A not-yet-released Rolling Stone magazine profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, quotes him and anonymous aides expressing anger, disrespect and derision at various members of the Obama administration, including Vice President Biden, Amb. Richard Holbrooke and Amb. Karl Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador to the More…
It’s time for a post-White House press conference listicle.
1. Unity, Stand Together as One. The priority message that “I will take back with me to the Afghan people,” in President Hamid Karzai’s words, was the “strong, steady, long-term relationship with America.” Whatever turbulence exists in the relationship between Washington More…
At the White House this afternoon, Presidents Barack Obama and Hamid Karzai committed themselves to a “long-term partnership,” in Obama’s words, “that is not simply defined by our military presence.” Both expressed confidence in the ultimate success of a war in its More…
The New York Times has a good overview of the tone of this week’s Washington visit by Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai: an end to nearly 18 months of very public pressure, doubts and the occasional insult, and the beginning of an embrace. Why?
“Two things are happening,” said Richard Fontaine,
Not a whole lot of news came out of Gen. Stanley McChrystal and Amb. Karl Eikenberry’s White House news conference this afternoon. McChrystal patiently explained that the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban are “distinct but not completely unrelated.” Eikenberry used the adjective “successful” as often as humanly possible. McChrystal, the commander More…
I was on a plane returning from Guantanamo Bay on Friday while the White House held a conference call about Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s visit to Washington, which formally begins tomorrow at the State Department. Here’s how Lt. Gen. Doug Lute, the White House’s Afghanistan-Pakistan coordinator, described the visit’s primary More…
It’s a small gesture, but during a press briefing yesterday on coordinating NATO civilian-military planning with Afghan efforts, Amb. Richard Holbrooke, the administration’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, made sure to single out the country’s increasingly volatile president for conspicuous praise:
Continuing with the newest Afghanistan metric, President Hamid Karzai’s whining has intensified, this time to the point where he follows up an attempt to walk back Thursday’s anti-western rant with a statement to a group of parliamentarians declaring that he’ll join the Taliban if he’s forced to be More…
Still no confirmation of The Christian Science Monitor’s major story about the Pakistanis arresting half of the Taliban’s senior leadership. But The New York Times has a great piece this morning about the restored closeness of the CIA and its Pakistani counterpart, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency. That close-but-uneasy More…
Whatever’s happening with the Baradar capture, President Obama convenes his national security team today for what I think is the first all-hands meeting on Afghanistan and Pakistan since the December West Point speech. The (very long) guest list:
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