VP Joe Biden’s new national security adviser

Vice President Joe Biden’s new national security adviser

Colin Kahl, a former deputy secretary of defense for the Middle East in President Obama’s first administration, was recently named Vice President Joe Biden’s national security adviser and deputy assistant to the president. But, as Lee Smith reports in the Weekly Standard, Kahl is perhaps best known – or would be, if more people realized who was responsible – for deleting the reference to Jerusalem as the eternal, undivided capital of Israel in the Democratic platform during the last presidential campaign.

In advance of the CNAS report’s publication, Kahl wrote an astonishing op-ed in the Washington Post which sought to convince readers that Israel made things much worse than they would have been when it bombed Iraq’s Osirik reactor, and that there would be similar or still more disastrous results should Israel dare to attack Iran’s nuclear weapons plants. Think that’s a mischaracterization? The title of the op-ed is “An Israeli attack against Iran would backfire — just like Israel’s 1981 strike on Iran.” 

Kahl warned in his op-ed that if Israel were to strike it would doom the likelihood of Iran’s cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency. “An Israeli strike would also end any prospect of Iran cooperating with the IAEA, seriously undermining the international community’s ability to detect rebuilding efforts.”  It seems Kahl may be the only one still holding out hope that Iran will ever cooperate with the IAEA regardless of any action by Israel. He also claimed Saddam was nowhere near ready to create nukes, so Israel’s Osirik mission was premature and ill-advised.

Why Joe Biden – someone most Israel supporters used to consider reliably pro-Israel, would pick someone like Kahl is a mystery.

PS.- As many of this administration decisions are…