Category: Terror War

The Associated Press has read Bob Woodward’s new book “Obama Wars” and I haven’t. Woodward says that, although Obama throughout his campaign for President insisted that Afghanistan is the war we needed to win, was in a rush to exit right from the beginning of his presidency;

According to the book, Obama said, “I have two years with the public on this” and pressed advisers for ways to avoid a big escalation in the Afghanistan war.

“I want an exit strategy,” he said at one meeting. Privately, he told Vice President Joe Biden to push his alternative strategy opposing a big troop buildup in meetings.

While Obama ultimately rejected the alternative plan, the book says, he set a withdrawal timetable because, “I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.”

OK, that’s not new to denizens of this blog, but now it’s in print and written by one of the Democrats own journalists. So now, while our troops slug it out with the enemy in Afghanistan, they can thank the President for not supplying enough to do their job just so he can try to get reelected.

Woodward also documents the internal tussels in the Administration;

Biden called Holbrooke “the most egotistical bastard I’ve ever met,” and a number of administration officials expressed scorn for national security adviser James Jones, the Times said.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, thought his vice chairman, Gen. James Cartwright, went behind his back, while Cartwright dismissed Mullen because he wasn’t a war fighter.

Gen. David Petraeus, who become the Afghanistan commander this summer, told a senior aide that he disliked talking with David Axelrod, the president’s senior adviser, because he was “a complete spin doctor.”

Of course Biden is going to dislike someone who is smarter than Biden – but that’s not a high bar to reach. And I have no idea why General Petraeus would have to deal with Axelrod.

But, here’s my complaint; the press excoriated President Bush for his “rush to war”. Where is the same level of concern about Obama’s rush to leave? We left Somalia too quickly and brought on both of these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Imagine the result of leaving Afghanistan before the job is done.

I’m also not particularly enamored with Obama’s cavalier attitude towards the lives of Americans as quoted by Ace of Spades.

We can absorb a terrorist attack. We’ll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever . . . we absorbed it and we are stronger.

So those of you who are planning to be the next victims of terrorist activities can rest assured that your death will make the rest of stronger.

The New York Times complains that there aren’t enough troops in Afghanistan to keep aid workers safe these days;

As NATO forces poured in and shifted to the south to battle the Taliban in their stronghold, the Taliban responded with a surge of their own, greatly increasing their activities in the north and parts of the east.

The worsening security comes as the Obama administration is under increasing pressure to show results to maintain public support for the war, and raises serious concerns about whether the country can hold legitimate nationwide elections for Parliament next Saturday.

I guess it couldn’t be because the Obama Administration made the political decision to give General McCrystal half of the troops he requested last year as a compromise with the Democrat anti-war base. He set McChrystal up to fail and then fired him for complaining about it.

American military officials say the increased level of violence is related to the rise in the number of its forces here. The last 2,000 of 30,000 new American troops are expected to arrive in the next week or two, military officials say. The result is more military operations, they say, and more opportunities for the insurgents to attack coalition forces.

That does not entirely explain the increased activity of the Taliban in areas where they were seldom seen before, and where the coalition presence is light, however.

Maybe it’s because the surge has been a trickle and half of what the commanders requested. The Obama administration has decided that win or lose, they’re pulling out next year. What happens between now and then is irrelevant.