Obama’s Growing Trust in Biden Is Reflected in His Call on Troops

NYtimes
June 24, 2011
By MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — As President Obama began mulling his next big decision on troop levels in Afghanistan last January, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. quietly flew to Kabul to meet with President Hamid Karzai and tour the battlefield with the top American commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus.

At a military base in Wardak Province, where the Taliban continue to pose a security threat, Mr. Biden listened with bewilderment as an American civilian told him about plans to dig a well in a nearby village. “Why do they need a well?” he asked, according to a person who was there.

Convinced he was seeing mission creep, Mr. Biden came home and pressed the president on a point he had making since the first troop debate in 2009: the United States needed to stop nation-building in Afghanistan. The military, he argued, was going beyond Mr. Obama’s goals of defeating Al Qaeda, preventing the Taliban from toppling the Afghan government and improving security.

In ordering the withdrawal of 30,000 troops by next summer, Mr. Obama finally sided with Mr. Biden. While the decision has drawn criticism from those who say it is a rush for the exits, it shows the growing trust the president has placed in his vice president — an outcome many would not have predicted when Mr. Obama chose the garrulous senator, now 68, as his running mate.

“They began as friendly rivals,” said David Axelrod, a longtime adviser to Mr. Obama, recalling the primary. “But the relationship has been forged in the fires of many tests. There’s a real bond between them.”

The two men often spend several hours a day together when both are in town, in addition to a weekly one-on-one lunch, and officials say Mr. Biden is almost always the last person in the room with the president.

Mr. Biden’s decision not to ask for a dedicated portfolio of issues, as Vice President Al Gore did under President Bill Clinton, prompted skeptics to predict he would lack influence. But Mr. Biden has become the president’s chief troubleshooter, shepherding a stalled arms-reduction treaty with Russia through the Senate, for example. He has also been his point person on issues ranging from Iraq to budget negotiations with Congress, which collapsed this week over disagreements about taxes and spending cuts.

As the budget impasse shows, Mr. Biden’s role has limits. After Republican negotiators pulled out of the talks, party leaders suggested that Mr. Biden could no longer function as Mr. Obama’s proxy. On Friday, the White House announced that the president would join him in discussions with Congressional leaders next week.

While Mr. Biden has overcome his reputation for gaffes and administration officials no longer roll their eyes at his loquaciousness, his public statements still go further than those of his buttoned-down boss.

The vice president declined to be interviewed for this article. But some officials worried that the perception of a Biden victory on the Afghanistan strategy could worsen tensions in an administration that prefers to present a united front.

Both Pentagon and State Department officials had warned that a swift troop reduction could jeopardize gains in stabilizing parts of the country and prevent the military from securing other volatile regions. And the plan has already prompted NATO allies to hasten their own exit.

Moreover, some question the viability of Mr. Biden’s ultimate vision for Afghanistan, in which the United States would leave behind only a force large enough to secure American bases for counterterrorism operations there and in Pakistan.

“Biden is calling for a clear transition to Fortress Kabul,” said Bruce O. Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who led the administration’s initial Afghan review in early 2009. “But that perspective has never gotten any traction with the Pentagon. They view it as an unending mission with no chance of success.”

The last time Mr. Obama deliberated over troop levels, in late 2009, the vice president argued just as vociferously for a minimalist approach. The president, though, sided with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, both of whom favored sending at least 30,000 additional troops.

Mr. Obama, however, attached a deadline of 18 to 24 months, and Mr. Biden paid close watch. “He’s an aggressive enforcer of the president’s goals and vision,” said Tom Donilon, the national security adviser.

While the vice president energetically promoted the administration’s policy, he also privately kept voicing his deep skepticism of attempts to transform Afghanistan, several officials said. During recent debates over the withdrawal timetable, he pushed to bring back the troops at the earliest possible date, next April, according to officials, and countered arguments by Mr. Gates and Mrs. Clinton to leave a large part of the additional troops in place until the end of 2012.

Mr. Biden’s hand was strengthened by other factors, including chronic tensions with the government of President Karzai and the Navy Seal raid that killed Osama bin Laden, which lent support to his argument that the United States could combat Al Qaeda with focused covert operations rather than a major troop deployment.

A devout Catholic, Mr. Biden fingered a rosary ring in the White House Situation Room during the raid. When he tucked it away in his wallet, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, jokingly suggested that might be premature, gesturing to the rosary ring that he had pulled out of his own pocket, according to an aide.

In internal debates, officials said, Mr. Biden has consistently expressed doubts about the public’s appetite for an endless war. “The vice president always does a good job of bringing America into the room,” said David Plouffe, a senior political adviser.

With Americans struggling in a still-weak economy, Congress worried about the huge deficit and the president facing a re-election campaign, Mr. Biden is being tapped to reassure the country that the military commitment is limited.

On Thursday, the White House released a video in which he talked about the need to shift to the home front.

“By winding down these wars and bringing home these troops, we will free up significant resources — resources we can reinvest at home,” he declared.

With 68,000 troops remaining in Afghanistan, even after next year, Mr. Biden dismisses the argument that the United States is rushing for the exits, officials familiar with his thinking said. He also believes that American troops can conduct counterterrorism operations from there “indefinitely.”

Such a calculation is risky. Ron Klain, Mr. Biden’s former chief of staff, recalling the vice president’s recommendation to push for the passage of an arms treaty through a hostile Senate, against the advice of other White House officials, said: “He has this quality where he is willing to take chances.”