Vice President Biden

Secretary of State Clinton

Secretary of Defense Gates

Ambassador Susan Rice, Permanent U.S. Representative to the United Nations

Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg

Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan

Under Secretary of Defense Michele Flournoy

Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

General James E. Cartwright, USMC, Vice Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff

General David Petraeus, U.S. Central Command

General Stanley McChrystal, U.S. Commander in Afghanistan (via videoconference)

Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan (via videoconference)

Anne Patterson, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan (via videoconference)

General James Jones, National Security Advisor

Tom Donilon, Deputy National Security Advisor

John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security

Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, Special Assistant to the President for Afghanistan and Pakistan

Earlier in the day, Obama will meet separately and privately with Biden and Clinton. Interesting omission in light of questions about how much the increase will cost: Peter Orszag, the director of the Office of Management and Budget.

“It is critical Obama develops a channel to Karzai where hard messages can go both ways,” said Bruce O. Riedel, who helped the administration formulate its initial Afghan policy. “It is time-consuming, but we can’t hope to succeed without a political channel that works.”

Mrs. Clinton “combines the hard-headed strength, the political clout and the human understanding to do it right,” said Mr. Riedel, who is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Poor Richard Holbrooke! First it was Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) who overshadowed the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan by brokering Karzai’s acquiescence to the (ultimately ill-faded) runoff election. And now his boss is doing a job that was supposed to fall under his portfolio. And to think Holbrooke came into office picking off sections of the Iran brief as well.

But the Obama administration doesn’t close a door without opening a window. Here’s the everyone-in-his-or-her-right-place line:

The American ambassador, Karl W. Eikenberry, has a workable relationship with Mr. Karzai, officials said. But the two have also had their ups and downs, and anyway, some American officials say the White House needs an interlocutor at a higher level than an ambassador, or even a special envoy, like Mr. Holbrooke.

But if Eikenberry is the interlocutor for the day-to-day and Clinton is the interlocutor for the biggest crises, then Holbrooke’s interlocutory role is rather less than clear, and now Karzai knows that if he doesn’t like what Holbrooke tells him, he gets a second bite at the apple with Clinton. Perhaps Holbrooke’s more durable role in the administration is to coordinate the interagency team that he’s assembled to get diplomacy, development work, intelligence, communications and finance for Afghanistan and Pakistan all rowing in the same direction. But wait! If Stuart Bowen’s proposal for a new U.S. Office of Contingency Operations goes forward — and a formalized proposal for it is coming very soon — Holbrooke will lose that role as well. So where would that leave Holbrooke, the premiere diplomat of his generation?

And how! Here’s Jake Tapper of ABC:

Eikenberry arguably “knows Afghanistan better than anyone else in the US government,” a senior administration official said. “He’s basically been there non-stop since 2003 in a range of capabilities, at a range of times, and in range of assignments,” having served as United States Security Coordinator for Afghanistan, Chief of the Office of Military Cooperation-Afghanistan and Commander of the Combined Forces Command.

As leader of the civilian diplomatic corps as Ambassador, Eikenberry is “lead civilian Big Dog in this fight,” another official said. “The President really wants his unvarnished opinion.”

That’s one serious endorsement. I suppose a wag could say that Richard Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, is supposed to be the “lead civilian Big Dog,” but whatever. (Holbrooke is curiously going to … Russia, according to Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin.)

But many Afghans, he wrote in his resignation letter, are fighting the United States largely because its troops are there — a growing military presence in villages and valleys where outsiders, including other Afghans, are not welcome and where the corrupt, U.S.-backed national government is rejected. While the Taliban is a malign presence, and Pakistan-based al-Qaeda needs to be confronted, he said, the United States is asking its troops to die in Afghanistan for what is essentially a far-off civil war.

The concern about the U.S. presence fueling the insurgency — not for what the U.S. does, but merely for the fact of its existence — was raised by Defense Secretary Robert Gates in January, but it has not yet seemed to penetrate most discourse about the war. Gates himself backed away from the critique in September, saying that Gen. Stanley McChrystal convinced him that the U.S. military could mitigate the danger by actively providing for the Afghan people’s well-being. And indeed, McChrystal has tacitly paid respect to the critique, saying in his much-derided London address that jobs programs could do much to deprive the Taliban of foot soldiers who fight because their lack of economic alternatives accelerate their antipathy to the U.S. presence. That approach won the support yesterday of Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in his uneasy embrace of a modified version of McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy. But if Hoh is right, then it’s simply too late for that strategy, as the mere presence of the U.S. military will have reached the “tipping point” that Gates warned about in January.

