Bob Woodward: Obama's Wars

Lyndon B. Johnson, 

South Vietnam, 1966

In December 2009, Michael Lindenberger wrote “Obama's Afghanistan decision evokes LBJ's 1965 order on Vietnam buildup” for The Dallas Morning News. In 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson took ownership of a war he, like Obama, had inherited. Gen. William Westmoreland wanted more troops in Vietnam, and after a protracted debate within the White House, Johnson sent them. Over the next three years, he would send hundreds of thousands more and launch a carpet-bombing campaign against North Vietnam. Johnson's presidency – and many argue, Johnson himself – were destroyed long before America could finally, 10 years later, quit Vietnam. Obama's decision to send 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan has reawakened those memories of Vietnam's early days, and brought unsettling comparisons from an array of historians who have spent their careers studying Johnson. "I'll tell you, the more that I stayed awake last night thinking of this thing, the more I think of it, I don't know – it looks like to me we're getting into another Korea," Johnson said in 1964 during a tape-recorded conversation with national security adviser McGeorge Bundy. "It just worries the hell out of me. I don't see what we can ever hope to get out of it, once we're committed." McGovern, who campaigned hard for Johnson, said he had expected Johnson to pull back after gaining the presidency in his own right in 1964.

“I think this is a dreadful mistake on President Obama's part. It makes me sad. I am for him. I worked for him, and I still think he is a brilliant man. But it looks to me like Vietnam all over again.”

- Senator George McGovern, 2009

In September 2010, Peter Baker wrote “Woodward Book Says Afghanistan Divided White House” for The New York Times. Some of the critical players in President Obama’s national security team doubt his strategy in Afghanistan will succeed and have spent much of the last 20 months quarreling with one another over policy, personalities and turf, according to the new Bob Woodward book. The book, “Obama's Wars,” by the journalist Bob Woodward, depicts an administration deeply torn over the war in Afghanistan even as the president agreed to triple troop levels there amid suspicion that he was being boxed in by the military. Mr. Obama’s top White House adviser on Afghanistan and his special envoy for the region are described as believing the strategy will not work.

“I have to say that. I can’t let this be a war without end, and I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.”

- President Barack Obama to Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, when asked about whether or not his deadline to withdraw was “firm”

“This needs to be a plan about how we're going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan. Everything we're doing has to be focused on how we're going to get to the point where we can reduce our footprint. It's in our national security interest. There cannot be any wiggle room.”

- Barack Obama, telling White House aides as he laid out his reasons for adding 30,000 troops in a short-term escalation

In September 2010, Steve Luxenberg wrote “Bob Woodward book details Obama battles with advisers over exit plan for Afghan war” for the Washington Post. President Obama urgently looked for a way out of the war in Afghanistan last year, repeatedly pressing his top military advisers for an exit plan that they never gave him, according to secret meeting notes and documents cited in a new book by journalist Bob Woodward. Frustrated with his military commanders for consistently offering only options that required significantly more troops, Obama finally crafted his own strategy, dictating a classified six-page "terms sheet" that sought to limit U.S. involvement, Woodward reports in "Obama's Wars," to be released on Monday. According to Woodward's meeting-by-meeting, memo-by-memo account of the 2009 Afghan strategy review, the president avoided talk of victory as he described his objectives.

“It got to the point in the spring, after a top-secret update to the president in the Situation Room at the White House, the president left the meeting and told his aides: What makes us think that given the description of the problem, that we're going to design a solution to this?”

- Bob Woodward, author of Obama's Wars

Eric Alterman On Arizona And Obama from WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show by listenerservices@wnyc.org (WNYC, New York Public Radio)

Eric Alterman, columnist for The Nation, and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, is the author of Kabuki Democracy: The System vs. Barack Obama. He discusses the new political landscape in the light of the Tucson shooting, and next moves for the Obama administration. Listen to the podcast.

Bill O'Reilly: Pinheads and Patriots: Where You Stand in the Age of Obama

Pinheads and Patriots: Where You Stand in the Age of Obama is a political commentary by American political commentator Bill O'Reilly, published in 2010. It was published on September 14, 2010. In his this his ninth book, Bill O'Reilly prompts further debate with President Barack Obama and the American people on the current state of the union. Bill offers a blunt political commentary, and offers some introspection, looking back at his own actions and those of past Americans who, he believes, have inspired a code of conduct for modern times. Source: Wikipedia. Tunku Varadarajan at The Daily Beast said this about the book: Bill O’Reilly is a liar. He’s also a total pinhead, to pluck a word from his newest book, which bears the glib and gassy title Pinheads and Patriots. On page 74 he writes, “My ‘social networking’ is done in person. I don’t twitter. Or tweet, or whatever they call it. Also, I don’t chat online, use an iPod, or rely on text messaging. I refuse to do these things because they do not help me.” Oh, really, O’Reilly? So what, then, is @oreillyfactor, a Twitter address “verified” as belonging to “Bill O’Reilly”? Dude, don’t you think anyone with the slightest animus against you—and there are millions who believe you’re the Devil’s spawn—would check this particular assertion against the facts?

