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Kristol's Secret Plan to Support Obama
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Talk about strange bedfellows. The neocon godfather, who started a new policy group, loves Obama’s plan for Afghanistan. He tells The Daily Beast why Obama is a Democrat he can get behind.
For those of you scoring at home, here’s who doesn’t like President Obama’s new Afghanistan strategy: John Murtha and Bill Ayers. Here’s who does: John McCain and Bill Kristol.
One place where President Obama has followed through on his post-partisan promise is foreign policy. With centrist national security Cabinet picks, he built on the success of the surge in Iraq and managed to depolarize the most divisive debate of our decade. Now he’s doubled down on Afghanistan, committing 21,000 new troops and extending the effort to Pakistan, all in an effort to root out al Qaeda and the resurgent Taliban. It’s a long-term commitment by a resolute new president that scrambles old political labels and brings a welcome bipartisan focus to the global conflict formerly known as “the war on terror.”
“I’m heartened by the first two and half months of the Obama administration,” Kristol said, “because I do think that some of the crazed partisanship and bitterness of the Bush years seems to have receded.”
It was in search of strange bedfellows that I went down to Washington, D.C., to attend the inaugural conference of the innocuously named Foreign Policy Initiative. In recent days, it had been targeted by the liberal netroots and their cable ditto-heads as the newest incarnation of the now infamous Project for a New American Century, a neoconservative think tank that advocated the war in Iraq. Two out of the three members of the FPI board of directors—Bill Kristol and Bob Kagan—do indeed overlap with PNAC; the third is Dan Senor, who was introduced to the world as Paul Bremmer’s spokesperson in Iraq. But in the netroots’ eagerness to re-litigate old debates, they missed the real man-bites-dog story: The founders of FPI support the Obama administration’s Afghanistan strategy.
“On Afghanistan and Iraq, I think he’s been good,” Kristol told me in a pre-conference interview. “Gates, Clinton, Jones, Obama, Biden, Holbrooke—these are serious people. They’re trying to do the right thing and they’re not being diverted much by day-to-day politics… I’m heartened by the first two and half months of the Obama administration because I do think that some of the crazed partisanship and bitterness of the Bush years seems to have receded.”
“There is a view on the left that is hostile to the mainstream Democratic tradition,” Kristol continued. “They’re entitled to be hostile—that’s their view of the world. They were hostile to Clinton’s policy in Iraq—the no-fly zones—some were hostile to the interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo. … The interesting thing to me is that the Obama administration has not signed on to that view. I’m not going to agree with them on some of what they do, but this is more like a traditional centrist Democratic administration than what the left-wing academics would like in terms of a radical redefinition of American foreign policy.”
This is miles from the GOP campaign party line, in which Obama was dangerously naïve and “pallin’ around with terrorists.” It’s a return to an older tradition—that of the Truman-Eisenhower-Kennedy era, in which campaign rhetoric receded in the face of Cold War responsibilities and broad policy continuity.
Inside the Foreign Policy Initiative conference at the Mayflower Hotel, policy compliments from a bipartisan cadre of speakers continued as the National Funeral Directors Association held their annual meeting down the hall.
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With friends like these, who needs the democrats?!
Kristol is complaining about partisan politics? This hack has about as much credibility as Cheney in a gun safety class. Obama is taking NO CUES from Neo Con's, he will take his own path, he has NEVER said to pull out from Afghanistan, all through his campaign he said Bush took the wrong path to Iraq instead of Afghanistan where the last time I checked Bin Laden trained those who killed American's on 911.
Kristol needs to crawl back into his hole.
The U.S. does NOT need tens of thousands of troops occupying Afganistan. It needs a crack assualt team with superior intelligence to hunt down & capture Bin Ladin; and foreign aid and social workers to reconstruct Afgani society as a counter to the Taliban. We cannot change every society we happen to disagree with: to do so is tyranical, and futile because we did not win the wars in Vietnam or Korea, and we will certainly lose the war in Afganistan which could, easily, spread to Pakistan and beyond. Obama's "open mind" should listen to divergent opinions but should act from core democratic values.
