Washington Extra – ‘Wild ride’ ends
The sharpest debater in the 2012 field of Republican presidential candidates exited the race touting a hodgepodge of initiatives that made his failed race so colorful.
“Suspending the campaign does not mean suspending citizenship,” Newt Gingrich warned in his long-awaited announcement that he was quitting. He then ticked off the vision of America he will continue to pursue as a private citizen:
His fabled U.S. colony on the Moon, holograms in houses, cures for diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, not to mention a national energy policy/balanced budget that would free the United States from “radical Islam, Saudi kings and Chinese bondholders.”
The bombastic former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives brought an element of unpredictability to the Republican presidential nominating contest. His come-from-behind victory in South Carolina in January briefly led some to wonder whether Mitt Romney really could be knocked off.
Not so. As primary defeats began to pile up, Gingrich’s campaign became less about his big ideas and more about the St. Louis zoo penguin who had the nerve to peck at the hand of this notorious animal lover.
“It was a truly wild ride,” a tired-looking Gingrich said as he bowed out, refusing to answer reporters’ questions.
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Washington Extra – An anniversary observed
One year ago, President Barack Obama was secretly holed up in the White House Situation Room monitoring what turned out to be the successful U.S. military operation to kill Osama bin Laden.
A year later, he spent the day on another secret mission: flying aboard Air Force One to Afghanistan, the country from which bin Laden hatched his Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
With journalists in tow (they had agreed not to report anything about the trip until after Air Force One landed and Obama was safely in Kabul), Obama signed a “U.S.-Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement” and was set to deliver an address to Americans about the U.S. role after most NATO combat forces withdraw from the war-torn country by 2014.
The drama of the president of the United States arriving in the dead of night on an unannounced mission offered an early taste of what Mitt Romney is up against in his quest to unseat Obama on Nov. 6.
The Republican presidential candidate visited a New York fire station to mark the anniversary of bin Laden’s death. But the message of the campaign event, including Romney’s contention that the White House had politicized bin Laden’s capture, quickly was overshadowed by news flashes and video of Obama’s surprise trip.
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Washington Extra – Peace by piece
Not since Vietnam has the United States sat down with an enemy it was fighting on the battlefield and negotiated an exit from war. That long-standing policy might end this year if a carefully choreographed diplomatic dance takes U.S. and Afghan officials to a negotiating table with the Taliban.
As Reuters Washington correspondent Missy Ryan explains, President Obama’s peace gambit has the potential to be a significant development for U.S. foreign policy. But it turns out it is a policy borne out of necessity: two years ago, the Pentagon thought the Taliban could be defeated militarily, and today, it’s all too clear they aren’t going away.
There are many hurdles and not insignificant push back here at home to overcome. And Obama may want to don a helmet for the incoming fire… from Capitol Hill. As soon as he notifies Congress of plans to move Taliban detainees from Guantanamo to get the ball rolling, he is sure to face a torrent of attacks.
If the idea of talking with a fundamentalist group known for its brutality and repression is just too hard to conceive, consider this: it could have well happened a decade ago and possibly ended the war in Afghanistan.
As a former U.N. official and advocate of peace talks told Ryan: “When people start to add up cost of war in Afghanistan over the last decade, they will ask how on earth the new Afghan leadership and U.S. officials failed to take advantage of these early overtures by the Taliban.”
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Washington Extra – Combat ready?
The Obama administration is known to be methodical when it comes to its messaging. But Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s declaration that the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan might end next year seems to have caught people here and overseas by surprise.
Today, everyone from Panetta to White House spokesman Jay Carney to NATO allies tried to tamp down notions that a major policy shift was underway. But many were still scratching their head about whether there is now a new U.S. timetable for winding down a war that is over a decade old.
One senior NATO official summed up the potential for confusion with a mind-bending quote: “He (Panetta) said the combat role will come to an end but he also said combat will continue. And that’s exactly what I’m saying.”
So the question is: Did Panetta jump the gun or is this part of a carefully crafted messaging plan, right out of the Obama administration’s playbook?
