As President Obama deliberates over whether to send tens of thousands more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, one name is emerging as the hope of the anti-war left and enjoying somewhat of a public image rehabilitation.
It's all about Joe.
Vice President Joe Biden has been the leading skeptic in the administration toward Gen. Stanley McChrystal's call for escalating the war with 40,000 more troops. While the commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan has had the public support of top military voices like Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, Biden has won many officials over with his argument that the strategy should focus more on taking out top Al Qaeda targets in Pakistan with drones and Special Forces and shifting security responsibility to the Afghans.
With his cynicism, Biden is being cast as the wise man of foreign policy -- a far cry from the gaffe-prone uncle image he had, even seemingly within the administration, after Inauguration Day. He has emerged as the anti-Cheney, a highly influential adviser to the president arguing for military restraint rather than military escalation.
"Why Joe Is No Joke," blares the cover of Newsweek. The centerpiece article explains how Biden has firmed up his status in the White House, and how his "once lonesome position now has high-level support" regarding Afghanistan. The article calls Biden a "truth teller" and a "political realist" who is a force to be reckoned with.
A New York Times article Wednesday portrayed Biden the same way, describing him as the "in-house pessimist" who has gradually won backing from within the administration.
But the attention has brought with it added pressure, particularly from the left.
The Huffington Post's Arianna Huffington wrote on her Web site Wednesday that Biden should, in a symbolic stand against the war, resign if President Obama decides to escalate the U.S. presence in Afghanistan.
"Though it would be a crowning moment in a distinguished career, such an act of courage would likely be only the beginning. Biden would then become the natural leader of the movement to wind down this disastrous war and focus on the real dangers in Pakistan," Huffington wrote.
Oh sure, Biden's going to resign the highest post he's ever attained in his life just to make Arianna Harpington happy. Yew betcha ...
Biden is speaking for a broad swath of the Democratic Party in expressing to Obama his skepticism toward the war. Polls show public support for the war is at startlingly low levels, and a number of Democrats have voiced support for a more restricted U.S. involvement in the region.
"One of the central problems in Afghanistan right now is you have a government that is corrupt and incompetent," Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Surrender Mass., said on ABC's "This Week." If you don't have good governance at the center of all of this, you can put all the troops you want in there, you can invest all the money you want in there, and it won't make any difference."
He said "enlarging our military footprint" would be "counterproductive" and "a mistake."
But Biden may end up facing the scorn of anti-war advocates like Huffington in the end.
Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin said an expectation that Obama will approve more troops has triggered discontent on the left. "[Biden] has painted himself as the heroic skeptic on the Afghanistan war, and now it seems that we may be poised for Obama to finally listen to General McChrystal," she told FOX News.
British media reported this week that Obama has already decided to send up to 45,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, though the White House denies it.
Publicly, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama is "several weeks" away from a decision.
"We have finished at the broad landscape level," Gibbs said. "We are in the decision-making phase now," he told FOX News.
Biden's skepticism has its skeptics as well.
California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Democratic chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said alongside McGovern Sunday that the counterinsurgency strategy pursued by McChrystal is "really critical." She said the American people don't have the stomach to stay in Afghanistan for another 10 years, but that the mission there is in "serious jeopardy" and Obama has an obligation to follow his commander's advice.
"I don't know how you put somebody in who was as crackerjack as General McChrystal, who gives the president very solid recommendations, and not take those recommendations if you're not going to pull out," Feinstein said.
Given that Biden opposed the troop surge in Iraq -- widely credited with creating the stability that is allowing the U.S. to withdraw -- even after voting for the Iraq war in 2003, some question why Biden's advice is given so much weight.
"When was the last time Biden was right about anything?" military reporter Tom Ricks wrote on his blog on the Foreign Policy magazine site last month, a dose of heavy skepticism noted in the Times piece Wednesday.
#1
CMIIW, but wasn't Biden the one behind the push to divide Iraq into three seperate and autonomous states at one point? I realize that at the time his idea may have seemed like the fastest way to get out of Iraq but it would be akin to what the Brits did when they chopped the Middle East up into a bunch of de facto states way back when; and we all know how well that worked out.
It's amazing this guy has any credibility left at all. Say what you want about Cheney and his policies, his credibility was never in question; as The Surge proved beyond any shadow of a doubt.
