Obama's Troubled AfPak Summit

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lauded brand-new military moves undertaken by the Pakistani government.

The optics seem more telling than the rhetoric.

President Barack Obama is hosting his first summit of his wartime allies, the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the so-called "AfPak" summit, dealing with what Obama calls the biggest geopolitical threat to America's security. But there's no state dinner in their honor. No address to Congress, which must fund Obama's plans (and may attach) conditions.

And the principal social event, a dinner for the presidents hosted by Vice President Joe Biden at the Naval Observatory, has its own ironic backstory. Biden famously walked out of a dinner last year with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

After their meetings today, Obama struck a note of optimism.

"I'm pleased that these two men -- elected leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan -- fully appreciate the seriousness of the threat that we face, and have reaffirmed their commitment to confronting it. And I'm pleased that we have advanced unprecedented cooperation between Afghanistan and Pakistan on a bilateral basis -- and among Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the United States -- which will benefit all of our people."

Vice President-elect Joe Biden delivered a critical message when he visited Afghanistan on January 10th.

But the words and pictures were not in synch.

Even the body language at today's Obama statement was telling in regard to the troubled nature of the AfPak summit. Obama, who can be quite warm when he wants to be, was notably cool both to Karzai and to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.

Karzai was George W. Bush's man in Kabul, a buddy of sorts, the recipient of regular phone calls from the American president and participant in weekly video conferences with the White House. There will reportedly be none of that with Obama, who had apparently only spoken to Karzai a few times since his own inauguration prior to this week's Washington summit.

Indeed, it was Biden who delivered the message that things would be different back on January 10th, when the then vice president-elect visited Kabul and talked with the Afghan president he walked out on last year as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai laid out his vision for Afghanistan's future at the Brookings Institution on Tuesday.

But Obama is stuck with Karzai, who will almost certainly win August's Afghan election.

Zardari has none of the Bush buddy/Biden bete noire baggage with Obama that Karzai carries. But the warmth meter doesn't register much higher there.

His administration isn't the target of corruption charges from American officials that Karzai's has been, but this widower of the assassinated Benazir Bhutto hasn't found the way to counter a very alarming jihadist insurgency while balancing the needs of secular reformists and a powerful national security apparatus that is still geared more to a potential war with India rather than the threat within (in part because it's shot through with jihadists itself).

Zardari's administration has cut deals with homegrown Taliban that amount to unsuccessful appeasement. At the insistence of the Obama Administration, it's embarked on a brand-new offensive, which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lauded today. But who knows how long that will last, or even if it's an effective move.

With increasing signs of restiveness in Congress -- though House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is against tying the administration's hands -- Obama is offering more money for civilian projects in both countries, and new US training in Kuwait for Pakistani counter-insurgency operations. But how well that will go is anyone's guess.

Meanwhile, the talk will continue. On Thursday, Attorney General Eric Holder, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and CIA Director Leon Panetta all hold meetings with opposite numbers from the Aghan and Pakistani government.

And everyone comes back together again in August for another trilateral summit. That will be after the Afghan elections, which Karzai and his former warlord running mates are expected to win.

In fact, these trilateral US/Afghanistan/Pakistan summits may take place every quarter.

Civilian deaths in Afghanistan are a major problem for the new strategy.

Perhaps there will be better optics the next time around. But that may happen only if things are going better.

What's the likelihood of that?

Well, Defense Secretary Bob Gates did an interview with Fareed Zakaria on CNN a few days ago. What he said should give pause. So far, there have been no breakthroughs with more moderate Afghan Taliban -- a lynchpin of the new Obama strategy announced on March 27th -- and Gates has "real reservations about significant further commitments of American military, beyond what the president has already approved."

Gates went on to compare the situation to the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, noting that the Soviets sent 120,000 troops into the mountainous country, pursued scorched earth tactics, and still lost.

Of course, the Afghan resistance received massive help from the US, which sought successfully to create a Soviet Vietnam.

And it's not so much a matter of winning, or losing, a war in the conventional sense. The mission is to disrupt and disable Al Qaeda from using the region as a safe haven from which to prepare and launch 9/11-type attacks.

The Obama Administration may be closer to achieving that than it may suppose. So long as Pakistan doesn't descend into basket case status.

You can check things during the day on my site, New West Notes ... www.newwestnotes.com.

 

 

Comments

[jaysan]

Pakistan will continue to jerk the US around, pretending that it's fighting the Taliban, when it's really just generating an unverifiable bodycount for show. Like the infamous bodycount statistics produced in the Vietnam War, neither the US govt nor the American people can verify the casualty figures being reported by the Pakistani govt. Likewise, the Pakistani military will go and kill anybody and present this as Taliban killed.

Meanwhile, the Taliban won't be standing still -- they'll keep continuing to spread their presence like a virus, ultimately bringing down Pakistan's ruling govt. The civilian govt will continue to haplessly fiddle like Nero while Rome burned, and the military will be watching it all like a smiling crocodile.