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Washington Extra – Fighting words
When President Barack Obama announced the 30,000 U.S. troop surge for Afghanistan in December 2009, he said: “It must be clear that Afghans will have to take responsibility for their security, and that America has no interest in fighting an endless war in Afghanistan.”
Obama, president for less than a year, said those words at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He was still trying to prove that he had what it took to be commander-in-chief.
A year-and-a-half later, it is now a different setting. Obama will announce his plan to start bringing troops home from Afghanistan at the White House, having proven his mettle when he gave the go-ahead for the daring and risky operation that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
He is also a declared candidate for re-election facing a public most concerned about the economy and quite tired of war.
Watch to see whether tonight’s speech will take on a campaign tone or frame the decision as a result of victory. It may be neither. We’ll see at 8 p.m.
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Washington Extra – Long day
The longest day of the year probably seemed even longer for some.
Jon Huntsman started the day in New Jersey to formally throw his hat into the ring against the picturesque backdrop of the Statue of Liberty. Here’s the thing about backdrops and TV… Huntsman made it into every shot, but not Lady Liberty. And then he was off to New Hampshire for a rally.
At the Capitol, it was scheduled as a two-hour meeting, but the issues seem never-ending as Vice President Joe Biden and lawmakers negotiate on the deficit and debt limit. Some speculation swirling that perhaps a short-term increase in the debt limit may be an option if agreement is out of reach.
Not exactly a sunny day for the economy. Data out today point to a housing market still struggling to regain footing.
And tomorrow promises to be an extra long day for Afghanistan watchers waiting for President Barack Obama to lay out details of a U.S. troop drawdown in a White House address at 8 p.m.
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Lugar warns U.S. against war in Libya
In recent days some U.S. senators have been urging President Obama to consider military intervention to help Libyan rebels fighting Moammar Gaddafi.
Not Richard Lugar.
The top Republican on the Senate foreign relations committee said little while a senior member of his own party, John McCain, repeatedly urged the United States to pursue setting up a no-fly zone over Libya.
On Sunday Democrat John Kerry, the chairman of the foreign relations committee, suggested that Washington might want to ”crater” runways used by Gaddafi’s forces.
On Tuesday, Lugar issued a strong warning against U.S. intervention in what he called Libya’s civil war.
“The United States should not, in my view, launch military intervention into yet another Muslim country, without thinking long and hard about the consequences and implications,” Lugar said in a statement.
“ If a no-fly zone doesn’t stop the street-to-street fighting, are we prepared to escalate further, to put boots on the ground? Would that involve taking control of the country? Would we be obligated to stay until democracy is established?”
Would Congress swing its spending ax at the war in Afghanistan?
You’d think the war in Afghanistan would be the sacred cow of federal spending. The Republicans now in charge of the House have always embraced “Support Our Troops” and “Defeat Terrorism” as two of the most serious ”Thou Shalts” of their political playbook.
But could the times be a-changing? Two influential conservative voices suggest they might be, as lawmakers search for the right balance between spending cuts and their own job preservation.
Grover Norquist, the influential political hierophant at Americans for Tax Reform, says in a Newsmax interview that the time has come for a serious cost-benefit discussion about Afghanistan.
Norquist says the United States will spend $119 billion this year in Afghanistan, a country with a GDP of just $14 billion. In his view, supporters of the war should not be afraid to debate their position, to come up with good reasons to stay and the benefits of doing so. “Only (conservatives) can convince the country to stay the course or to take a different approach,” he says.
Then there’s House Republican Ron Paul of Texas. He’s long been a voice crying in the wilderness about the need to scale back on America’s overseas military commitments. Except now, with the Tea Party’s ascent, Paul is no longer a political backwoodsman.
“Politically speaking, I think that I can make the case that we should bring our troops home, change our foreign policy, quit these ridiculous wars,” Paul tells MSNBC’s Morning Joe this week.
“I think I could actually sell that politically easier (sic) than saying: ‘Oh OK let’s cut medical care for the elderly’,” he added.
Training may be the U.S. way out of Afghanistan, but hurdles high
One of the strongest messages that U.S. officials tried to convey during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Afghanistan this week was that the American mission in the war-torn country is changing from combat to training, so that Afghan forces are ready to provide security for their own country after decades of upheaval, invasion and foreign occupation.
