I Might Not Agree With Obama On Afghanistan But At Least He Seriously Considered The Issues

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I might have my doubts about the strategy in Afghanistan, but I do appreciate the fact that Obama actually did think about the decision, in contrast to how decisions were made during the previous administration. The New York Times has an article on how the decision was reached:

The three-month review that led to the escalate-then-exit strategy is a case study in decision making in the Obama White House — intense, methodical, rigorous, earnest and at times deeply frustrating for nearly all involved. It was a virtual seminar in Afghanistan and Pakistan, led by a president described by one participant as something “between a college professor and a gentle cross-examiner.”

Mr. Obama peppered advisers with questions and showed an insatiable demand for information, taxing analysts who prepared three dozen intelligence reports for him and Pentagon staff members who churned out thousands of pages of documents.

This account of how the president reached his decision is based on dozens of interviews with participants as well as a review of notes some of them took during Mr. Obama’s 10 meetings with his national security team. Most of those interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, but their accounts have been matched against those of other participants wherever possible.

Mr. Obama devoted so much time to the Afghan issue — nearly 11 hours on the day after Thanksgiving alone — that he joked, “I’ve got more deeply in the weeds than a president should, and now you guys need to solve this.” He invited competing voices to debate in front of him, while guarding his own thoughts. Even David Axelrod, arguably his closest adviser, did not know where Mr. Obama would come out until just before Thanksgiving.

Obama “peppered advisers with questions and showed an insatiable demand for information.” In contrast, George Bush was known for rarely asking questions and having no intellectual curiosity. The article further shows how Obama’s approach differed from Bush’s:

The episode underscored the uneasy relationship between the military and a new president who, aides said, was determined not to be as deferential as he believed his predecessor, George W. Bush, was for years in Iraq. And the military needed to adjust to a less experienced but more skeptical commander in chief. “We’d been chugging along for eight years under an administration that had become very adept at managing war in a certain way,” said another military official.

Besides trying to avoid the mistakes that George Bush made, Obama considered previous U.S.  mistakes:

Moreover, Mr. Obama had read “Lessons in Disaster,” Gordon M. Goldstein’s book on the Vietnam War. The book had become a must read in the West Wing after Mr. Emanuel had dinner over the summer at the house of another deputy national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, and wandered into his library to ask what he should be reading.

Among the conclusions that Mr. Donilon and the White House team drew from the book was that both President John F. Kennedy and President Lyndon B. Johnson failed to question the underlying assumption about monolithic Communism and the domino theory — clearly driving the Obama advisers to rethink the nature of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

2 Comments

  1. 1
    Brett Robinson says:

    "I Might Not Agree With #Obama On #Afghanistan But At Least He Seriously Considered The Issues" http://bit.ly/56B3VP #p2 #topprog #peace

  2. 2
    Brett says:

    "I Might Not Agree With #Obama On #Afghanistan But At Least He Seriously Considered The Issues" http://bit.ly/56B3VP #p2 #topprog #peace

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