Obama Administration

James Gordon Meek, a reporter for the New York Daily News, happened to run into President Obama and the First Lady Arlington National Cemetery the other day. His account is well worth reading. Meek was visting the grave of a friend who was killed in Iraq when they began conversing.

Well, we appreciate his service very much," Obama told me.

I then told him I'm a reporter for the Daily News -- but was just there to visit friends.

"Well, James," he said, looking me in the eye, "just because you're a journalist doesn't mean you can't honor your friends here."

I also liked the president's comments yesterday when he stopped off at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska.

Two days ago, we gathered at Fort Hood and we honored 13 Americans taken from us: soldiers and caregivers; mothers and fathers; husbands and wives; sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. We grieved with families who have endured unimaginable loss. And we found inspiration in the wounded, their spirits unbowed, and in those who braved the bullets so that others might live.

Yesterday, we gathered at Arlington National Cemetery to salute proud veterans who served on foreign fields long ago and wounded warriors from today. And as citizens of a grateful nation, we are humbled by such service.

Today, we gather here, at Elmendorf. And we see the same spirit. It's the spirit that I saw in the outstanding airmen and soldiers I met with a few moments ago. It's the spirit that I see in all of you."

It has been quite a week for Obama and the military. Maybe he can pull off this lousy couple of months he has had on the national security front.

Photo: TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images

Everybody makes mistakes, and I think I did earlier today. The thoughtful notes posted in response to my lead item today have persuaded me that I was wrong in my critique of President Obama's speech at Fort Hood. The general theme of the pushback was that this was not the time or place for the kind of speech I would have liked to hear.

I think "JPWREL" said it best:

There is a great deal of unhappiness in this nation over this tragic event and the wars in general. Sensitive to that undercurrent I think Obama threaded the needle just right in carefully reaching out to the hearts of his listeners and at the same time not lowering the gravity of the occasion by reverting to more divisive and mundane political themes."

Got it.

That said, somewhere down the road, I still would like to see the president tackle the issue of "political correctness." For example, I think affirmative action did this country a lot of good, and that diversity and tolerance are great strengths to be cultivated-but that we should not shy away from expelling violent extremists from the ranks of the military.  

Photo:  JIM MCISAAC/Getty Images

I think President Obama missed a major opportunity at Fort Hood on Tuesday. His speech was fine was far as it went -- but that wasn't very far. It felt very conventional, a bit rote and obligational, like Reagan on an off day, doing a state fair stopoff on the way to the Western White House.

What I had hoped for was a passionate, engaged address that tackled political correctness in the same was as did his race speech during the campaign, which I think was his high point during that time. It was a terrific speech that I think moved both him and the country forward. (Look inside the Army, Mr. President, and  you will find "Ashleys" everywhere.)

Didn't happen. This was a treading water speech. "We must pay tribute to their stories?" That feels to me more like the work of a desperate speechwriter than an inspired, transformational president. I dunno, maybe transcendence just requires more time and effort than he has available right now. That's sad, because there are a lot of people in this country for whom the military looms about as large as race.

I really do think Obama still could be a great president, leading us toward "a more perfect union." But not the way he has been going lately. Time is  passing ... Look at this speech. "History is filled with heroes"? That's high school stuff. I can remember when the knock on Obama's speeches was that they were too good.

Photo: TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images

Wow. Here it is November 6 and we still have no idea where the Obama Administration is going on Afghanistan. All I want for Christmas is a decision!

No matter what the president decides, I'll come away worried by his handling of the process. What can you do in 10 weeks than you can't do in four? I don't think he and the people around him understand the costs of the Big Dither of 2009 -- in the trust of Afghans, in the support of Americans, in the confidence of other nations. Spencer Ackerman has just offered up a good, if CNAS-centric, analysis of the state of the debate.

I am still an Obama fan, though less than I was 90 days ago. I am still glad he is president, and I'll take him over Bush any day. Biden may be a wanker, but he isn't Cheney. I just hope Obama gives a great speech explaining his approach and brings along the American people with him.  

Photo: PETE SOUZA/The White House via Getty Images

I think we all tend to criticize too much and praise too little, especially with public officials. So I was impressed today to see proven provider John McCreary, who has forgotten more about intelligence than I will ever know, commend Hillary Clinton for her sharp comments in Pakistan yesterday:

"The US secretary of state questioned Pakistan's commitment to the fight against al-Qaida, saying she found it hard to believe that no-one in the Pakistan government knows where senior figures are hiding.

"I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn't get them if they really wanted to," she told a group of newspaper editors during a meeting in the city of Lahore on Thursday.

