{"id":8237,"date":"2010-09-29T12:17:09","date_gmt":"2010-09-29T20:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=8237"},"modified":"2010-09-29T12:24:02","modified_gmt":"2010-09-29T20:24:02","slug":"dicking-afghanistan-where-obama-went-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/29\/dicking-afghanistan-where-obama-went-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"Dicking Afghanistan: Where Obama Went Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Washington Post ace Al <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2010\/09\/29\/AR2010092901757.html\">Kamen has an outtake<\/a><\/strong> from Woodward&#8217;s new book that shows how Obama was on the wrong foot on Afghanistan from his first days in office:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;It wasn&#8217;t until well into the Obama presidency,&#8221; Woodward writes, that vet\u00c2\u00aderan diplomat Richard Holbrooke, the special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, &#8220;learned definitively how much the president didn&#8217;t care for him.&#8221; The two had met and chatted briefly on Jan. 22, 2009, when Obama named him to the job. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;&#8216;Mr. President, I want to ask you one favor,&#8217; Holbrooke had said, expressing gratitude for the highly visible assignment. &#8216;Would you do me the great favor of calling me Richard, for my wife&#8217;s sake?'&#8221; Woodward writes. &#8220;&#8230; She disliked the name &#8216;Dick,&#8217; which the president had been using.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Obama referred to Holbrooke as &#8220;Richard&#8221; during the announcement ceremony but, Woodward writes, &#8220;told others he found the request highly unusual and even strange. Holbrooke was horrified when he learned that his request &#8212; which he had repeated to no one &#8212; had been circulated by the president.&#8221; <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This explains why Obama&#8217;s foreign policy wizards were too busy to notice that the Karzai family were some of the biggest rascals in Central Asian history. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Washington Post ace Al Kamen has an outtake from Woodward&#8217;s new book that shows how Obama was on the wrong foot on Afghanistan from his first days in office: &#8220;It wasn&#8217;t until well into the Obama presidency,&#8221; Woodward writes, that vet\u00c2\u00aderan diplomat Richard Holbrooke, the special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, &#8220;learned definitively how much [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-8237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8237"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8239,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8237\/revisions\/8239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8237"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}