Bush picks Khalizad as ambassador to Afghanistan

[Barrett808]

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush has decided to name his special envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, as ambassador to the country.
If approved by the Senate, Khalilzad would succeed Ambassador Robert Finn, who was the first ambassador to Afghanistan in more than two decades. Adolph Dubs was killed in 1979 in a shootout in Kabul after he was kidnapped by Afghan Muslim extremists while being driven to the U.S. Embassy.

Khalilzad would continue to serve as special envoy, said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

Bush met with Khalilzad Monday morning and was formally nominating him later in the day, McClellan said.

"Zal has done a great job as special envoy and the president appreciates Zal taking on this new role at such an important time as we continue to build upon the progress we are making in Afghanistan," McClellan said.

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http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-09-22-Bush-Afghanistan_x.htm

[kskiska]

1. Has he run out of Texas donors for these positions?

Our ambassador to France doesn't even speak French.

[UpInArms]

2. Zalmay Khalilzad: The Neocons’ Bagman To Baghdad

http://www.wrmea.com/archives/april03/0304012.html

Neo-con Credentials

More importantly, perhaps, Khalilzad’s impeccable credentials make him a natural for membership in the neo-conservatives cabal which is the driving force behind Washington’s Iraq policy. “He has a narrow view of the Middle East and South Asia,” his former associate stressed. “ security to the exclusion of everything else. He tends to look at military solutions as the first, not the last policy option.”

<snip>

His hawkish views most likely were formed at the University of Chicago, where he studied under Wohlstetter. After obtaining his Ph.D. in 1979, Khalilzad taught political science at Columbia University, where he worked with Zbigniew Brzezinsky, the Carter administration’s architect of the policy supporting the Afghan mujahideen resistance to the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. In 1984 Khalilzad accepted a one-year fellowship to join the State Department, where he worked for Paul Wolfowitz, then the director of Policy Planning. His fellowship turned into a full-time position that extended through the Reagan administration.

In the first Bush administration, Khalilzad became assistant deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, again working for Paul Wolfowitz, who by then was the Number 3 man at the Pentagon. In that capacity, Khalilzad rejoined the coterie of policymakers who had successfully pressed the Reagan administration to provide arms to the Afghan mujahideen. During the 1991 Gulf war, Khalilzad caught the notice of then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, who stayed in close touch with him throughout the Clinton administration.

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