The Asbestos Will Remain In Altgeld Gardens Afghanistan

David Sanger of the Times describes Obama's evolution on Afghanistan. From an early belief in remaking their society, Obama quickly shifted his focus to the US political calendar and the pursuit of victory there.

Mr. Sanger needs to flatter his sources and is broadly sympathetic to Team Obama (certainly relative to Bush). Nevertheless, his picture of a President who tuned out his generals is clear:

Charting Obama’s Journey to a Shift on Afghanistan

By DAVID E. SANGER

It was just one brief exchange about Afghanistan with an aide late in 2009, but it suggests how President Obama’s thinking about what he once called “a war of necessity” began to radically change less than a year after he took up residency in the White House.

Not long before, after a highly contentious debate within a war cabinet that was riddled with leaks, Mr. Obama had reluctantly decided to order a surge of more than 30,000 troops. The aide told Mr. Obama that he believed military leaders had agreed to the tight schedule to begin withdrawing those troops just 18 months later only because they thought they could persuade an inexperienced president to grant more time if they demanded it.

“Well,” Mr. Obama responded that day, “I’m not going to give them more time.”

A year later, when the president and a half-dozen White House aides began to plan for the withdrawal, the generals were cut out entirely. There was no debate, and there were no leaks.

So facts were not going to matter, and didn't? I believe that, but I am still surprised to see it reported. The timing is clear:

The tight group of presidential aides charged with answering questions like that — of redefining the mission — began meeting on weekends at the end of 2010. The group’s informal name said it all: “Afghan Good Enough.”

“We spent the time asking questions like: How much corruption can we live with?” one participant recalled. “Is there another way — a way the Pentagon might not be telling us about — to speed the withdrawal? What’s the least we can spend on training Afghan troops and still get a credible result?”

By early 2011, Mr. Obama had seen enough. He told his staff to arrange a speedy, orderly exit from Afghanistan. This time there would be no announced national security meetings, no debates with the generals. Even Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton were left out until the final six weeks.

So immediately after the Republican wave in 2010 Team Obama cut out the generals (as well as their civilian masters) and charted a new course.

The key decisions had essentially been made already when Gen. David H. Petraeus, in his last months as commander in Afghanistan, arrived in Washington with a set of options for the president that called for a slow withdrawal of surge troops. He wanted to keep as many troops as possible in Afghanistan through the next fighting season, with a steep drop to follow. Mr. Obama concluded that the Pentagon had not internalized that the goal was not to defeat the Taliban. He said he “believed that we had a more limited set of objectives that could be accomplished by bringing the military out at a faster clip,” an aide reported.

After a short internal debate, Mr. Gates and Mrs. Clinton came up with a different option: end the surge by September 2012 — after the summer fighting season, but before the election. Mr. Obama concurred. But he was placing an enormous bet: his goals now focus largely on finishing off Al Qaeda and keeping Pakistan’s nuclear weapons from going astray. Left unclear is how America will respond if a Taliban resurgence takes over wide swathes of the country America invaded in 2001 and plans to largely depart 13 years later.

It is revealing is that Mr. Sanger feels no need to explain that September 2012, "before the election", is not before any important election in Afghanistan.

Mr. Sanger provides a snippet of Early Obama, when he still believed in his Hope and Change:

So in the first days of his presidency, Mr. Obama asked Bruce O. Riedel, a former C.I.A. officer with deep knowledge of the region, to lead a rapid review. At the time, the president was still speaking in campaign mode. He talked about remaking “an economy that isn’t dominated by illicit drugs” in Afghanistan and a “civilian surge” to match the military effort. But he said little about the Riedel team’s central insight: that Pakistan posed a far greater threat.

He really needed an expert to tell him that?

And a bit more on Obama's commitment to victory. Ooops, that's ambiguous - victory in Afghanistan:

But he also began to reassess whether emerging victorious in Afghanistan was as necessary as he had once proclaimed. Ultimately, Mr. Obama agreed to double the size of the American force while training the Afghan armed forces, but famously insisted that, whether America was winning or losing, the drawdown would begin in just 18 months.