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Excerpt:

HEY, YOU! YOU, THE AMERICAN! You who believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This book is about you. No spin.

In this age of Obama, all that you take for granted is changing, yet many Americans have no clue. So I've decided to fix that. After reading the following pages, you will know precisely what's going on in the United States. Then you can plan exactly how to deal with the massive shift in the way our country is being run. Trust me, you need to know what is really happening so that you can make effective decisions for yourself.

These changes are not all bad, but they're not all good, either. Many will hurt you and your family. Most media people and politicians won't tell you that because they don't care about you. But I do.

Why? It's very simple: you guys have made me rich and famous. I worked hard to position myself to succeed, but you made it happen.

Without you watching me on TV and reading my books, I would be just another energetic bloviator -- perhaps teaching school in Miami or reporting the news in Dallas. I appreciate the fact that millions of you have contributed to my success, so now it's payback time: I will vividly chronicle the changes occurring in an America that your great-grandparents would never recognize today, because knowing the facts is how you can preserve the things you love about this country most -- the things they loved, too.

As you must know by now, it has been a great adventure for me to write five consecutive bestselling nonfiction books over the years, and again, I'm grateful that you were there right along with me on those adventures.

Find the rest of that excerpt here, at ABC News.

Khodorkovsky's Trial from WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show by listenerservices@wnyc.org (WNYC, New York Public Radio)

David Remnick, New Yorker editor and the author of The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, discusses the trial of jailed Russian businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once the country's richest man, and talks about the notion of an independent judiciary in Russia.

Download that podcast here.

"Favorite Books of 2010: Mara Liasson Suggests Actually 'Reading Obama'" from NPR's Monkey See by MARA LIASSON "+Democracy"

I cover the White House and the president, and I often wonder if there is such a thing as "Obamaism." This book offers one definition. Kloppenberg is the chairman of the history department at Harvard; he's written books about liberalism and social democracy, and he places Obama squarely in that progressive intellectual stream. Kloppenberg offers an answer to one of the great ironies about reactions to Obama: how the same man can be vilified as a socialist and derided as a sellout to Wall Street. According to Kloppenberg, Obama's writings and speeches show that he is an adherent of philosophical pragmatism, a home-grown American philosophy developed at the end of the 19th century by William James and John Dewey. Philosophical pragmatists are anti-absolutists. They believe that compromise, public debate and civility are the building blocks of true democracy. Kloppenberg believes Obama's cerebral caution and his nuanced understanding of both sides of a debate are not personality traits or signs of weakness; they are a philosophical choice.

Read the blog post here. But of all the blog posts and plugs for the book at NPR, the BBC and the like, the most substantive of them, must be this post out of the quarterly, "Democracy" ("a journal of ideas"), which we'll quote at length here:

One of Kloppenberg’s most important claims is that Obama embodies the spirit of pragmatism–not the colloquial pragmatism that is more or less the same thing as practicality, but the philosophical pragmatism that emerged largely from William James and John Dewey and continued to flourish through the work of Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, and others. Kloppenberg provides an excellent summary of the pragmatic tradition–a tradition rooted in the belief that there are no eternal truths, that all ideas and convictions must meet the test of usefulness. (Or, as James put it, ideas have to “work.”) Josiah Royce, James’s Harvard colleague and friend, argued that behind all moral claims there must be some “absolute truth” or “absolute knowledge.” Without such absolutes, he (and many others) believed, individuals would have nothing on which to build a moral life. But the pragmatists insisted that every idea has to confront the test of relevance to its time and circumstances. There could be no easy recourse to an absolute truth, either from religion or ancient texts or even from contemporary philosophy. People and nations must live with the knowledge that even their deepest beliefs can be challenged and, if necessary, rejected.

