Inevitable: Obama Admin Leaks Plans for Dramatic Scale Back in Afghanistan

This is a PR strategy designed to make him look look like a hawk while calling for a full retreat. As for Biden the so call foreign policy expert, this is the same guy who advocated the partition of Iraq and the admin's point man on the stimulus, in other words an expert in media minds but not in reality.

WASHINGTON — President Obama is exploring alternatives to a major troop increase in Afghanistan, including a plan advocated by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to scale back American forces and focus more on rooting out Al Qaeda there and in Pakistan, officials said Tuesday.............

In looking at other options, aides said, Mr. Obama might just be testing assumptions — and assuring liberals in his own party that he was not rushing into a further expansion of the war — before ultimately agreeing to the anticipated troop request from General McChrystal. But the review suggests the president is having second thoughts about how deeply to engage in an intractable eight-year conflict that is not going well.

Although Mr. Obama has said that a stable Afghanistan is central to the security of the United States, some advisers said he was also wary of becoming trapped in an overseas quagmire. Some Pentagon officials say they worry that he is having what they called “buyer’s remorse” after ordering an extra 21,000 troops there within weeks of taking office before even settling on a strategy.

Mr. Obama met in the Situation Room with his top advisers on Sept. 13 to begin chewing over the problem, said officials involved in the debate. Among those on hand were Mr. Biden; Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates; Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; James L. Jones, the national security adviser; and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

They reached no consensus, so three or four more such meetings are being scheduled. “There are a lot of competing views,” said one official who, like others in this article, requested anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations.

Among the alternatives being presented to Mr. Obama is Mr. Biden’s suggestion to revamp the strategy altogether. Instead of increasing troops, officials said, Mr. Biden proposed scaling back the overall American military presence. Rather than trying to protect the Afghan population from the Taliban, American forces would concentrate on strikes against Qaeda cells, primarily in Pakistan, using special forces, Predator missile attacks and other surgical tactics.

That buyer's remorse line rankles me, if its the case, are worse view of Obama as a total fraud on keeping America safe have been confirmed. As for the abandonment of the AFPAK strategy in favor of the lighter foot, that goes back to flawed assumption of the elites and the left. These guys view the presence of American troops as causing the antagonism. As we learned with the surge, nothing could be further then the troop, the closer the proximity to the locals the stronger the bonds and the less likely the insurgents would gain a foothold. Obama's priority in Afghanistan is limit his domestic political damage, other considerations have now become secondary.