Sep

Karl Rove: Biden is Consistently Wrong, Mark Levin: Obama is Pathetic

Karl Rove believe’s President Obama’s hands-off approach to the war in Afghanistan is the wrong approach, especially when it comes to relying on Vice President Joe Biden for counsel.

Mr. Obama’s hands-off approach to the war seems to fit his governing style. Over the past year, he outsourced writing the stimulus package to House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, washed his hands of Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to reinvestigate CIA interrogators, and hasn’t offered a detailed health-care plan.

Mr. Obama’s aloofness on the war will be a problem if the recent airing of Joe Biden’s views on Afghanistan is a tipoff that Mr. Obama will rely on his vice president’s guidance. According to reports in the New York Times and other publications, Mr. Biden supports reducing troop levels in favor of surgical attacks—mostly launched from offshore—and missile strikes against al Qaeda, especially in Pakistan.

Such an approach would almost certainly lose the war. Actionable intelligence—key to defeating an insurgency—would dry up. Tribal chieftains would cut deals with the Taliban and al Qaeda. The Afghan government would probably collapse, and the Afghan people would have little choice but to swing their support to the Taliban. Pakistan would likely come to see us as a fair-weather friend and increasingly resist U.S. attacks against al Qaeda on its soil. American credibility would be shattered. And militant Islamists would gain a victory.

Mr. Biden has a record rare in its consistency and duration of being wrong about big national security questions.

In his first U.S. Senate campaign in 1972, he called for cutting and running from Vietnam. He later voted to cut off funding for South Vietnam and spoke out against the war. After we did withdraw, communist forces conquered South Vietnam as well as Cambodia, where Pol Pot carried out a campaign of genocide.

In the 1980s, Mr. Biden opposed President Ronald Reagan’s national security approach on almost every front, including funding for the Contras in Nicaragua, building missile defenses, and increasing military spending. In the 1990s, apparently willing to cede Kuwait to Saddam Hussein, he voted against the first Gulf War. Over the past decade, Mr. Biden opposed the surge that put us on the path to victory in Iraq. Instead called for a “soft partition” that would have divided Iraq into three countries. …

Rove hopes the president will make a surprise visit to Afghanistan when he visits Denmark. If so, it would be a signal that he has the courage to win the war. We’ll have to see about that.

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As an added bonus – here’s Mark Levin’s take on the subject. He isn’t as polite as Karl Rove, but he hits the nail on the head. (Skip to about 2:20) Here’s the link he posted on his website to the names of every American troop whose life was lost since Obama took office.