Afghanistan Video: Hillary Clinton in Kabul (19 November)
Afghanistan: Obama’s Options (From Cage Fighting to Rugs)
Afghanistan Follow-Up: Civil War in the Obama Administration

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The excellent Rajiv Chandrasekaran has an article in The Washington Post this morning, “A Softer Approach to Karzai”. It’s an effective review of the US-Karzai relationship from the start of the Obama Administration, leading to a “reset” of Washington’s approach: “It’s not sustainable to have a ‘War of the Roses’ relationship here, where…we basically throw things at each other.”

Chandrasekaran is too cautious a journalist to bring out the full significance of that “reset”. It is an acceptance of the manipulation of the Afghan presidential election. It is the posting of a “longtime field officer close to Karzai to be the new [CIA] station chief in Kabul”.

And it is the effective firing of President Obama’s envoy on Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke. After his heated argument with Karzai over the August election, Holbrooke was effectively declared persona non grata by the President and his inner circle. So Holbrooke now will sit in Washington rather than envoy-ing.

So even if US officials tell Chandrasekaran “that Karzai has been an ineffective leader”, don’t let that obscure the rest of the picture. Karzai, the “tactically shrewd tribal chieftain”, out-manoeuvred Obama and his advisors. And now Washington has no choice but to accept the Afghan President.

A Softer Approach to Karzai
Rajiv Chandrasekaran

When a team of senior U.S. officials led by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton entered the presidential palace in Kabul on Wednesday for a dinner meeting, they had little indication of what Afghan President Hamid Karzai planned to discuss, or whether questions about corruption and governance would pitch their host into a foul mood.
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Tags: Hamid Karzai, Hillary Clinton, Obama Administration, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Richard Holbrooke, Slobodan Milosevic, Washington Post

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At the start of the year we closely tracked the political battle between the White House and military commanders, notably General David Petraeus, over the deployment of additional US troops to Afghanistan. This was nominally resolved at the end of March by a “compromise” agreement (even though the military got almost all of the troop request) in which Obama announced a new strategy of military measures supporting non-military measures to build up the country.

The situation was not resolved, either inside Washington or in Afghanistan, and we are back in another cycle of reports, spin, and power moves over another escalation in the US military commitment. One curious absentee, however, is Petraeus, who has not been far from media-shy in the past. Tom Englehardt digs beneath the surface for the story:

How Top Generals May Trap Obama in a Losing War

Front and center in the debate over the Afghan War these days are General Stanley “Stan” McChrystal, Afghan war commander, whose “classified, pre-decisional” and devastating report — almost eight years and at least $220 billion later, the war is a complete disaster — was conveniently, not to say suspiciously, leaked to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post by we-know-not-who at a particularly embarrassing moment for Barack Obama; Admiral Michael “Mike” Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has been increasingly vocal about a “deteriorating” war and the need for more American boots on the ground; and the president himself, who blitzed every TV show in sight last Sunday and Monday for his health reform program, but spent significant time expressing doubts about sending more American troops to Afghanistan. (“I’m not interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan… or sending a message that America is here for the duration.”)

On the other hand, here’s someone you haven’t seen front and center for a while: General David Petraeus.
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Tags: Barack Obama, Bob Woodward, Cecil Rhodes, Central Intelligence Agency, David McKiernan, David Petraeus, David Sanger, Douglas MacArthur, Eric Schmitt, George W Bush, Karen DeYoung, McClatchy News Service, Mike Mullen, Nancy Youssef, NBC News, New York Times, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Raymond Odierno, Robert Gates, Stanley McChrystal, Taliban, The Times of London, Thomas Ricks, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post