Arrogance: Obama Blows Off Pentagon’s Advice about Afghanistan & Congressional Language to Cut His Czars’ Salaries
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on June 22, 2011
Deplaning from Air Force One: Pres. Obama's arrival in Afghanistan in December 2010
If you have no military background whatsoever, would it be wise to ignore the advice of the Pentagon, of men and women who have spent decades defending our nation and are experts on foreign security? Would it be prudent to disregard what they have to say about the fragility of Afghanistan?
Well, if you have an election coming up and your numbers are in the commode — and if your name is Barack H. Obama, of course you’ll ignore their recommendations.
He won, you know… and he’s also planning to ignore new legislation cutting the salaries of some of his controversial unvetted czars.
Arrogance, thy name is Obama.
From The Guardian, Barack Obama and Pentagon split on Afghanistan pullout:
Barack Obama is set to reject the advice of the Pentagon by announcing on Wednesday night the withdrawal of up to 30,000 troops from Afghanistan by November next year, in time for the US presidential election.
The move comes despite warnings from his military commanders that recent security gains are fragile. They have been urging him to keep troop numbers high until 2013.
The accelerated drawdown will dismay American and British commanders in Kabul, who have privately expressed concern that the White House is now being driven by political rather than military imperatives.
“This is not something we feel entirely comfortable with,” a Whitehall official told the Guardian.
Obama’s nationally televised address, the sixth he has given since becoming president, is intended to mark the beginning of the end of American military deployment in Afghanistan, from a present high of almost 100,000 troops.
The White House confirmed that the withdrawal will be “significant”.
Obama’s decision is aimed at placating an American public tired of a 10-year war that has cost 1,522 US lives. The killing of Osama bin Laden added impetus to calls to pull out.
From London Evening Standard, Don’t rush Afghanistan pullout, military chiefs warn Obama and Cameron:
Military chiefs and MPs today warned Barack Obama and David Cameron against too hasty a withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Tonight the President will pledge to bring 10,000 US troops home by the end of the year and declare: “It is time to start winding down the war.” Mr Cameron is expected to respond early next month, by reaffirming his pledge to withdraw British troops from a combat role by 2015.
But military leaders in both countries are warning a hasty exit could leave Afghanistan unstable and throw away the gains made after years of conflict.
James Arbuthnot, chairman of the Commons defence committee, said it would be a “serious betrayal” to withdraw troops too quickly or stick rigidly to an “arbitrary timetable”.
He added: “In my view it should have a degree of flexibility, because we need to be sure conditions on the ground mean that troops can be withdrawn leaving a stable country behind.”
Tonight the President will use a primetime TV broadcast to appease public opinion which has turned against the decade-old military campaign against the Taliban. He is expected to say that 5,000 US troops will leave the combat zone by the end of next month, followed by up to another 5,000 by the end of the year.
Next year, 20,000 more US personnel will leave, fulfilling the President’s pledge to reverse the surge of 30,000 extra combat troops that he launched in December 2009, to weaken the Taliban in southern Afghanistan.
From Los Angeles Times, Obama’s speech on the Afghanistan war: Draining a political mess of his own making:
Here’s some important new information that President Obama should certainly leave out of his big Afghanistan speech Wednesday evening:
Only 12% of people in our most important regional ally, Pakistan, now have a positive view of the United States. And only 8% express confidence in the American leader to do the right thing, according to a new Pew Research Center poll.
This could have something to do with deadly U.S. drone raids on Pakistan and the assassination of Osama bin Laden there in a commando incursion; a whopping 14% of Pakistanis think the latter was a good thing.
Obama’s speech from the White House this evening will be his third major address on Afghanistan, now the nation’s longest war ever. The first two — on March 27, 2009, and Dec. 1, 2009 — involved Obama ordering the sorts of American troop surges into combat that the Democrat used to say would make things worse when his predecessor ordered one into Iraq. (Scroll down for links to the full texts of those two speeches.)
Obama’s latest speech will be directed solely at Americans, who have begun registering impatience with the war, especially since Obama joined another one in Libya in March that he said would last days, not weeks, and has now gone on for months.
The president is in a mess of his own making. He built his initial national political persona on opposition to Bush’s Iraq war because, the former U.S. senator argued, it distracted America from the far more important conflict against Al Qaeda, the Taliban and terrorism in Afghanistan, which was the haven for Al Qaeda’s 9/11 training.
Bush’s Iraq surge worked, however, enabling Obama to proclaim victory and transfer those troops. This, in turn, enabled Vice President Joe Biden, the candidate who wanted to slice Iraq into three parts, to go on cable TV and with no sense of irony call Iraq one of Obama’s “great achievements.”
That left the Afghanistan war, 10 years old this fall, where Al Qaeda forces were making gains against the invisible central government. When Obama became commander-in-chief, the United States had 32,000 troops there. Today it has 100,000.
Since 2001, 1,632 Americans have died there, 696 of them (43%) during the 882 days of Obama’s presidency.
At West Point in his Afghanistan surge speech, sending in 30,000 more pairs of U.S. boots, Obama spoke 4,582 words. He said “Al Qaeda” 22 times and “Taliban” 12 times. He said the word “victory” zero times.
About those umpteen unvetted czars… Politico reports:
President Barack Obama is planning to ignore language in the 2011 spending package that would ban several top White House advisory posts.
House Republicans tacked on language to the contentious spending bill to cut the salaries for four so-called czars — policy advisers appointed to assist the president on health care, climate change, autos and manufacturing, and urban affairs.
But in a signing statement issued Friday, Obama said he’s not obligated to comply.
“The president also has the prerogative to obtain advice that will assist him in carrying out his constitutional responsibilities, and do so not only from executive branch officials and employees outside the White House, but also from advisers within it,” the statement said.
“Legislative efforts that significantly impede the president’s ability to exercise his supervisory and coordinating authorities or to obtain the views of the appropriate senior advisers violate the separation of powers by undermining the president’s ability to exercise his constitutional responsibilities and take care that the laws be faithfully executed. Therefore, the executive branch will construe section 2262 not to abrogate these presidential prerogatives.”
The anti-czar language in the spending bill marked a victory for Republicans and conservative pundits, who accused the administration of giving unelected bureaucrats too much power within the White House.
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