At [the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in] Copenhagen, this December, weeks away, a treaty will be signed. Your president will sign it. Most of the third world countries will sign it, because they think theyre going to get money out of it. Most of the left-wing regime from the European Union will rubber stamp it. Virtually nobody wont sign it.
I read that treaty. And what it says is this, that a world government is going to be created. The word government actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity. The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to third world countries, in satisfication of what is called, coyly, climate debt because weve been burning CO2 and they havent. Weve been screwing up the climate and they havent. And the third purpose of this new entity, this government, is enforcement.
How many of you think that the word election or democracy or vote or ballot occurs anywhere in the 200 pages of that treaty? Quite right, it doesnt appear once. So, at last, the communists who piled out of the Berlin Wall and into the environmental movement, who took over Greenpeace so that my friends who funded it left within a year, because [the communists] captured it Now the apotheosis as at hand. They are about to impose a communist world government on the world. You have a president who has very strong sympathies with that point of view. Hes going to sign it. Hell sign anything. Hes a Nobel Peace Prize [winner]; of course hell sign it.
#4
His analysis is wrong. In American law, the Constitution always trumps treaties. To revoke a treaty that was confirmed by the Senate would only require an Act of Congress signed by the President.
While sovereignty is a major concern going forward, this is not a "hit the fan" moment.
#5
Maggie E, your take assumes that the Supreme Court agrees with you. There are some on the court, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who believe that we should take foreign law into consideration in US cases. They would be happy to cede sovereignty to Europe.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
10/15/2009 18:03 Comments ||
Top||
#6
Sovereignty rests SOLELY with the people. It cannot be given away, except by coup.
#7
Such a treaty would never be ratified in the first place. We'd toss out every last congressman and Senator and they know it. That is what happened with Kyoto.
It is "desirable" to redistribute America's wealth to poorer nations, argued President Obama's newly confirmed regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein.
According to Sunstein, global climate change is primarily the fault of U.S. environmental behavior and can, therefore, be used as a mechanism to redistribute the country's wealth. The argument bears striking resemblance to comments made by Obama's former environmental adviser, Van Jones. WND reported Jones used a major environmental convention to argue for spreading America's wealth.
Now WND has learned Sunstein made similar, more extensive arguments.
Continued on Page 49
#3
It is "desirable" to redistribute America's wealth to poorer nations, argued President Obama's newly confirmed regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein.
How do these idiots get to where they are? Do they have long tongues or something? Maybe this is why Obama doesn't vet his candidates so he can claim ignorance when they spouting crap like this. As idiotic as this is, it almost suggests that he's using them as trial balloons or something.
I like newc's suggestion. Start with the Cass's current and future personal wealth (along with that of all of the supporters of this stupid policy), then go from there.
#5
I agree 1/2 of obama's wealth and I'm set for life, GIMME.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
10/15/2009 6:09 Comments ||
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#6
Psychobabble (a portmanteau of psychology or psychoanalysis and babble) is a form of prose using jargon, buzzwords and highly esoteric language to give an impression of plausibility through mystification, misdirection, and obfuscation
Lesson number one: To be a member of the administration you must master the art of psychobabble.
#7
It's called charity Mr. Sunstein. You and your friends can write a check for up to 100% of your net worths.
Posted by: ed ||
10/15/2009 9:27 Comments ||
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#8
The weird part is that even if he was kidnapped by North Koreans and put in one of their concentration camps to starve, he would look around and say "This is entirely the fault of the United States!"
And the weirder part is that he would believe himself.
#9
According to Sunstein, global climate change is primarily the fault of U.S. environmental behavior
Bull$hit! This guy is one of the America haters. Cass how about beginning the process by re-distributing your income. What a moron. Is there some kind of a$$hole machine that keeps spitting out these nut jobs?
#11
Is there some kind of a$$hole machine that keeps spitting out these nut jobs?
Machine Variables?
+ Guilt over not serving in Nam
+ unresolved anger
+ lies to get out of draft
+ Baby Boomer
+ trying to impress other Boomers with "open mind"
____________________________________
Equals Leftist boomer with a grudge, axe to grind, and Job in government.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
As President Obama deliberates over whether to send tens of thousands more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, one name is emerging as the hope of the anti-war left and enjoying somewhat of a public image rehabilitation. 