“I think he hated the idea from the beginning,” one of his advisers said of the surge. “He understood why we needed to try, to knock back the Taliban. But the military was ‘all in,’ as they say, and Obama wasn’t.”

Obama's lack of commitment has been noted here for years. Oddly, the killing of Osama (by Obama!) is not highlighted as an excuse for leaving.

NONE DARE CALL IT NATION BUILDING: Both of the following passages are from young Obama's March 2009 announcement of his new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan:

So I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal:  to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future.  That's the goal that must be achieved.  That is a cause that could not be more just.  And to the terrorists who oppose us, my message is the same:  We will defeat you.

Per the White House press office the President's team agreed this was not a Bush-era nation-building effort. But later in the same speech:

This push must be joined by a dramatic increase in our civilian effort.  Afghanistan has an elected government, but it is undermined by corruption and has difficulty delivering basic services to its people.  The economy is undercut by a booming narcotics trade that encourages criminality and funds the insurgency.  The people of Afghanistan seek the promise of a better future.  Yet once again, we've seen the hope of a new day darkened by violence and uncertainty.

So to advance security, opportunity and justice -- not just in Kabul, but from the bottom up in the provinces -- we need agricultural specialists and educators, engineers and lawyers. That's how we can help the Afghan government serve its people and develop an economy that isn't dominated by illicit drugs.  And that's why I'm ordering a substantial increase in our civilians on the ground.  That's also why we must seek civilian support from our partners and allies, from the United Nations and international aid organizations -- an effort that Secretary Clinton will carry forward next week in The Hague.

At a time of economic crisis, it's tempting to believe that we can shortchange this civilian effort.  But make no mistake: Our efforts will fail in Afghanistan and Pakistan if we don't invest in their future.  And that's why my budget includes indispensable investments in our State Department and foreign assistance programs.  These investments relieve the burden on our troops.  They contribute directly to security.  They make the American people safer.  And they save us an enormous amount of money in the long run -- because it's far cheaper to train a policeman to secure his or her own village than to help a farmer seed a crop -- or to help a farmer seed a crop than it is to send our troops to fight tour after tour of duty with no transition to Afghan responsibility.

Clear and focused. Not nation building.

Here is TNR on the December 2009 surge and withdrawal:

I wonder how many Americans who may be paying only cursory attention appreciate the thinness of Obama's pledge to start withdrawing troops from Afghanistan in July 2011. Subsequent commentary from administration officials has made this point clearer than Obama did last night.

Administration officials were earnestly insisting the withdrawal would be "conditions-based".  I guess they had not internalized Obama's commitment to victory - November 2012.

Comments

[Melinda Romanoff]

This too will be Bush's fault.

[myiq2xu]

Afghanistan is where empires go to die.

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier. - Rudyard Kipling

[Jim Eagle]

Why do these reporters still believe that Obama is smart enough to even spell Afghanistan. They act as if he is a chess grand master and that every move (evolutionary at that) has been designed years back in anticipation of these calculated events. This is, as Clarice has pointed out from Jack Cashill, a man who can't even merge his nouns and verbs correctly. But its not the Modern Language Association who awards "The Smartest Man in the World" accolade, its the legacy media.

[narciso]

Ah Beaks, I mean Riedel, the fellow who told us, we had nothing to fear from the Muslim
Brotherhood, unfortunately, he doesn't hide like Paul Gleeson's character on a freighter,

This does match Obama's sentiments, he expressed in the Chicago Reader, that Ryan Lizza picked up, in that issue with the inflammatory Spiegelman cover, that we needed
to 'understand the enemy' more than just invade Afghanistan, much less Iraq, well they want us to die,

[GMax]

Shorter Obama on damn near everything, its all about the O...