Holbrooke tolT the Post that he shares some of Hoh’s analysis, if not his conclusions. According to the paper, Hoh will meet with Tony Blinken, Vice President Biden’s national security adviser, later this week. And don’t be surprised if Kerry calls him to testify at some point, either.

This post has been updated for clarity.

“On the one hand, it is expected to achieve high impact counterinsurgency and broad-based economic development objectives as quickly as possible, especially in those areas more susceptible to radical Taliban recruitment,” Callison’s memo says. “On the other hand, it is asked to do this by working through national and local government channels and host country contractors and NGOs, and not through U.S. contractors and NGOs, to avoid the overhead charges of the latter and to improve the institutional capacity and legitimacy of government agencies and local institutions.”

“These are all worthy goals,” Callison continues, ”and USAID can achieve them all. However, they are contradictory objectives without a reasonable period for the latter.”

Relatedly, two influential security wonks at the Center for a New American Security say we don’t have to worry so much about Hamid Karzai’s stolen election because we can still work with … local Afghan officials.

Update: Didn’t mean to slight USA Today’s Ken Dilanian, who apparently had the memo first.

Vice President Biden

Secretary of State Clinton

Secretary of Defense Gates

Ambassador Susan Rice, Permanent U.S. Representative to the United Nations (via videoconference)

Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan

Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

General David Petraeus, U.S. Central Command

General Stanley McChrystal, U.S. Commander in Afghanistan (via videoconference)

Admiral Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence

CIA Director Leon Panetta

Karl Eikenberry, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan (via videoconference)

Anne Patterson, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan (via videoconference)

General James Jones, National Security Advisor

Tom Donilon, Deputy National Security Advisor

John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security

Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, Special Assistant to the President for Afghanistan and Pakistan

–

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Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s behind-the-scenes account of the Afghanistan-Pakistan debate within the administration, continuing through the present strategy review, exposes the fissures that quote concealed. It’s a masterful piece, and its central question is whether the Obama administration — indeed, whether President Obama — understood the costs entailed by embracing counterinsurgency. Damaging quote number one:

“It was easy to say, ‘Hey, I support COIN,’ because nobody had done the assessment of what it would really take, and nobody had thought through whether we want to do what it takes,” said one senior civilian administration official who participated in the review, using the shorthand for counterinsurgency.

But there was an assessment. That was the white paper, the result of a weeks-long process chaired by Brookings’ Bruce Riedel and co-chaired by Flournoy and special representative Richard Holbrooke, with contributions from many others, including lead skeptic Tony Blinken, Vice President Biden’s longtime foreign policy adviser. That paper’s embrace of a rather fulsome counterinsurgency strategy — fulsome in the sense of its focus on far more than just military measures, but governance and development and communications and regional attitudes as well — led lots of people to believe that the policy was set. Administration officials, that day and for months after, referred the white paper when questions about the strategy got raised.

Someone who read the white paper was Gen. Stanley McChrystal. That’s why to nearly everyone who asked, he portrayed his approach as his take on what would be required to flesh out Obama’s strategy — which he thought was the white paper. As he told Frontline for a forthcoming documentary, “When I hear the president talk about the commitment to Afghanistan as he did in the spring when he announced more forces, I believe that most Americans probably recognize or share his resolve.” And the feeling that the White House might no longer have that commitment, after placing McChrystal in Afghanistan precisely to design and conduct a counterinsurgency campaign, is why some in uniform have been thrown for a loop by this process. I have heard a great deal of frustration from civilians that they are not sure whether, in their day-to-day work, they are actually executing the president’s strategy, as that strategy may change. Damaging quote number two:

“We were operating under the assumption that when they said COIN, that’s what they meant,” said a senior U.S. military official in Afghanistan, “and they were serious about committing the necessary resources.”

It’s one thing to rethink basic assumptions, and to use setbacks as an opportunity to examine whether the entire enterprise is on a secure intellectual footing. But it’s another to adopt that footing without thinking through its implications — while assuring everyone that you had.

Vice President Biden

Secretary of State Clinton

Secretary of Defense Gates

Ambassador Susan Rice, Permanent US Representative to the United Nations

Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan

Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

General David Petraeus, U.S. Central Command

General Stanley McChrystal, U.S. Commander in Afghanistan (via videoconference)

Admiral Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence

CIA Director Leon Panetta

Karl Eikenberry, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan (via videoconference)

Anne Patterson, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan (via videoconference)

General James Jones, National Security Advisor

Tom Donilon, Deputy National Security Advisor

John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security

Brennan, one of Obama’s most important advisers, wasn’t in last week’s meeting; neither was Donilon or Rice.

