scaring even the anti-war libs into going along. You know … “Well, let’s see what Joe thinks. What do you want to do, Joe?” Something like that. And Crazy Joe says, “I wanna play Wack-A-Mole!”
Among the alternatives being presented to Mr. Obama is Mr. Biden’s suggestion to revamp the strategy altogether. Instead of increasing troops, officials said, Mr. Biden proposed scaling back the overall American military presence. Rather than trying to protect the Afghan population from the Taliban, American forces would concentrate on strikes against Qaeda cells, primarily in Pakistan, using special forces, Predator missile attacks and other surgical tactics.
The Americans would accelerate training of Afghan forces and provide support as they took the lead against the Taliban. But the emphasis would shift to Pakistan. Mr. Biden has often said that the United States spends something like $30 in Afghanistan for every $1 in Pakistan, even though in his view the main threat to American national security interests is in Pakistan.
Mr. Obama rejected Mr. Biden’s approach in March, and it is not clear that it has more traction this time. But the fact that it is on the table again speaks to the breadth of the administration’s review and the evolving views inside the White House of what has worked in the region and what has not. In recent days, officials have expressed satisfaction with the results of their cooperation with Pakistan in hunting down Qaeda figures in the unforgiving border lands.
A shift from a counterinsurgency strategy to a focus on counterterrorism would turn the administration’s current theory on its head. The strategy Mr. Obama adopted in March concluded that to defeat Al Qaeda, the United States needed to keep the Taliban from returning to power in Afghanistan and making it a haven once again for Osama bin Laden’s network. Mr. Biden’s position questions that assumption.
Mrs. Clinton, who opposed Mr. Biden in March, appeared to refer to this debate in an interview on Monday night on PBS. “Some people say, ‘Well, Al Qaeda’s no longer in Afghanistan,’ ” she said. “If Afghanistan were taken over by the Taliban, I can’t tell you how fast Al Qaeda would be back in Afghanistan.”
I told you they should have made that woman War Czar. I don’t know why she’s allowing this nonsense with the mullahs and the Ivans, and the insults to the Brits, but I still say there’s no way she’d let some Kohl-wearing boy-loving woman-beaters running around the ass end of Bleakistan make a fool of her.
Yeah, I know, Bill … OK, never mind that. That didn’t happen anyway. And say what you will about Obama. He always had a soft spot for crazy uncles. But he also always knows when to throw them under the bus. I hope.
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Topics: Afghanistan,Obama
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 12:19 am Comments (4) on Wednesday, September 23, 2009
4 Responses to “The Biden Plan”
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September 23rd, 2009 at 1:37 pm
“WASHINGTON — President Obama is exploring alternatives to a major troop increase in Afghanistan, including a plan advocated by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to scale back American forces and focus more on rooting out Al Qaeda there and in Pakistan, officials said Tuesday.”
Wouldn’t surprise me. I’ve always thought that his attacks on Bush’s policies were purely a tatctic to secure political advantage.
“Obama will refocus our resources on al Qaeda in Afghanistan and finish the fight with the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11.”–Barry O’s website
One more campaign promise that I doubt will be fulfilled.
September 23rd, 2009 at 3:08 pm
[...] The Biden Plan [...]
September 23rd, 2009 at 5:41 pm
If Obama abandons Afghanistan, and the Taliban move back into power (inevitable), which ultimately means the fall of any meaningful government in Pakistan, then he will have signed the death warrant of the Democratic Party, most particularly if the barbarians think this signals weakness enough to attack with impunity. As much as I dislike the Democratic Party as it stands today, I don’t really want to regress into the Dark Ages (even one powered by electricity).
September 23rd, 2009 at 8:39 pm
[...] to those on the right who believe that Obama trusts Joe Biden more than his generals; or who insist that Obama hired Gen. McChrystal to tell him what to do and so he should do that, by [...]