While the cover story in today’s NYT Magazine about HRC’s hawkishness has already been diaried here, a key aspect of that story hasn’t been addressed in detail yet:
Jack Keane is one of the intellectual architects of the Iraq surge; he is also perhaps the greatest single influence on the way Hillary Clinton thinks about military issues. A bear of a man with a jowly, careworn face and Brylcreem-slicked hair, Keane exudes the supreme self-confidence you would expect of a retired four-star general. He speaks with a trace of a New York accent that gives his pronouncements a rat-a-tat urgency. He is also a well-compensated member of the military-industrial complex, sitting on the board of General Dynamics and serving as a strategic adviser to Academi, the private-security contractor once known as Blackwater. And he is the chairman of an aptly named think tank, the Institute for the Study of War. Though he is one of a parade of cable-TV generals, Keane is the resident hawk on Fox News, where he appears regularly to call for the United States to use greater military force in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. He doesn’t shrink from putting boots on the ground and has little use for civilian leaders, like Obama, who do.
Keane first got to know Clinton in the fall of 2001, when she was a freshman senator and he was the Army’s second in command, with a distinguished combat and command record in Vietnam, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo. He had expected her to be intelligent, hard-working and politically astute, but he was not prepared for the respect she showed for the Army as an institution, or her sympathy for the sacrifices made by soldiers and their families. Keane was confident he could smell a phony politician a mile away, and he didn’t get that whiff from her.
“I read people; that’s one of my strengths,” he told me. “It’s not that I can’t be fooled, but I’m not fooled often.”
Clinton took an instant liking to Keane, too. “She loves that Irish gruff thing,” says one of her Senate aides, Kris Balderston, who was in the room that day.
There is a link to a Fox News page about Keane in that excerpt. In that link, Keane publicly blasted President Obama’s approach to combating ISIS:
Gen. Keane (Ret.) joined “Fox and Friends” this morning to explain what his plan would be to defeat the terrorist group, starting with raising the number of U.S. forces in Syria from roughly 3,000 to about 10,000.
“We have got to triple down on the number of advisors, trainers, air controllers to help these local forces,” he told Steve Doocy.
“We have to unleash, once and for all, a devastating, unrelenting air campaign. And we have not had that to date.”
In another Fox interview, Keane asserted that the president has a “basic mistrust of the military”:
"From the very beginning in 2009, the emphasis has been withdrawing troops from war. It's never been a discussion about winning wars," said Keane, adding that this is just the latest example of the president going against the advice of military commanders.
He said in 2009, generals recommended more than 20,000 troops stay in Iraq, but the president went ahead with a total withdrawal plan. Keane said Obama's refusals to accept force level recommendations are "unprecedented."
"There's always been a basic mistrust of the military and this sort of of flippant attitude that the military is always gonna want more than what they need," said Keane.
Keane has called the president’s views on Gitmo being a terrorist recruiting tool a myth:
"Are we just going to walk away from our responsibilities to detain people who are actual terrorists?" Keane asked. "That's irresponsibility. The facts have changed. That is really the issue here."
He added it's a "myth" that terrorists use the detention center as a propaganda tool, saying that may have been true at one time, but it's simply not the issue we're facing today.
Keane believes that the president has continually limited our military options:
Keane believes these measures on the ground are insufficient, pointing to military leaders who are urging the president to "strengthen this weak hand on the ground."
He called out Obama for repeatedly, since 2009, rejecting "force level plans" from his generals.
"Every time he has limited our military options to be able to accomplish the mission," said Keane.
In all honesty, until I read the article in today’s NYT print edition, I had never heard of Jack Keane. I suspect that many, if not most, Kossacks have never heard of him either. It behooves us all to learn more about him and exactly which views the virtually certain Dem nominee shares w/ him. It might also be nice to know what role he might play during a HRC presidency.
It’s also interesting to note that the NYT article lists Robert Gates, Stanley McChrystal, and David Petraeus as 3 other key advisers to HRC. I’ve never perceived that any of them were terribly popular here. When I eagerly joined this site many years ago, the fact that its views stood in stark opposition to those of the likes of Keane, McChyrstal, and Petraeus was a major reason why I did so.
I hope that people know what they’re buying into on matters military.