I agree. Great Britain failed at policing the world and we will also. It is arrogant and foolish to believe that we have the right to impose our values on to the rest of the world. Actually, lately I'm no longer sure we have any values that anyone else would find desirable. Those who embraced capitalism have serious regrets after we brought down their economies. We embraced the immoral values that we had decried globally when we proved that we are a nation of laws only when it is convenient and that we are equally barbaric when we are attacked. We are lagging behind third world nations in education, in math, in science, in technology, in language and in medicine. We forget how years of war weaken a military force. Do we even possess a superior intelligence team? We were asleep at the wheel on 9/11, we haven't located Bin Ladin almost a decade following the attack, we have no difinitive proof regarding the anthrax distribution . . . where is the evidence that our superior intelligence force exists? Afghanistan has brought down powerful nations in the past. Where is the evidence that our outcome will be any different? I suspect both the admistration and the military leaders are aware, but I fear we lack the will to concede defeat and move on.
lol muddog did you even read the article? or just see kristol's name and just start running your mouth. haha oh i love the "educated" left.
Can someone please tell me who it was who decided this guy was so smart?
I have a feeling that Mr' Kristol's brain keeps most of his plans secret from even him.
mr. kristol, has not only drunk too much of the "obama koolaid" but is drunk on his own ego-driven need for "ink about him" rather than sticking to his forte, which at one time was advancing conservative philosophy and demolishing liberal/socialistic rhetoric.
afghanistan could, as was the case in vietnam and korea been wrapped up years ago by eliminating the drug-cartels and eradicating the poppy fields, which are now the major source of income for that country today. ever since the soviet invasion afghani's have not had the opportunity to pursue a true agraian economy or attempt to modernize their sub-surface mining wealth! stamp out the drug kamizars and their product and you will be at the doorway of freedom for the afghan nation!
Kristol has no military experience, has been consistently wrong about all things involving war and geopolitics, and was previously doing everything in his power to stop Obama.
What does it say about a person to be such a scum bag that you would just join any party, form any alliance to get more war? This guy is bad. Everyone likes to call Cheyney the worst, but this guy is just a smirking idiot of destruction.
while they the neo-cons and Obama may agree that Afghanistan is the true gordian knot, where they differ is strategy. Obama's like Gate's two handed approach of militarism with constructionism is where they bifurcate which was clearly his campaign promise unblemished by soft rhetoric. where you see back peddling I see the ramping of his original vision.
my fear is while we hear the rhetoric of the neo-cons one armed approached to afghanistan in support of President Obama there is a malicious janus at work here rearing its ugly head through the likes of dick cheney. who attempts to undermine any gains made by the Obama administration in rendering a vision by planting seeds doubting his allegiance and character.
the greater question is why the double standard is applied to guys at--Project for a New American Century?
like bankers on wall street John McCain and Bill Kristol, Richard Pearle, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and that cabal of num-nuts keep reinventing themselves, while people like Patreus, and Powell and any host of the brass who are up to their elbows and assholes trying to save the lives of their enlisted men if they f&%k--up get wished to the anonymity of the corn fields.
What an unprincipled hack. Being unable to maintain relevancy and popularity, he is forced to support someone he has been against since as long as he says he knows. Well at least he operates only in print journalism and doesn't appear on TV to espouse his views... oh wait
On another note, the reason why some Neo-Cons can support Obama is because they are exactly that, *neo-cons*. They have liberal economic policies, backwards and primitive social ideas, and a belief that the end justifies the means.
I am not smart enough to know what Mr. Kristol is up to, but I am smart enough to know that it is something...if he truly supported the President he would throw his political clout behind him in the next election. And no matter what happens in the next three and a half years, no one in their right mind believes that will happen.
This whole argument is therefore trivial in my mind.
Thank you.
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