Bravo for Secretary Clinton.  Either the Pakistani security services contain senior officers who know where bin Laden is and are lying or they are incompetent and ought to be dismissed. There are no other explanations for Pakistan having become the headquarters for al Qaida and the base area for international Islamic terrorism.

‘Nuff said.

AAMIR QURESHI/AFP/Getty Images

While we're all wanking away waiting for the White House to get off the dime on Afghanistan, some of the smart money stays focused on the real issue: the future of Pakistan. This is the real center of gravity in this mess. What does it profit a man if Pakistan falls apart while Afghanistan is stabilized?

David Rohde's fascinating series on being kidnapped by the Taliban concludes today with his escape. Good to read especially for how the Taliban has evolved in recent years. Or devolved.

Another David, Mr. Ignatius, continues his good reporting out of Pakistan, giving the strategic overview. This guy is so good, he should have his own blog!

I've been struck recently by the relative optimism about Pakistan from Iggie and another smart guy, Peter Bergen.

nicksarebi/flickr

Cheney accuses the Obama administration of dithering on Afghanistan. Okay,  this is enough to make me reconsider everything I've said on the subject. Seriously: I think this guy is about as wrong about American foreign policy as it is possible to be. If he thinks something, that makes me doubt it. Especially when that Karl Rove piles on.  

Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images

I've been reading an unusually candid report on the Afghan war a Canadian military intelligence officer delivered earlier this month in Ottawa. Capt. G.B. Rolston, who served in Kandahar from September 2008 to April of this year, offers several striking observations about the state of the war that go a long way toward explaining why the current approach has been so unproductive. They also speak to the crucial question of why Gen. McChrystal's proposals are about much more than just adding more troops and in fact amount to a call for radical change in the conduct of the war.

• Welcome to an Afghan army brigade headquarters: "The table is [the brigade commander's] CP. His cellphone is their primary comms link. The G2 is off somewhere playing chess with a source, the G3 is driving around the city by himself looking for troops to jack up and the G4 is taking a nap. Most of the rest of the headquarters are off playing cards or chess or watching Bollywood videos on a cellphone."

• The Afghan treatment of detainees is so lax as to verge on bizarre. "The Afghans are, I am happy to report, exceedingly hospitable to detainees. You can see [in an accompanying photo] these men are neither restrained nor blindfolded. This picture was taken shortly after I suggested to the Canadian operations mentor, seated, that he remove the magazines from their weapons."

• Detainee operations around Kandahar actually probably help the Taliban more than they do Afghan government forces. "[I]t's fair to say that every high level insurgent in the province has been through the mill at least once. More problematic to me was the disposition of detainees while in custody, either left to sit around in the intelligence office, or sometimes next to the brigade commander as shown here for extended periods. It's fair to say that any bona fide insurgent in ANA custody probably learned more from the experience than the other way around."

• Afghan National Army military intelligence officers brought an interesting perspective to signals interception: "rather than passively listening [to enemy radio traffic], the ANA had a tendency to get into arguments with insurgents."

• In one remote village, strong Afghan commanders worked hard to deny the area to the Taliban, and also gained a remarkable amount of intelligence. But then the outpost "was closed just after the end of our tour due to its sustainment difficulties, in all likelihood dooming many of the locals who had collaborated with us there." This is the opposite of protecting the population -- it is endangering them.

• He also takes a small whack at the Americans, saying that the safest police stations in southern Afghanistan were those where Canadian mentors lived and slept. "The American PMT approach, which involved teams driving out in the morning to visit, regrettably was far less effective in this regard." 

• After years of training and advising, "we were still very much at year zero." (Are you listening, Senator Levin?) The Afghan forces he knew couldn't control a district, he said. "And that's a big problem, because the whole definition of victory in a counter-insurgency, as defined in FM 3-24 and elsewhere, is getting the battle to the point where indigenous forces can take over, and you can leave. ... All [the enemy] has to do is deny you that indigenous force development, by making things so kinetic that you can't focus on mentoring."

• Under the way we currently operate, he says, most allied units think that dealing with Afghans is someone else's job. "Mentors in effect become the excuse for Western soldiers to avoid contact with Afghan soldiers."    

• That last issue, the failure of mentoring, leads to his strong endorsement of Gen. McChrystal's recommendations for a radical new approach to the war. The most significant aspect of the general's plan, he says, is to have Americans and other foreign troops co-located with Afghan forces, living, eating and sleeping alongside them. He advocates giving up mentoring and going instead to this flat-out partnering.

His conclusion: "The key, the absolute key aspect in McChrystal's words is co-location."

SHAH MARAI/AFP/Getty Images