Except for a previously filmed interview. On Oct. 13, next Tuesday, excerpts from a chat McChrystal had with PBS’s “Frontline” will be included in its (excellent) documentary about both the Afghanistan war and the debate surrounding it, “Obama’s War.” It will probably seem to the public that McChrystal is speaking after Jones and Gates’ mild admonishment. And if so, that might actually help McChrystal.

On camera, McChrystal doesn’t say anything politically charged. In four appearances — ‘Frontline’ sent me a screener today of the documentary — McChrystal makes an observation about holding the volatile southern province of Helmand (”Once you clear something and don’t hold it … I would argue that it’s worse. Because you create an expectation, and then you dash it”); another about the difficulties of the war (”There will be as many frustrations as there are times when you think you got it right. But, I think there’s no alternative”); another on Pakistan (”I think they’ve also found the resolve internally”); and finally on the value of the public debate — much as he said in London:

Any war or conflict you enter where you are likely to lose more Americans and expend more treasure is something worthy of very detailed debate. There ought to be a lot of skepticism. There ought to be a lot of discussion. Before an American soldier is put in harm’s way, I hope that not just that political leadership, but the American people give it a lot of thought. So I think it’s appropriate.

The full transcript of McChrystal’s interview is already posted on the documentary’s Website. In the interview, as in London, McChrystal declines to get drawn into saying that Obama should increase troops:

Do you have enough troops?

In the “oil-slick” technique, as you know, you go where you can — the highest value areas, typically population centers and whatnot — and then you go out from there. And we’re going to have to do that in accordance with our priorities. …

Are you requesting new troops to come in? … Do you know where you need more?

… What we do is we take those forces that we have, particularly mating them with the Afghan National Army [ANA] and Afghan National Police [ANP], and try to grow from there, with the troops that we have trying to maintain enough security in each area. We hope that over time the force requirements in the latter parts of hold-and-build will go down, and in fact will shift to just the police. But it takes a long time. Could be months, could be years in some areas before you could go all the way down to typical status quo security.

If anything, the starkest assessment in the documentary doesn’t come from McChrystal, but from Brig. Gen. William Mayville, his director of operations:

How does this end? And how long is it going to take?

We’re going to leave here under shades of gray. We’ll have stability — at least reasonable stability. We’ll have a firm understanding that more has to be done. But in the end, you’ll have an Afghan solution to an Afghan problem. And that’ll be good enough.

Naturally, Holbrooke means the Taliban, who openly broadcast — particularly in Pakistan — calls to insurgency and announcements of who they intend to kill for imagined transgressions. The ambassador told a story about a colleague held hostage by the Pakistani Taliban who engaged his captors in an argument about religious justifications for suicide bombing. His illiterate captors had been assured there were Koranic justifications for the practice. The exchange, Holbrooke said, reiterated the importance of radio.

I actually saw something similar last year in Afghanistan. In a combat outpost called Zormat, in the eastern province of Paktiya, the commander of a cavalry troop hosted a small radio station, not capable of reaching a big audience, run by two Afghan 20-somethings. They operated out of a particle-board-lined trailer and mostly took requests for Indian pop songs. But in between the music, they would broadcast denunciations of the Taliban in slangy, real-talk vernacular. The information ministry in Kabul (if memory serves) gave them news programs to broadcast, but they did the lion’s share of their work by speaking to their neighbors in immediate, relevant language about why the insurgency was a malignant force. Then they’d open up the phone lines, let people vent their frustrations — against the government, against the U.S., against the insurgency, whatever — and occasionally argue with the Taliban, who had no problem calling in.

The commander of the cav troop, Capt. Chad Collins, ordered his men to distribute portable radios, weighing just a few pounds, to villagers when they’d drive into town to drop off humanitarian supplies. His conviction was that getting people to listen to easily-accessible, non-preachy broadcasts from their peers was a core component of counterinsurgent success.

Holbrooke agrees. He pledged that he wasn’t going to set up his own broadcasting networks, as they’d lack credibility. “A lot of this can’t be done in American voices, we understand that,” he said. Instead, the administration should help sponsor local radio — the primary communications medium in Afghanistan and much of Pakistan — and explain the u.S. message in relevant ways. “The key is Pakistanis themselves, and [the U.S. should] support them any way we can, in the media area and however else.”

Holbrooke is here with his strategic communications advisers, Ashley Bommer and Vikram Singh. One absence: the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, Judith McHale, whom Holbrooke singled out for praise and cooperation, particularly for taking her first trip abroad in her new job to Pakistan.

For a view as to structural problems afflicting U.S. public diplomacy efforts, don’t miss this latest post from Matt Armstrong at Mountain Runner.