[narciso]

You see why he had to 'throw McCrystal under the bus' he kept interfering with 'finishing
his waffle'

[Captain Hate]

well they want us to die

The ability to ignore that, no matter how many times it's repeated, or to contort it into something different, won't have good results.

[narciso]

The struck through piece, in the LUN, actually shows Riedel's 'unique brain patterns, re the GID blown agent, that's actually the more charitable view,

[narciso]

The less charitable view, suggested by Mauro, in the LUNe, is he is actively lying,

[Clarice]

On everything else except self aggrandizement the man is a moron.I expect when he was running for President his knowledge of Afghanistan was limited to memorizing the left's idiotic claim that that's where we should have been fighting, instead of "Bush's war in Iraq".

[Rick Ballard]

Narciso,

The Mohametan Situation was resolved when Obama shot Osama and then declared the scent of Arab Spring to be the most fragrant in the world. It must be true because the MFM has as little to say about it as they do about about the utterly vanquished SkyDragon - which has also disappeared from the MFM.

When Obama forces Merkel to cough up the great wad of OPM which the mean spirited Germans have been hoarding, the age of Aquarian EUtopia will dawn, the President having resolved all problems in this best of all possible worlds.

Just ask the Syrians.

[narciso]

Yes I know, Rick, the moves to get Fredo away from Johnny Olla, have been working wonderfully, just ask Hyman Roth.

Interestingly, inlike quarrelsome Kahtan, Doughty had great respect for the Asir, although unlike another future Arabist,
St. John Philby, was smart enough not keep them near you, much like those mountain lions on the other thread.

[Buford Gooch]

OT: Tea Partiers for sure /snark

[narciso]

No, the People's Front of Judea or the Judean People's Front, take your pick.

[An exotic alien, which is what Obama is.]

A nit to pick in the Dystrel Affair. Obama was not born to a Kenyan Finance Minister and an American anthropologist. He was born to an impressionable coed and a randy exotic. Or alien, if you prefer.
================================

[sailor]

Well, I think Obama has ruined everything in Afghanistan! He finally "did" the surge while promising our troops would be out in September 2012--the result is that our brave men are being killed every day by men who are purportedly our allies! It is a horrible mess, and, I would be even more distraught if I had a family member over there.

[narciso]

Yes, I've become rather cynical,about the enterprise specially about Karzai, who's really relishing he's a 'SOB but our SOB'

http://babalublog.com/2012/05/lockerbie-bomber-dies-in-libya/

[myiq2xu]

Libya claims the Lockerbie bomber is dead.

I'll believe it when they produce the body.

[Rick Ballard]

Kim,

"Obama Was Not" would make a great game. We could start with Alice's comment on the last thread:

1. raised in Chicago

[Ignatz]

--Yes I know, Rick, the moves to get Fredo away from Johnny Olla, have been working wonderfully, just ask Hyman Roth.

Interestingly, inlike quarrelsome Kahtan, Doughty had great respect for the Asir, although unlike another future Arabist,
St. John Philby, was smart enough not keep them near you, much like those mountain lions on the other thread.--

My decoder ring started smoking and then just gave up the ghost on that one.

[myiq2xu]

https://twitter.com/#!/memeorandum/status/204217714997329920

When is the NYT gonna do a story about how Rev. Wright’s Trinity United shaped Barack Obama?

[MarkO]

Bingo, Clarice.

He's just not that smart. And, he's a liar.

[narciso]

Fredo is Bashir, Johnny Olla are the Iranians,
and that has worked out just as well,

Doughty was the British explorer of late 19th Century Arabia, whose insights are very valuable although a touch politically incorrect for this era,

[sbwaters]

Rick: "Obama Was Not" would make a great game.

It would. Each time a player discovered a rotten answer in the house of cards it gets pulled away.

And when the structure collapsed on Election Day, 2012, all the players get to chant:

"Clean-up on aisle 1600!"

