The NYT describes the unusual way the President made key decisions regarding Afghanistan in December of 2009 — apparently they were about getting Obamacare passed:

One adviser at the time said Mr. Obama calculated that an open-ended commitment would undermine the rest of his agenda. “Our Afghan policy was focused as much as anything on domestic politics,” the adviser said. “He would not risk losing the moderate to centrist Democrats in the middle of health insurance reform and he viewed that legislation as the make-or-break legislation for his administration.”…

A former adviser to the president, who like others insisted on anonymity in order to discuss the situation candidly, said that Mr. Obama’s relationship with the military was “troubled” and that he “doesn’t have a handle on it.” The relationship will be further tested by year’s end when Mr. Obama evaluates his Afghanistan strategy in advance of his July deadline to begin pulling out.

If the NYT report is accurate, whatever domestic political issues are the administration’s priorities in December 2010 will determine war policy for next year. How reassuring for soldiers and military families.

Obama’s behavior is even more bizarre and disgraceful when it is obvious that the administration should have been focusing in the national jobs emergency instead of the economically ruinous sideshow that became Obamacare. HT: BOTW

This entry was posted on Monday, August 30th, 2010 at 7:38 pm and is filed under business, Democrats, General, Republicans, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.