New National Security Adviser Will Side with Biden on Afghanistan
With the resignation of National Security Adviser Jim Jones, Vice President Joe Biden seems to have gained the upper hand regarding the Obama administration’s Afghanistan policy. Biden is not a supporter of a counterinsurgency policy that would eliminate terrorists wherever possible while trying to gain the support of the people. Instead, he wants to implement a counterterrorism policy that would use drones and Special Forces to hunt down the terrorists without having a large presence of American troops. By appointing Thomas Donilon as the new national security adviser, President Obama appears to have been influenced by Biden’s point of view.
Donilon has been described as suspicious of the entire uniformed military chain of command besides voicing a skeptical view of the Afghanistan counterinsurgency policy. His appointment sends the signal that the vice president’s strategy will win out since Donilon will be supporting Biden and will team up with him to execute Biden’s plan.
A former high-ranking CIA official felt that this will hurt America’s relationship with Afghanistan since they know the strategy will be to withdraw troops. According to the former official:
[I]n some sense they are America’s best ally. Although the administration said we are going to transition out in 2011 they look at it as we are leaving. They don’t want trouble so they will be buddies with the Taliban in order to hedge their bets.
Michael Hayden, the former CIA director, echoes that sentiment in stating that:
[C]ounterterrorism is successful, but unless you want to do it forever, you need counterinsurgency successes that change the facts on the ground. The timetable is a real impediment to progress and empowers the Taliban.
All those interviewed felt that if America withdraws, a signal will be sent to the terrorists that they defeated NATO and Afghanistan can once again be a safe haven.
Fran Townsend, the former Bush homeland security adviser, thought the timing of Jones resignation was very odd. She pointed out that Jones, a former Marine and NATO commander, was instrumental in getting NATO to commit troops to Afghanistan and that he has been greatly involved in the strategic review of troops in the region. Since Jones prepared the president’s agenda for the NATO conference, Townsend questions whether the NATO conference in Lisbon this November will now focus on reducing the amount of troops in Afghanistan.
PJ Media was told that Jones fairly presented to the president all the realistic views and was non-political. Yet President Obama has chosen someone with the opposite credentials. Donilon is a White House insider, sensitive to the political demands put upon the president. He will facilitate, but not determine, policy. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates summed it up when he stated to Bob Woodward that “Donilon would be a ‘disaster’ as national security adviser.”
“Instead, he [Biden] wants to implement a counterterrorism policy that would use drones and Special Forces to hunt down the terrorists without having a large presence of American troops.”
Isn’t this what we did during the Bush administration and it didn’t work too well? Why are Democrats always so anxious to follow policies that have never been proven to work? It would be different if Biden could point to an example where his ideas worked, but he can’t. So why does he think they will work in a place like Afghanistan?
I’m beginning to think that if we really want to make a difference in Afghanistan we should treat that war like the insurrection in the Philippines in around 1910. The United States made a committment to the Philippines that we would stay no matter how long it took to defeat that rebellion and, coupled with an aggressive counterinsurgency policy, we were able to eventually win that war. Few people today know about America’s war in the Philippines but we would do well to start dusting off those history books about that subject. That is an example of how an aggressive counterinsurgency policy CAN work and it should be followed. We should NOT be listening to some demented Democratic hack politician from Delaware who has never been right about anything, especially when it concerns the military.
This is why a political tsunami on Nov. 2nd will not end all of the problems engendered by the 2008 election of Barack Hussein Obama and Joe Biden. The President and Vice President still have considerable power to appoint like minded individuals to critical policy making and implementing positions within their inner circle, much of which will remain intact or capable of adjustment over at least the next two years and possibly beyond if the incoming Congress cannot, will not or are incapable of turning around the suicidal Socialist/Progressive/Communist agenda forced down America’s throat by forces unconcerned with the will of the people or of Americas survival.
Regardless of who’s left standing after Nov 2nd the next two years are going to be a very critical period in America’s history. If the current administration retains control of either house or, perish the thought, both houses, the great experiment that, in 200 plus, brief years made the wilderness that was America into the beacon of freedom and prosperity around the world, will have failed. This is the heritage that will have been squandered if America remains in a state of complacent, apathetic, self imposed ignorance.
Everyone needs to get out and vote and everyone needs to be on high alert for voter fraud and intimidation. No one can afford to sit on the sidelines as a disinterested, disengaged observer. America will have no chance of recovery to its former greatness if the lessons of the 2008 election cycle and the events of the past 22 months are not embedded in the conscience of the present generations and those to come.
Scary Halloween: a Fannie Freddie lobbyist national security advisor depends on a goof ball vp’s “expertise”.
I thought we were supposed to listen to the generals.
Unfortunately this situation at the NSC has been brewing for quite a while according to Woodward’s “Obama’s War”. NSC Jones was being isolated from Obama by senior WH political advisers and his own Deputy NSC advisers (who were former Obama campaign political advisers). As former long time Democratic Party strategist Pat Caddell remarked “These are naive idiots who’ve come out of academia and have never done anything real in their lives, and they are actually in power,” he said. “These are the people we never let in the room when we had serious business to do. Now they’re running the country.” Unfortunately the end game in the WH appears to force Karzai to accept a political truce with the Taliban and beginning a military withdrawal from Afghanistan by next summer.
I don’t care who sides with whom. I want the security of the US first on everyone’s mind. I want the war won in Afghanistan. I don’t want our military to have died for nothing. They deserve better than a cowardly president and a buffoon of a vp, and a cabinet and pseudo cabinetstraight out of some Marx scenario.
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The war in Afghanistan cannot be won with an utterly corrupt Karzai in Kabul and the Pakistani ISI providing support to the Afghan Taliban. It is a waste of American lives and treasure. We will be bled to death. We give the Pakistani military billions of dollars and we give Karzai billions of dollars and they are all playing us for suckers. Biden’s approach is the only tenable one. Special Ops can keep al Qaeda out of Afghanistan and can make their operations in Waziristan untenable. Thats all we need to concerned with. We cannot save Afghanistan from itself.
Karzai and the Paki ISI are playing us for suckers. The war is untenable. Special Operations can make Al Qaeda operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan extremely uncomfortable and untenable. We cannot save Afghanistan from itself. The Biden/Donilon approach is the only logical approach at this point. If this war is catastrophic going into the Presidential Cycle in 2012 the Biden/Donilon approach will have acquired a momentum all its own, particularly in light of the fact that our NATO allies are already signaling a SIGNIFICANT drawdwon of their forces in 2012.