[jimmyk]

He was born to an impressionable coed and a randy exotic. Or alien, if you prefer.

At the risk of sounding like a whacko, my money is still on Frank Marshall Davis as the real pappy. Of course neither was a father in any meaningful way.

Great "Pieces" as always, Clarice.

[hit and run]

Rick:
"Obama Was Not" would make a great game. We could start with Alice's comment on the last thread:

Indeed. That would make a good twitter hashtag.

#ObamaWasNot

2. a Constitutional law professor

[jimmyk]

#ObamaWasNot

3. Editor of the Harvard Law Review

[hit and run]

#ObamaWasNot

...bothered by eating dog, either as a youth when it was presented to him - or as an adult when retelling the tail.

[quantas]

"but it suggests how President Obama’s thinking about what he once called “a war of necessity” began to radically change less than a year after he took up residency in the White House."

The Evolution began when Obama had access to the inner circle and learned how F***** we are thanks to the 'plan'

Night Raids were our undoing. Thank you
gen McChrystal. For nothing.

[Stephanie]

#ObamaWasNot

smoking weed without inhaling.

[Jane]

When is the NYT gonna do a story about how Rev. Wright’s Trinity United shaped Barack Obama?

On the Chris Matthews show he talked about the republicans bringing race back to the election by raising Reverend Wright. I was a little confused because I thought Wright was about religion not race. But Chris kept up that meme until everyone agreed republicans are racists.

Then he raised the "religious" issue of Romney's mormonism, and someone commented that Mormons were racists until a few years ago so it's fair game.

My head spun around 3 times and now my neck is sore.

[Jane]

#Obama was not (and never will be) competent.

[hit and run]

#ObamaWasNot fighting insurance companies to get his dying mother health insurance because they were denying her coverage due to a preexisting condition.

[Rick Ballard]

#ObamaWasNot

The author of Dreams From My Father (whoever he was)

[hit and run]

#ObamaWasNot at the memorial service for the grandmother who raised him. But he did write a letter that was read to those who did attend.

[For real.]

Obama was not, and never will be.
==================

[Captain Hate]

#ObamaWasNot honest in the 2004 donk convention speech that launched his career

[quantas]

Oh, you think Obama fired McChrystal's ass because of the Rolling Stone article? It didn't help, but it was just the frosting on the cake of rat poison.

The failure of the offensive in Marjah launched February 2010 seemed to help bring Obama into the 'McChrystal: idiot and liar" camp, but it was the civilian casualties that screwed us with the locals.

BTW; the night raid idiocy started in Iraq and it was SO successful there, we exported that smart policy to Afghanistan.

[Rick Ballard]

#ObamaWasNot

aware of the difference between liability insurance and collision coverage

[Captain Hate]

quantas is arguing with the voices in his otherwise empty head.

[MarkO]

#ObamaWasNot

Smart.

[hit and run]

Dang it Rick,I was going to post that one.

[Ignatz]

Thanks narc.

[hit and run]

Oh,on topic.

#ObamaWasNot able to get the asbestos out of Altgeld Gardens

[Ignatz]

TK could have a field day with #ObamaWasNot.

[Ignatz]

Were I still 10 or so I would already have posted that #ObamaWasSnot. :)

[Hope in one hand]

The right inists that the Occupy movement is aligned with, sympathetic to or manipulated by the Obama administration. The reactionaries will not let go of this fixed idea, even though all of the evidence points in the opposite direction.

Example: Three young "anarchists" associated with the Occupy movement have been charged with plotting to bomb Barack Obama's campaign headquarters and Rahm Emanuel's home.

Dem Anarchist's luvs dem some Obama

[Chubby]

#Obama Was Not and Is not worthy of kid glove treatment from his political adversaries.

[hit and run]

#ObamaWasNot kidding when he said that he believed we could look back generations from now and tell our kids that his nomination as the Democratic candidate for president in 2008 would be the moment the oceans stopped rising.