You see, the military wants to joyride down this Talibanization path as far as they can take it, before it becomes unsustainable in front of the US. At that point, the military types figure Talibanization will have proceeded far enough so that they can drop their pretense of cooperation with the US, and then they'll just shrug their shoulders to the US and say, "oh well, if you can't beat'em, join'em"

Oh, they'll still be smiling amicably at you when they say that, and plunge the knife into your chest.
And you'll be bewildered and say, "Et tu, Bruté?"
And they'll still smile amicably while replying, "It's not our fault - we gotta go with the flow over here. You'll understand­."

The road to hell is paved with friendly smiles from the Pakistanis.

[BottomLine2008]

I'm really bored by these snipes back and forth from Indian and Pakistani partisans.

That's your fight. I don't care much about it.

[Lean2left]

Even though I admit that I have been a party in these snipes, but I really hate to do it. I love smart and constructive criticism from any person, but some times I have to use my comments as flags of caution to readers who might be mislead by the hidden agenda of a few posters. If someone spews hatred from their mouth everytime they post a comment, then it doesn't take a genius to figure out their angle.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

Well, there are hundreds of thousands of refugees from the new Pakistani offensive against the Taliban ...

[katooom]

Yes, get out now. We kicked over this hornets nest many many years ago. Now they fire our own weapons at us. Do you think this will not repeat?

So far we are AT LEAST $18Billion down in this mess. And now we are going to double down? Would you really want your child dieing for the likes of Karzai or Zardari? The nukes may be there, nothing we can do about that. All the money and lives will not change that. There will ALWAYS be an insurgency after those nukes.

And where does Holbrooke get off with the statement "We have turned a corner", where is there ANY evidence of this!!

Russia bogged down, and they were far more ruthless than we. This is a quagmire and we should get out. Nation building does not work.

[LizM]

How would you describe nation-building? It seems to mean different things for different folks...an­d, what should we do after we get out?

[katooom]

Nation building is taking responsibility for the development and building of infrastructure, education, policing, defense, productive jobs, and establishment of some type of 'elected' government. You know, the kind of things we should be doing here at home!

What we should do when we get out? Leave them alone. If they want to cooperate in trade of some type, welcome them. North Vietnam is a good example.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

You seem to be forgetting Al Qaeda.

[BottomLine2008]

So it's all America's fault we got attacked on 9/11?

You seem to believe every peacenik canard out there.

God save us from the extremes of the right and the left.

[bigberta]

Let's hope we stop being diverted from our objectives by Israel operatives like Paul Wolfowitz to be the proxy for Israel's objectives.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

What do you imagine are Israel's objectives in AfPak.

Incidentally, Paul Wolfowitz isn't exactly listened to in the Obama circle, needless to say ...

[BottomLine2008]

Nobody has listened to that guy in years. I think he even got fired from the World Bank.

Don't live in the past.

[BottomLine2008]

I watched the news clip but I still don't get why we're causing so many civilian deaths in Afghanistan.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

I think it happens generally when a unit is in trouble or when there is poor intelligence on the ground leading to hitting the wrong targets.

[BottomLine2008]

Karzai is talking in that clip at Brookings about us still being there in 15 years!

That's some vision he has for Afghanistan's future.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

The US will probably have some presence, as it does in dozens of countries. But he seems to envision much more.

[katooom]

And please notice, we are broke. We simply cannot afford to police the world.

[BottomLine2008]

I wish the news clip from January on Biden's trip to Afghanistan had told us what he was really doing there. But now we know.

[BottomLine2008]

I like Hillary Clinton in that news clip.

She's working out very nicely as the Secretary of State.

[BottomLine2008]

It sounds like Obama knows he has two half-baked presidents to work with. I hope he gets that less may be more than we think when it comes to getting done what we need to get done.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

The optics would seem to make that clear.

[FearlessFreep]

I hope it isn't a case of THREE half-baked presidents!

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

And who would be fully-baked?

[katooom]

Obama is being played like a cheap fiddle by these two crooks. Of course they are going to take our money and protection - and smile at every appropriate time.

It is very disheartening to know we are sending more troops into that quagmire. We need to get out - now!

[jaysan]

Better take their nukes with you, otherwise they'll fall into Taliban/AlQaeda hands. Then they'll be showing up in a city near you.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

There is that ...

[Lean2left]

I am sure that will go a long way to treat the burning sensation that indians have been feeling since 1947. Regional supremacy at last!

[BottomLine2008]

Get out now? Are you serious? Is everything the Vietnam War?

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

Get out without disrupting and disabling Al Qaeda? And go back to square one?

[FearlessFreep]

There may turn out to be no alternative to that.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

Perhaps you should read the column you're commenting on ...