The New York Times published a piece on Sunday charting President Obama’s “journey to a shift on Afghanistan,” as the article’s headline reads, and claimed that the president did not consult the generals when deciding on pulling out the “surge” troops and the overall withdrawal plan. “The generals were cut out entirely,” the Times’ David Sanger writes, later adding that Obama ordered the withdrawal after “no debates with the generals.” The article also has a quote from an unnamed adviser:

“I think he hated the idea from the beginning,” one of his advisers said of the surge. “He understood why we needed to try, to knock back the Taliban. But the military was ‘all in,’ as they say, and Obama wasn’t.”

Of course the neocons are now pouncing on the president. “This is breathtaking,” Mitt Romney adviser Max Boot writes, “The commander-in-chief at least has an obligation to solicit [the commanders'] views and take them into careful consideration.” Right-wing Washington Post blogger Jen Rubin piled on today too. Obama “actually doesn’t all that much care if we ‘win’ or not,” said Rubin, who also quoted AEI’s foreign policy leader Danielle Pletka saying Obama “just as hates the word ‘victory.’”

But did President Obama really choose to ignore his top commanders’ advice when making his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan? A spokesperson for House Armed Services Committee chairman Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA), a strong critic of the president on national security issues, told Politico’s Austin Wright that the Times story was most likely “inaccurate”:

“McKeon is reserving judgment,” Claude Chafin, a spokesman for the HASC chairman, tells Morning Defense in an email. “The report is so dramatically at odds with recent communications between the committee, commanders on the ground and senior administration officials that it must be inaccurate.”

A “senior defense official” also told Wright that “[t]he suggestion that the White House and the Department of Defense haven’t consulted closely on the major decisions on Afghanistan over the past three years is simply incorrect.”

Moreover, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan at the time Obama announced his withdrawal plans in June 2011, Gen. David Petraeus, said then that, while he did not recommend the plan that Obama ultimately decided on, he was indeed consulted:

“I provided assessments of risk. I provided recommendations. We discussed all of this again at considerable length. The president then made a decision. … And so that’s how I would layout the process that took place, the very good discussion, this was indeed vigorous. All voices were heard in the situation room. And ultimately the decision has been made. And with a decision made, obviously I support that.”

So no, Obama did not decide to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan without consulting his top military commanders.

Reacting to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s announcement yesterday that U.S.-led international forces would shift from their lead role in combat operations to a primary role of training Afghan forces, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney resorted to distorting the announcement before a Las Vegas crowd. Calling President Obama “misguided and so naive,” Romney said:

Today, his secretary of defense unleashed such a policy. His secretary of defense said that on a day certain, in the middle of 2013, we’re going to pull out our combat troops from Afghanistan… So the Taliban hears it, the Pakistanis hear it, the Afghan leaders hear it. Why in the world do you go to the people that you’re fighting with and tell them the date you’re pulling out your troops?

But Panetta did not announce any troop withdrawals. He said that in in mid-2013 the U.S. and its allies will shift in roles from one of primarily combat to one of primarily training and advising local allies — a move many experts have said is a necessary step toward ending the war. And this plan isn’t necessarily all that new. U.S. commander of international forces in Afghanistan Gen. John Allen laid it out last month. In fact, Panetta even added, amid the same announcement that Romney misstated, that U.S. troops would remain at the ready to fight if needed. “It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to be combat-ready; we will be, because we always have to be in order to defend ourselves,” Panetta said.

Looking back on the run-up to the Iraq war, neoconservatives and their allies in the Bush administration took heavy criticism for engaging in “groupthink” that brooked no dissent. Bogus charges of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programs constituted the most glaringly obvious example of this foible. Now, with Iran in the cross hairs, a prominent neoconservative scholar is falling prey to the same problem.

In a blog post yesterday on Commentary magazine’s website, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) scholar Max Boot goes beyond simply ignoring ideas with which he disagrees, and informs readers that no such credible ideas even exist. Boot’s article, headlined “A Powerful Case for Force Against Iran,” picks up on an article from Foreign Affairs magazine, CFR’s bi-monthly journal.