[jimmyk]

#ObamaWasNot

aware that corpsman is not pronounced "corpse-man."

[hit and run]

#ObamaWasNot kidding when he told AIPAC in 2007 that cynicism was as big a threat as Hamas or Hezbollah.

[Rick Ballard]

#ObamaWasNot

aware that Austrian is not a language

[Disraeli]

Bueller?

Halliburton?

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/05/parwan-locks/

[hit and run]

#ObamaWasNot notified for over three hours after the (first) underwear bomber tried to take down a plane headed for Detroit.

[Janet]

A nit to pick in the Dystrel Affair. Obama was not born to a Kenyan Finance Minister and an American anthropologist. He was born to an impressionable coed and a randy exotic. Or alien, if you prefer.

What an excellent point!!!

Love the title to this thread too. Well done, TM!

[pagar]

"Why do these reporters still believe"

They are not reporters, they are leftist propaganda spreaders.

[not a lawyer]

"This too will be Bush's fault."

So, you think this quagmire doesn't recoil to the Decider?

I note the desperation to avoid the subject, in any sense, except about the losing pitcher who was brought out in the bottom of the ninth, with bases loaded. Yeah. HE'S losing the game.

[rodger]

What? No Jeremiad?

[Clarice]

hanks. Jimmyk, Count me in the Davis as papa camp, too.

[hit and run]

#ObamaWasNot serious when he pledged not to have lobbyists in his administration

[hit and run]

#ObamaWasNot serious when he pledged a net spending cut

[hit and run]

#ObamaWasNot serious when he pledged that no on who made under $250K would have their taxes raised

[centralcal]

Me too. Have always thought he looks more like Davis than Obama, Sr.

[Janet]

#ObamaWasNot

aware of the stories in Dreams From My Father.

[Clarice]

cc, I think Rick Ballard was the first to observe that physical resemblance.

[TexasMom2012]

#ObamaWasNot serious when he promised to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term

[TexasMom2012]

#ObamaWasNot serious when he said you could keep your insurance plan if you liked it

[Rick Ballard]

#ObamaWasNot

kidding about leading the Democrat Party 'beyond the precipice'.

[doobie]

RobinhoodTAX.org has a great ad where the 'little people' take after a Bankster with their pitchforks.

Occupy sympathy goes 'Wright'.

[Extraneus]

#ObamaWasNot fooled when capitalist pigs told him that profit isn't overhead.

[MarkO]

Has anyone put this hashtag on Twitter?

[Danube of Thought]

Minus 15 at Raz today.

Leads Romney by 2.

[rse]

On the media, virtually every policy document I read at some point brings up media involvement to gain implementation. I was just reading some of the materials since Planet Under Pressure in March getting ready for Rio.

Skydragon may be finished but the world vision it was created for endures. It also pointed out all the interconnected intl relationships that have been created so that a failure to come to a singular agmt in Rio should not need to stop implementation. People to manage and control. Resources etc.

And whoever last asked me about what the World Council of Churches was up to on all this, LUN.

Obama was not-

Kidding about fundamentally transforming America.

[Rick Ballard]

#ObamaWasNot kidding about using his profit to earning ratio as a metric for stock valuation.

[henry]

#ObamaWasNot able to get a single vote for his budget (any of them).

[myiq2xu]

#ObamaWasNot the winner of the 2008 Democratic primaries. Hillary got more votes.

The super delegates gave it to him anyway.

[Danube of Thought]

"At the time, the president was still speaking in campaign mode. "

You mean at some point he stopped?

[Danube of Thought]

"So, you think this quagmire doesn't recoil to the Decider?"

The majority of American deaths go straight to the incumbent asshole.

[Rick Ballard]

Clarice,

There has to be a way to work a vignette from The Life and Times of President Zelig von Munchausen into your Pieces every once in a while. It would be a great fit with his Forest Gump efforts at rewriting Presidential biographies.

