On Dithering

Obama still contemplating Afghanistan strategy, according to the NY Times. I suspect that Obama does not want to increase troop levels at all, and probably wants to begin to end our involvement in Afghanistan. That's what I would do. However, the military-industrial complex seems to be inexorably pushing him in the direction of additional troops.

At any rate, I wanted to point out that one thing that makes me question my own position is that I share it with Joe Biden. Biden has an almost unparalleled history of being epically wrong on foreign policy issues. He was opposed to the first Gulf War, to kick Saddam out of Kuwait. He then supported the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, which obviously was a mistake. After that, he opposed the troop surge, which ultimately worked in Iraq, and advocated partitioning the country into three smaller nations, which would have been a disaster.

So really, the safe bet here may be to find out what Biden wants to do, and just do the opposite. He wants to draw down troop levels and focus on al Qaeda only. Maybe we should support McChrystal's plan, then.