In emails, Hillary's outside advisers pushed hawkish Afghan line

[Little Tich]

Source: Yahoo! News / Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In the fall of 2009, as U.S. President Barack Obama conducted a long, divisive review of whether to pour more U.S. troops into Afghanistan, an influential group of advisors were quietly pushing a hawkish line.

The advisors didn't work for Obama's White House, however. They were veterans of President Bill Clinton's administration and they peppered Obama's secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, with messages urging a robust counter-insurgency effort in Afghanistan and a tougher U.S. stance toward Pakistan, according to emails released by the State Department late on Tuesday.

The emails reveal how, even as Obama ran a highly formalized Afghan policy review of near-endless meetings and position papers, Hillary Clinton was receptive to outsiders' sometimes off-the-cuff views delivered through back-channels.

How much they influenced Clinton, who was also getting plenty of advice on Afghanistan and Pakistan from officials at her State Department, remains unclear. But Clinton eventually threw her support behind a troop "surge" and there is some evidence the external advisors formed part of her thinking.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/emails-hillarys-outside-advisers-pushed-hawkish-afghan-line-221712235.html

[msongs]

1. OMG HRC read newspapers, magazines, and watched videos... nt

[murielm99]

2. All cabinet members and Presidents

listen to back channel advisors and informants. There may be some evidence that they even help form part of those people's thinking.

OMG! Hillary listened to many points of view. Crucify her!

[hopemountain]

3. another example of

yahoonews msm propaganda.

[silenttigersong]

5. How is this propaganda

What is formerSos Clinton deny this is her email?There are some things that news medias know not to do .Even if they are main stream,I think it is a foriegn policy issue hawkish is the key word.Ridiculasly enough do you know any military that is dove like?I suppose it is a tactic for hearts and minds.This only relevent to Historians.

[karynnj]

4. there is really nothing new here other than specifics

Of advisers and advise. We publicly saw obama's review and anyone could watch a series of 6 or so hearings Kerry had at the time. On the SFRC Lugar spoke publicly of HRC refusing to appear or have any State Department speak to the committee.

We know what the outlines of most positions were. Biden wanted to have a policy that decreased, rather than increased US troops. His was totally a counter terrorism approach.

From the Hastings Rolling Stone article, it was clear that HRC was for a bigger surge as proposed by McCrystal and backed by Gates. Now we know that people she trusted went from Penn, who few of us like, trust and who has no real diplomatic or military experience to Clark
, who is respected by most here and who has expertise. In addition, HRC was not alone in the President's national security council.

We also know what Kerry's conclusions were because he gave a speech after all the hearings. A dominant concern was that though Americans have the power to win huge areas back, without the Afghanis having the military ability to then hold the area themselves AND having good enough government to make the area stable, our effort will ultimately be for naught.

Obama as president, had the responsibility and power to implement his choice - a smaller version of the military proposal.

Ultimately, the issue is less who each listened to - and everyone listened to many people, but the decision they came to. Only one path is choosen, making it hard to know what the impact of the others would have been.

Not to mention, this is not a multiple choice test where there is a right answer. In many cases here, the choice is for the least bad. Here EVERY choice may have ultimately looked very wrong a few years later.

While it is dangerous to assume what happened elsewhere, there are possible analogues. For the even bigger surge, there was the Iraq surge, that did as predicted stop the fighting in Iraq while we stayed, but ultimately led where we are now. For just counter terrorism, Yemen is not working well. As to the diplomacy/push for Afghan leadership, that is what Kerry's recent brokering of the Afghan election through restructuring the government OR even the way we are trying to deal with ISIS.

The main new problem I have here is her positive support of the Penn memo. The advise seems to concentrate totally on how things play politically. In her then position, it should not have been all politics. Beyond that, it confirms what HRC wrote in her book - had she been the decision maker, she would have been more hawkish.