What is the evidence that Obama shares that view? His years at Harvard Law School drew him into the pragmatic ideas that dominated much of the faculty, and so there is little doubt that he knew a great deal about the tradition of pragmatism. But despite Kloppenberg’s claim, it is not entirely clear that he wholly embraced it. In The Audacity of Hope, a book that was designed for his presidential campaign but that also contains much of what we know about his opinions and convictions, Obama makes clear that he has an interest in pragmatism, but he is not wholly committed to it. “It has not always been the pragmatist, the voice of reason, or the force of compromise, that has created the conditions for liberty,” he writes. “The hard, cold facts remind me that it was unbending idealists like William Lloyd Garrison . . . Denmark Vesey . . . Frederick Douglass . . . Harriet Tubman . . . who recognized that power would concede nothing without a fight.”

The best argument for Obama as a pragmatist is his well-known preference for “deliberative democracy,” which he describes as a politics “in which all citizens are required to engage in a process of testing their ideas against an external reality, persuading others of their point of view, and building shifting alliances of consent.” Kloppenberg sees Obama as a person who is prone to “building support slowly, gradually, through compromise and painstaking consensus building . . . . It is a gamble he may lose. But it is not a sign of weakness.” Perhaps not. But the last two years suggest that the kind of slow, deliberate consensus-building that Obama seems to prefer is not consistent with the character and needs of national politics and is certainly not consistent with the political world he has inherited–as exhibited by the obdurate and virtually unanimous opposition of the Republican caucus to almost everything he proposes. It may be that no president could be more effective than Obama has been in this political climate. The climate of crisis that he inherited would make it difficult for any leader. But that is all the more reason for him to rebut energetically the powerful opposition that is attempting to derail him. His quasi-pragmatic coolness has not so far been helpful to him or to the nation.

If you're serious about "actually reading Obama," then it'd behoove you to check the full article out, here. See also: Pragmatism, Pragmatism: A Reader, Pragmatism and Other Writings (Penguin Classics), Pragmatism, A Companion to Pragmatism (Blackwell Companions to Philosophy)

The Daily Show - October 27, 2010 - Barack Obama

Barack Obama Pt. 1 Episode #15136 Barack Obama believes a lot has been accomplished over the last 18 months in very difficult circumstances. (06:49) Tags: Barack Obama, interviews, economy, health, Midterm Teapartyganza, insurance, reform, Democrats, midterm elections, Indecision 2010, Indecision, on location, Washington DC, intro, TDS Midterm Election Coverage. Aired: 10/27/10. Viewed: 885,931

See also: Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (Vintage), Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

30 Issues: Arianna Huffington & Cornel West on Obama and His Base from WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show by listenerservices@wnyc.org (WNYC, New York Public Radio)

Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post.com and the author of Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream, discusses whether or not President Obama has betrayed his base. Then, later in the show, Dr. Cornel West, University Professor in the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University; co-host of Smiley & West; and author of Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, A Memoir, weighs in on the topic. Jami Floyd, broadcast journalist, legal analyst for cable and network news, and blogger at It's A Free Country, chimes in with her post on whether Obama abandoned his base.

Listen to the podcast here.

The Thursday, October 21, 2010 Charlie Rose Conversation with Dana Milbank

CHARLIE ROSE: Dana Milbank is here. He is a veteran political
reporter and columnist for "The Washington Post." He is also the author of
a new book on Glenn Beck called "Tears of a Clown -- Glenn Beck and the Tea
Bagging of America."

Over the past few years Beck, a well-known cable television host, has
become a leader in the modern conservative movement. In August he hosted
the restoring honor rally in Washington D.C. which attracted hundreds of
thousands of attendees. I’m pleased to have Dana Milbank back on this
program. Welcome.

Dana Milbank believes that Beck is dangerous. See the full interview here. See also: Homo Politicus: The Strange and Scary Tribes that Run Our Government, Smashmouth: Two Years in the Gutter with Al Gore and George W. Bush, O is For Obama: An Irreverent A-to-Z Guide to Washington and Beltway Politics

Charlie Rose's Wednesday, October 20, 2010 conversation with Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives

CHARLIE ROSE: Nancy Pelosi is here. She is the speaker of the House
of Representatives. The Democrats face an uphill battle in the upcoming
midterm elections. The struggling economy continues to be one of the more
important issues for voters and has made 2010 a very tough time.

Republicans, increasingly confident that they can take back the House,
which would imperil Speaker Pelosi’s position. Democrats are cautiously
optimistic they can retain control of the Senate but there are very close
races in very interesting places. GOP candidates are also ahead in the
gubernatorial races. Several factors, including the independent vote,
turnout, and money will shape the outcome.

The results could profoundly impact the legislative agenda and
political map of the country. I’m pleased to have Nancy Pelosi back at
this table. Welcome.