We need to work on the President's favorite chile con cane recipe...

[Porchlight]

#ObamaWasNot

a pragmatist.

[Danube of Thought]

"The Evolution began when Obama had access to the inner circle and learned how F***** we are thanks to the 'plan'"

Not even the world-class weasel Obama offers up that imbecilic excuse.

Obama had "access to the inner circle" on January 21, 2009. His surge began in 2010. That surge has cost a lot of American lives, and for nothing.

[Janet]

from Flares Into Darkness -

Barack Gump -

[Janet]

#ObamaWasNot

from Hawaii...um..err...from Kenya.

[Jim Rhoads a/k/a vjnjagvet]

I believe satire, ridicule and humor are the most effective cleansing agent in times like these, especially when the MSM won't do its job.

The triumvirate of Feldman, Steyn and Ramirez are coming to the rescue.

Bravo Clarice.

[sailor]

OT-Did any of you read the piece by Bill Kristol recommending that Barack dump Biden and choose Hilary as running mate to "give" Romney more of a challenge in the election? Weird--but, of course, Kristol's a RINO.

[Janet]

#ObamaWasNot

a member of "Man's Country" in Chicago...really...he was NOT a member...we swear.

[Janet]

Bumper sticker of the day -

[MarkO]

"His surge began in 2010. That surge has cost a lot of American lives, and for nothing."

Obama knew that the surge was not intended to achieve progress, let alone victory. It was set in motion after he took an inordinate amount of time to attempt to learn what it was all about. Then, he made the decision to send an inadequate number of troops for the purported objective and announced an immediate withdrawal.

Quisling?

[Danube of Thought]

Romney will have all the cgallenge he can handle as is.

[Jim Eagle]

#ObamaWasNot tag is up and running at Twitter. Saw that MarkO set it up.

ObamaWasNot the first person to visit all 57 states in a POTUS campaign. Harold Stassen did it 4 times.

[marlene]

#ObamaWasNot post-partisan or post-racial.

[Threadkiller]

#ObamaWasNot

a Navy Seal.

[pagar]

#ObamaWasNot

a Harvard law professor.

http://theothermccain.com/2012/05/20/obama-as-much-harvard-law-professor-as-elizabeth-warren-is-cherokee/

[GMax]

Rats abandoning the ship so soon, well it is badly listing to the port and taking on water! Here:

Newark Mayor Cory Booker credited Bain Capital with growing businesses and said attacks on private equity must stop, during “Meet the Press” Sunday.

As far as that stuff, I have to say from a very personal level, I’m not about to sit here and indict private equity. It’s—to me, we’re just getting to a ridiculous point in America. Especially, I know, I live in a state where pension funds, unions and other people are investing in companies like Bain Capital. If you look at the totality of Bain Capital’s record, they’ve done a lot to support businesses, to grow businesses; this to me, I’m very uncomfortable.

Cory, that is going to make you persona nongrata on the Upper West Side.

[centralcal]

Okay, I made my Twitter contribution to the hashtag #ObamaWasNot. Go ahead everyone - join in the fun.

[Jim Ryan]

MEGRAHI: Wait... what the-

SATAN: I love this part!

MEGRAHI: Oh, [REDACTED].

BIN LADEN: Just sit the [REDACTED] down and shut up. We're going to be down here a long, long time.

SATAN: Hey, what's the matter, Megrahi, you bought my crap about the 72 virgins?! What a card!

MEGRAHI: Oh, [REDACTED].

BIN LADEN: [FACEPALM]

[bgates]

Cory, that is going to make you persona nongrata on the Upper West Side.

Booker!

[Tom's River]

Almost punched a hole in my screen when I saw that mutual masturbation. WTF?

[Caro]

#ObamaWasNot a racial uniter.

[Janet]

#ObamaWasNot

a Navy Seal.

Wonderful, TK!

#ObamaWasNot

named "Barack Half-white Eagle" by the Crow Indians.