Politics

Rightist raptor Tom Donnelly provides a painful chronology of President Obama's deliberations on Afghanistan. I remain an Obama fan, but his handling of this has done more to make me question my support than anything else he has done.

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Here's a guest post by Jennifer Bernal of CNAS, who went to see the Hillary& Bob Show on Monday:

This afternoon, George Washington University hosted a discussion with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. The talk was part of a series of high-profile events organized by the University to get students to engage with members of the government. To complete the celebrity roster, Christiane Amanpour and Frank Sesno moderated the discussion. The event drew hundreds of students to line up for tickets, several of them camping out on the street overnight to make sure they got dibs. Once the office actually opened, said tickets ran out in less than a half hour. (I'd only witnessed such zealous and long-lasting queuing on two past occasions: for sign-ups to the wine-tasting class offered by my college, and for a summer production of Hamlet featuring Jude Law.) 

(Read on)

Several notes have come in from people with first-hand knowledge of the Hill-Odierno relationship. The tone generally is that yes, there is a problem, but not so much between the two men as between their two missions. The American military has a gung-ho attitude and the feeling that they have seen, repeatedly, what happens when the Americans try to rush the transition. The U.S. embassy has the feeling that the military guys are looking too much in their rear-view mirrors and that eventually you have to hand this mess over to the Iraqis, and that it better happen soon because U.S. troop numbers, more or less steady this year, are gonna fall off a cliff next year.

Plus, the military guys keep on rotating to Iraq, while they see the dips do one "hardship tour" and then get a dream assignment in Paris or Rome as their reward, never to come back to the balmy climes of the Tigris. And the alcohol-fueled social life of the embassy leaves the soldiers, who can't drink in Iraq, on the outside looking in.

My feeling: It's six of one, a half dozen of the other. People clash because they represent clashing interests. I think Sanchez and Bremer could have gotten along famously if they had a clearer command relationship. As it happened, no one was in charge, and the missions clashed. I think the same thing may be happening here.

I've also gotten several e-missives from Hill himself, and seen some he launched to others. He certainly does like the word "bullshit." His problem is that his rep with the diplomatic press corps is that the more accurate the story about him, the more he tends to use it.  

KHALID MOHAMMED/AFP/Getty Images

The vibe at the Marine counterinsurgency conference on Wednesday was definitely in favor of giving Gen. McChrystal all the troops he wants. Of course, this was COINpalooza, and McChrystal is asking for more troops so he can implement a troop-intensive COIN strategy. So, yeah, so in this crowd, his request is like asking for a cheap beer in a frat house on Friday night.

No one quite spoke much directly to the issue, which would be "inappropriate" -- Washington's favorite word. But the debate of a COIN approach, with a sustained widespread presence vs. a counterterror approach (that is, in-and-out raiding) was constantly in the background. The third option, simply playing for time while building up Afghan security forces, didn't seem to be treated as a starter.

"If you're taking a raiding approach ... you're really vacating the battlefield," said the ever-quotable Brig. Gen. H.R. McMaster.

One of the most interesting panels was made up of three Marine colonels who commanded battalions in successful counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Not surprisingly, they were the most vocal people all day in support of the McChrystal plan. What you need is a force that simultaneously goes after the enemy and protects the population, they all agreed. But, observed Col. J.D. Alford, "We're a completely enemy-centric force" in Afghanistan. Alford, who commanded the 3rd Battalion of the 6^th Marines in northwest Iraq in 2005, said we need to be much closer to the Afghan security forces, living and working alongside them.

On the McChrystal plan, Alford added, "We've got to do some real math and tell some real truth ... if we are going to do population-centric COIN."

Col. David Furness, who operated near Fallujah in 2006, said, "I think we should get rid of those damn big bases. ... We need to get the hell off them." 

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He speaks much truth:

It's like they're coming in and saying to you, 'I'm going to drive my car off a cliff. Should I or should I not wear a seatbelt?' And you say, 'I don't think you should drive your car off the cliff.' And they say, No, no, that bit's already been decided -- the question is whether to wear a seatbelt.' And you say, 'Well, you might as well wear a seatbelt.' And then they say, 'We've consulted with policy expert Rory Stewart and he says ...'"

(Hat tip to man-about-town Randall Michelson of greater Los Angeles. How come all my best tips come from California? I suspect it is casued by the great new syrahs and other Rhonish wines coming out of the Central Coast. I think with global warming in a few years we'll be talking about the new Rhones coming out of Cornwall and Sussex.) 

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Ms. O'Sullivan, who is a nice person but didn't distinguish herself in her role in the Iraq War, when she was in the Bush White House, has landed a chair professorship at Harvard's Kennedy School. It is named for Jeane Kirkpatrick, but I will think of it as "the Bundy chair," in honor of her true intellectual predecessor.

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Some vets are Princeton have launched a program to teach other vets how to run for office. This is an explicitly non-partisan effort. It looks pretty good, judging only by its website.

Veterans Campaign was initiated by a group of graduate students and influential professors at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Some of the members have military experience, while others have staffed and managed political campaigns. Members hold different ideological and partisan beliefs, but all share the conviction that having more veterans in public office will benefit the United States.

I agree that having vets in office is a good thing. I'd especially like to see some former enlisted run for office. I think the armed services committees of Congress used to benefit enormously from the skeptical questions of former sergeants who had spent time in the mud, and weren't necessarily awed by generals.

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The Iranian election is getting interesting. Last week, Reuters reports, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani of corruption. Now old Rafsanjani comes swinging back, accusing the little guy of "misstatements and fabrications." He has a bunch of clerics from Qom over in his amen corner.

Old Juan Cole has a good roundup of events relating to the election, such as a massive rally against Ahmadinejad in Tehran that wasn't broken up by the police. Among the stories he cites is one carried by the official Iranian news agency in which presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi calls Ahmadinejad a dictator: "I say so because he does not abide by the laws, so why should we not call him a dictator?"  

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