Article on Joe

[gateley]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7203244

[gateley]

1. Here's an excerpt from another article

(It is an article supporting Obama's Afghanistan decision -- thought this part gave a little more info (probably opinion) on Joe's attitude toward it)

“Proof of Concept”:
The most prescient and astute of Johnson’s advisers on Vietnam was Undersecretary of State George Ball, who correctly predicted that the United States would become entrapped in an unwinnable quagmire with no plausible expectation of exit or victory if Westmoreland’s massive escalation proposal was accepted. Ball, tragically, was right. On Afghanistan, Obama’s most incisive counselor may be his vice president, Joe Biden, the former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Biden has emphasized the core counterterrorism mission against al Qaeda and has cast a skeptical eye on the grandiose “population protection” strategy promulgated by General Stanley McChrystal, the Afghan theater commander, who is a passionate proponent of the virtues of comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy. Biden has reportedly urged the president to demand a “proof of concept” in Afghanistan to validate the assumptions upon which the McChrystal counterinsurgency mission is predicated. Biden is said to have called for a two-year window at most to demonstrate the efficacy of the first troop reinforcements dispatched to Afghanistan in the early months of the Obama presidency. It appears that in contrast to the mere lip service Johnson bestowed on Ball, Obama has a more mature respect for the tough, realist critique of Afghan military strategy articulated by Biden.

[Muttocracy]

2. thanks for posting these! nt