Boot’s fellow CFR scholar Matthew Kroenig, in an article entitled “Time to Attack Iran: Why a Strike is the Least Bad Option,” wrote that “a military strike intended to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, if managed carefully, could spare the region and the world a very real threat.” Calling the piece a “powerful and sober article in favor of bombing Iran,” Boot writes that Kroenig “knocks down pretty much all of the objections [to bombing] that have been made.” Boot’s approbation should come as no surprise, since he himself has called for war against Iran. But the most shocking part of Boot’s post was his concluding line:

I have yet to see (have I missed it?) an equally detailed and convincing exposition of the anti-bombing side.

There are plenty of examples of good articles laying out the case against war with Iran. Some demonstrate that, while Boot prefers bombing, the multi-lateral U.N. nuclear sanctions shepherded by the Obama administration have actually slowed Iran’s progress. Some give realistic assessments of just what the (limited) benefits of a strike would be. Others give sobering assessments of potential fallout from such a strike. Just yesterday, Dr. Adam B. Lowther, a faculty member at the Air Force’s Air University, wrote a long article against bombing.

But what was most stunning about Boot’s conclusion was that the Foreign Affairs piece in question faced such harsh criticism from a well-known international relations scholar that Kroenig felt the need to respond. Harvard scholar Steven Walt wrote on his blog at Foreign Policy magazine’s website that Kroenig’s piece was “remarkably poor piece of advocacy,” and from there picked it apart for maximizing benefits of a strike and minimizing negative consequences. The devastating critique apparently compelled Kroenig to respond on Foreign Policy, followed by a less-than-satisfied rejoinder from Walt. (Others have weighed in on the spat, too.)

How did Boot miss this exchange over the very article he’s hyping in a top-tier magazine covering his very subject area? Boot’s claim raises the possibility that he willfully ignores counter arguments. But his parenthetical interjection — “have I missed it?” — suggests either he’s incapable of using Google or his reading list simply doesn’t cast a net wide enough to catch articles that don’t fit his ideological predispositions.

The Council on Foreign Relations’ Max Boot is no stranger to calling for increasingly confrontational measures to address Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. But in a column in today’s L.A. Times, Boot doubles down on his calls for war while in the same breath admitting that a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would only delay Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon. He writes:

[A]t this late date, even such tough actions might not stop Iran from going nuclear.

The only credible option for significantly delaying the Iranian nuclear program would be a bombing campaign.

While Boot completely skips an examination of the consequences associated with bombing Iran — including damaging any possibility of deterrence should Iran acquire nuclear weapons and giving pretext for brutal crackdowns on the Green Movement — he’s apparently willing to accept those consequences in exchange for just “delaying” the Iranian nuclear program.

Boot’s column is equally troubling in that it dramatically misrepresents the facts on the ground.

Boot suggests that Iran and al Qaeda are in league, even while admitting that the 9/11 report cleared Iran of any role in the 9/11 attacks. He also claims that while Iran was arming insurgents in Iraq, it “was covertly developing nuclear weapons.” The Nov. 8, report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) draws no such conclusion, leading a senior Obama administration official to observe:

The IAEA does not assert that Iran has resumed a full scale nuclear weapons program nor does it have a program [sic] about how advanced the programs really are.

Neoconservative talking points pushing for war hinge on the well worn argument that backing down from the use of force — as Neville Chamberlain’s attempts to negotiate with Adolf Hitler allegedly proved — will always result in failure. Boot writes:

In retrospect, weakness in the face of aggression is almost impossible to understand — or forgive. Why did the West do so little while the Nazis gathered strength in the 1930s?

In February 2003, Boot used a similar argument, urging President George W. Bush not to be swayed by antiwar protests opposing the imminent war in Iraq. He wrote:

When the demands of protesters have been met, more bloodshed has resulted; when strong leaders have resisted the lure of appeasement, peace has usually broken out.

Boot’s track record would suggest he’s far more interested in war than peace. Aside from his misstatement about intelligence estimates on Iran’s nuclear program, hyping of an Iran-Al Qaeda link and recycling of pre-Iraq War “appeasement” arguments, Boot is right about one thing: Attacking Iran would only delay its nuclear program. And for CFR’s Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies, it seems that’s a good enough reason to live with the consequences that will result.