Biden made a stop at the Kabul military training center, an expansive site about six miles northeast of the city center, where U.S. forces are teaching members of the Afghan National Army how to be part of a modern military. On 22,000 acres of bare terrain surrounded by mountains and dotted with cement walls and the ruins of Soviet-era military equipment, Afghan soldiers are learning everything from marksmanship to logistics. The facility has even had two all-women officer training classes, the first in the deeply traditional Muslim country, not for combat but for functions such as finance and logistics.
Biden spoke to trainers, toured the grounds and watched a group of the Afghan trainees storm a building. He spoke to each of the men, who greeted him, in turn, by standing to attention, shouting their names and giving their battalion numbers.
The soldiers are eager. They are paid for their time at the facility. “We don’t have a problem finding recruits,” said Lieutenant Colonel David Simons, director of public affairs for the NATO-Afghan training mission. On any day, there are 11,000 Afghan soldiers at the facility. And training in the more basic skills is already being put into Afghan hands, with international forces focused mostly on more specialized areas. “This is the year we’re really turning that over to Afghans,” said Captain Stefan Hasselblad, another spokesman for the base.
It may seem like wishful thinking to expect a force of newly minted Afghan soldiers to provide security in a country where the world’s largest and most modern military still struggles to control the violence after more than nine years of conflict. President Barack Obama’s most recent review of the war — released last month — noted improvement but said there is a hard road ahead. Violence in Afghanistan is at its worst level since the U.S.-led invasion in late 2001.
Wishful thinking or not, the training has to go on, not just for Afghanistan’s future but to placate the U.S. public which is weary of a war that is approaching the 10-year mark – at a price tag now well over $100 billion per year. The Obama administration is committed to starting to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan beginning in July. The longer term goal is to hand over all of Afghanistan’s security responsibilities to its government by 2014.
The trainers acknowledge that the Afghan soldiers present challenges almost unknown among American forces. Hasselblad said the biggest challenge is the country’s overwhelming rate of illiteracy. Ninety-five percent of the would-be troops cannot read at a minimum level, he said, and have to be taught enough reading so they can handle what he termed “basic soldier skills,” such as recording the serial number of a weapon or reading a map.
Training the host nation military and police force is the key to success not only in Afghanistan but in Iraq as well. At some point Afghanistan is going to make a shift towards their own version of ‘Operation New Dawn’.
Currently in Iraq the U.S. has moved to the advisory role. They are advising Iraqis to train other Iraqis. This will be the key in Afghanistan too. Check out excerpts from the piece below.
“This is where it all began,” said Ali, describing the training grounds at KMTB. “This is where one of the first soldiers was trained to pick up a rifle and begin the steps to protect their country. This is also where we teach them to protect themselves, and protect the people of Iraq.”
“At the start, coalition forces were conducting the training here,” he said. “They supplied logistics and instructed classes for our soldiers on how to shoot, move and communicate. Now it’s Iraqis conducting the training with U.S. soldiers advising them.”
http://www.dvidshub.net/news/63456/iraqi -us-troops-train-succeed-kmtb
Washington Extra – Hunkered down
In all the words said over at the White House today about the Afghanistan review, one name was not mentioned — Osama bin Laden.
The al Qaeda leader, who former President George W. Bush once declared wanted dead or alive, has eluded a manhunt and grown nearly 10 years older since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Bin Laden was last heard in an audio message aired on Al Jazeera television on Oct. 27 railing against France, and his freedom remains a symbol of how difficult it will be to declare victory against al Qaeda.
Security officials suspect he is in the border region of Afghanistan-Pakistan, but if they knew for sure where he was, they would have found him.
President Barack Obama said the reason why U.S. forces remain in Afghanistan is 9/11, and the core goal is “disrupting, dismantling and defeating” al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
He saw “significant progress” in pursuit of that goal, and said: “In short, al Qaeda is hunkered down.”
On the domestic front, the battle over earmarks is wreaking havoc on Capitol Hill and led Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to use the H word.
