{"id":1565,"date":"2009-10-24T14:15:52","date_gmt":"2009-10-24T18:15:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=1565"},"modified":"2009-10-25T17:19:23","modified_gmt":"2009-10-25T21:19:23","slug":"is-dick-cheney-wearing-a-joe-biden-mask","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/1565\/is-dick-cheney-wearing-a-joe-biden-mask\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Dick Cheney Wearing a Joe Biden Mask?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the growing rift between the Obama Administration and its military advisors, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/world\/asia\/nato-backs-mcchrystal-in-snub-to-biden-plan-1808414.html\" target=\"_blank\">reports are surfacing<\/a> that Vice President Joe Biden is upset with General Stanley McChrystal for making a closed door presentation to NATO defense ministers. In the briefing McChrystal explained his rationale for increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan. Apparently, the defense ministers liked what they heard.<\/p>\n<p>Here was Biden&#8217;s reaction:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Diplomatic sources say NATO endorsement of General McChrystal has led to anger in the Biden camp. They had criticized the commander for promoting his strategy, including a visit to London, while President Barack Obama is still weighing up the options.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In short, Biden thinks the best way to win in Afghanistan is to reduce the number of troops there while\u00a0implementing a counter-terrorism plan that expands the war into neighboring Pakistan, since that is where some members of al-Qaeda are based. McChrystal, on the other hand, wants to introduce 20,000 to 40,000 new troops and pursue a counter-insurgency strategy that would focus on eliminating the security threat inside Afghanistan. And yet, Biden is seen as the White House official most in favor of de-escalating America&#8217;s military involvement in the region.<\/p>\n<p>If Joe Biden was Dick Cheney,\u00a0would\u00a0the Vice President&#8217;s aggressive push to expand the theater of war while reducing the number of ground troops be reported on as a moderate approach?\u00a0 Well, at least the White House can&#8217;t be faulted for ignoring the advice of their military experts and applying\u00a0its own ideological notions of sound war planning&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the growing rift between the Obama Administration and its military advisors, reports are surfacing that Vice President Joe Biden is upset with General Stanley McChrystal for making a closed door presentation to NATO defense ministers. In the briefing McChrystal explained his rationale for increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan. Apparently, the defense ministers [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[138,356,101],"class_list":["post-1565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-afghanistan","tag-dick-cheney","tag-joe-biden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1565"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1576,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565\/revisions\/1576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}