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Book says Biden played key Afghan policy role
By Nicole Gaudiano - Gannett Washington Bureau
Posted : Tuesday Aug 3, 2010 19:34:18 EDT

Vice President Biden said he had an “unfair advantage” over others advising
President Obama on Afghanistan war strategy last fall because “I talked
about this with the president more often and more regularly than anybody
else,” according to a new biography of Biden.

“I knew, not just by body language [but] by direct assertion that he agreed
with me on [the] basic fundamentals of the policy,” Biden said in an
interview for the book, “Joe Biden, A life of trial and redemption” by
veteran political reporter and columnist Jules Witcover. “So in that sense,
I went into the debate in the Situation Room for those many hours we
debated, knowing he agreed with me on the strategy.”

True to its title, the book spans the dramatic highs and lows of Biden’s
life and career, drawing from newspaper stories and interviews with Biden
and Obama, and with confidants and family members of Biden. The book,
published by William Morrow, goes on sale Oct. 19.

Biden summarized his role in the Afghanistan debate for the book after Obama
decided to authorize sending 30,000 more troops to the country, setting July
2011 as the date to begin their withdrawal.

The book quotes Biden saying he and the president agreed that “we were not
in Afghanistan for nation-building,” and that “the fundamental reason for us
being there was al-Qaida.” Biden said securing the Afghan government also
would keep Pakistan from disintegrating and radicals from gaining control of
nuclear weapons.

Biden recalled that at one meeting, he asked national security officials,
“‘If there was no al-Qaida and Pakistan was stable, would you be making
recommendations to put tens of thousands of troops and sending hundreds of
billions of dollars to beat the Taliban?’ And the answer with several of the
members was ‘yes.’ Mine was emphatically ‘no.’ ”

Biden said some administration officials believed Afghanistan was key to
“stabilizing everything from Iran to the subcontinent.”

“I disagreed with that. The president disagrees with that,” Biden says in
the book. “So ... I always argued that the number of troops is less
important than the strategy.”

Some publications have portrayed internal administration discussions on the
war as a clash between Biden’s views and those of retired Army Gen. Stanley
McChrystal, with Biden arguing for a counterterrorism strategy against
al-Qaida, and McChrystal pressing for a troop increase to fight insurgents.

Biden said he sent many memos to Obama urging him to limit the number of
troops and set a date to begin drawing down troop levels. He said the memos
also noted that it wasn’t necessary to defeat the Taliban and that
al-Qaida’s return to Afghanistan was highly unlikely.

“Those principals are principals that the president bought and agreed with,”
he said, according to the book.

Witcover notes that the al-Qaida threat and Pakistan remained top
administration concerns, as Biden had urged. Asked whether some critics
might conclude that Biden “lost” on the issue of the troop surge and its
size, Obama told Witcover no one involved in the discussions would say that.

“Joe was enormously helpful in guiding those discussions,” Witcover quotes
Obama saying. “The decision that ultimately emerged was a synthesis of some
of the advice that he gave me,” along with advice from Defense Secretary
Robert Gates and top generals.

Tony Blinken, Biden’s chief foreign policy adviser, told Witcover that Obama
wanted someone to “question every premise and assumption” brought to the
table and that Biden “was probably the most insistent voice” in that
respect.

For instance, Biden questioned why the administration would spend 30 times
more on Afghanistan than on nuclear-armed Pakistan, when most al-Qaida
operatives moved to Pakistan after the 2001 terrorist attacks, Witcover
writes.

Obama “strongly encouraged” Biden’s role, according to Blinken.

“It also gave the president space to kind of sit back and have the vice
president do some of the hard and pointed questioning, and the president
could not show his own hand,” Blinken said, according to the book.


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Eric D. Schwerin
Rosemont Seneca Partners
(202) 333-1880
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.co