After the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog released its periodic report yesterday, replete with rich details about possible military dimension of Iran’s nuclear program, conservative hawks — ranging from journalists to think-tankers and even a presidential candidate — stepped up their support for a military strike on the Islamic Republic. While many in Congress are pushing for draconian sanctions on Iran, those not on Capital Hill are pushing a step farther.

Here’s a quick round-up of statements supporting a U.S. or Israeli attack from GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich, former Bush administration U.N. ambassador John Bolton, Wall Street Journal opinion and editorial writer Bret Stephens, and Council on Foreign Relations scholar Max Boot.

STEPHENS: [T]he policy debate… needs to abandon the conceit that there is a third way between allowing Iran’s nuclear drive to proceed effectively unhindered or to use military force to stop it…. A (bad) argument can be made that a nuclear Iran could be contained.

BOOT: Really stopping the Iranian program would require much tougher steps on the part of the U.S.–steps such as a naval blockade to cripple the Iranian economy and/or air strikes to cripple Iran’s military capacity.

GINGRICH: Well, if the Israelis decide as matter of national survival that they have to eliminate the Iranian nuclear capacity, I would strongly support them automatically… I think to ask them to take that risk is unconscionable.

BOLTON: The only alternative now is the potential for a pre-emptive military strike against their military program, either by the United States or Israel. Diplomacy has failed. Sanctions have failed.

Watch clips of Gingrich and Bolton:

It’s worth keeping in mind the right wing has been calling for an attack on Iran absent any evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program and well before the IAEA’s report.

“Iran’s nuclear program has produced much demagoguery and dangerous speculation,” the Atlantic Council’s Barbara Slavin noted yesterday in a Politico op-ed. “Dozens of other countries, however, have conducted nuclear research without becoming nuclear weapons states,” she said, adding, “It’s not too late to dissuade Iran from building and testing a nuclear weapon.”

When news that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had endorsed a 16-month timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, the right wing fell over itself to claim Maliki hadn’t meant what he said. Leading the charge was neoconservative writer Max Boot, who declared Monday that Maliki “is not really trying to push U.S. troops out by mid-2010.” Rather, Boot dismissively claimed, “he is playing politics — Iraqi politics.”

Today, in a Washington Post op-ed, Boot insists that the U.S. shouldn’t listen to Maliki, because his statements were “ambiguous.” Besides, Boot claims, no one in Iraq wants the American forces to leave:

Of course, if the Iraqi government tells us to leave, we will have to leave. But, the prime minister’s ambiguous comments notwithstanding, the Iraqi government is saying no such thing, because most Iraqis realize that the gains of the surge are fragile and could be undone by a too-rapid departure of U.S. forces.

In fact, there was nothing “ambiguous” about Maliki’s statement. Though the U.S. military tried to claim Maliki had been “mistranslated,” a New York Times review of the quotation made it clear Maliki was specifically endorsing the person who “wants to exit in a quicker way.” In fact, on Monday, Iraqi government spokesman Ali Al-Dabbagh stated — in English and on camera — that the government wanted a withdrawal by 2010.

Considering Boot argues that Maliki is “playing politics,” he should recognize that the Iraqi people — along with the govenrment — also favor withdrawal, and have for years:

March 2008: Just four percent of Iraqis said they had “a great deal of confidence” in U.S. occupation forces, compared to 46 percent who said they had no confidence at all. 72 percent strongly or somewhat oppose the presence of Coalition forces in Iraq.

September 2007: Nearly three-quarters of Baghdad residents polled said they would feel safer if U.S. and other foreign forces left Iraq, with 65 percent of those asked favoring an immediate pullout, according to State Department polling. 71 percent wanted the Iraqi government to ask the U.S. to leave within a year.

January 2006: “Asked what they would like the newly elected Iraqi government to ask the US-led forces to do, 70% of Iraqis favor setting a timeline for the withdrawal of US forces.”

Boot’s insistence that neither the Iraqi government nor the Iraqi people really want the U.S. to leave is another example of conservatives claiming to know more about what Iraqis want than Iraqis do. The Corner’s John Derbyshire seemed to sum up this perspective when he wrote yesterday that the U.S. should think about Iraq “with regard only to U.S. interests,” and that if Maliki “doesn’t like that, he can go to hell.”

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