Read the full transcript here. View the full interview here. See also: Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the New American Politics, Friends of God: A Road Trip with Alexandra Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi Prank Gag Toilet Paper

The Colbert Report - October 12, 2010 - Brendan Steinhauser

October 12, 2010 - Brendan Steinhauser Views: 149,166 Aired: 10/12/10 Episode 06131 Schools find a new way to raise money, and M. Night Shyamalan isn't really here.

See: http://www.colbertnation.com/full-episodes/tue-october-12-2010-brendan-steinhauser. See also: THE CONSERVATIVE REVOLUTION: HOW TO WIN THE BATTLE FOR COLLEGE CAMPUSES

In Full: State of the Union from rolodexter's YouTube Activity

Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections,” Obama said. “Well I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that’s why I’m urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong. - President Obama.

He's right. We're seeing no names in the Midwest throwing together multi million dollar campaigns, without breaking a sweat, raising those funds. How long is it going to take, until we start to get entities like The Death Star and Skywalker America donating millions to other no names?

So, if anything, uncertainties about how foreign-owned U.S. subsidiaries would be treated only further muddies the question. Based on our reading of the court's opinion and interviews with campaign law experts, we find that Obama has overstated the ruling's immediate impact on foreign companies' ability to spend unlimited money in U.S. political campaigns. While such an outcome may be possible, the majority opinion specifically said it wasn't addressing that point, and only further litigation would settle the matter once and for all. So we find Obama's claim to be Barely True. - politifact.com

Really, "barely true?"

Faking It from NYT Freakonomics Radio by freakonomics.podcast@gmail.com (Co-produced by American Public Media’s Marketplace® and WNYC.)

It’s not only our politicians who fake it. William Ian Miller, a law professor at the University of Michigan, admits that his own anxieties about teaching law led him to write the book Faking It. (He’s really a medieval historian.) This podcast features people who fake their religion, their political views – even their desire to have kids. That might sound terrible, but you have to ask: could society survive without lies like these?

Read the full NYT Freakonomics Radio feature here, and listen to their podcast. See also: Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime, The Anatomy of Disgust

"A look back at TARP" from APM's Marketplace

Jonathan Alter is the author of the new political book "The Promise." JONATHAN ALTER: Barack Obama told me in an interview that he knew that it would be toxic politically for him to back the TARP bailouts, but he also knew that it was necessary to prevent a depression. Even the House Republican Leader John Boehner, who now decries TARP, pleaded with his members to vote for it. JOHN BOEHNER: If I didn't think we were on the brink of an economic disaster, it would be the easiest thing in the world to me to say no to this. But I believe the risk in not acting is much higher than the risk in acting. But Congress wasn't swayed, and voted TARP down at first. By the time a package was passed, buying up mortgages would have been too time-consuming. So the government decided to temporarily pump money directly into the banks. And Mark Zandi of Moody's Analytics says that turned out to be a slam-dunk success.

Download the podcast here. See the full APM Marketplace feature story here. See also: The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, Betraying Our Troops: The Destructive Results of Privatizing War, Charlie Rose with Mark Halperin & Jonathan Alter; Robert Altman & Neve Campbell; Orlando Bagwell & Noland Walker (January 16, 2004)

Changes in Advisors and White House Staff from The Takeaway: Early Edition

My friends that work, do business in D.C. are too cool for books like this. But I dig the commercial fiction, Dan Brown flair and how current it is (with notes citing meetings from just a couple of months ago); I'm a little naive, so details about little security features about various Federal buildings (such as "secured rooms" for discussing classified information) are interesting to me.

Freedom Frenzy: A Look at Presidential Reading Lists from National Review Online

If you look at President Obama’s reading list over the years, it has a clear ideological tilt. He has read a host of books by such liberal authors as Thomas Friedman, but precious few books by conservative ones. Bush, on the other hand, often mixed liberal authors, including Kurlansky and even Camus, in with his Natan Sharansky (The Case for Democracy) and Eliot Cohen (Supreme Command). In this, Obama the reader is very much like Obama the politician. According to a story Rep. Eric Cantor (R., Va.) tells in the new book, Young Guns, Obama dismissed conservative ideas by telling Cantor that the election was over and “I won.” Perhaps Obama should reconsider this approach, if not in politics then at least when it comes to his library. Reading conservative authors is a low-cost way to demonstrate outreach to the other side of the aisle in our far-too polarized society. And who knows? It might even serve reading’s original purpose -- he might learn something.

In the vein of combing through really great reviews and articles that are rich in cross references out to other great reads, this quick article hooks with all of the hoopla over Freedom. It's not about that, obviously. There are probably 6 good titles in that article, definitely worth reading.