Woodward: Obama’s exit from Afghanistan purely political

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.

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Terror War