Best Foot Forward?

What a shabby-looking setting: a nicked, scratched table, recently-vacuumed carpet with outlet coverings in the floor, a bare wall with some sort of (electrical?) panel; the royql blue curtain is the only concession to
the status of the participants. And, everyone seems jammed together, as if in a partioned meeting room in some third-rate civic complex. This is a meeting of our Executive and Legislative branches?

http://www.911blogger.com/node/22041
Dwight Eisenhower
“I hate war, as only a soldier who has lived it can, as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed…. ”
Are they listening?

Don’t miss this spectacular piece by NYT’s Peter Baker on this. A comprehensive, meticulously detailed piece, well worth reading.
How Obama Came to Plan for ‘Surge’ in Afghanistan – NYTimes.com
It doesn’t suggest depression at all, but at long last, an administration serious about what they are doing.

The depression is not from the President. It is from everyone else who knows that, despite their public political rhetoric, this is hopeless. I think they all wished he had figured a way out of it.
You cannot make peace by fighting. There is no peacemaking in this plan. None. It presumes that the war we started will be continued on by somebody else while we slip out the back door.

James,
The comprehensive Times article confirms, both descriptively and in the two short paragraphs spent on it, that Obama’s protracted review process effectively excluded Congressional input. The photo — not to mention, the difficulty of Congressional leaders to come to terms with a patchwork quilt of assumptions, theories, constraints and wishes that got grafted into what is supposed to now represent a coherent whole (even though Gates was given complete permission to say that the “fixed timeframe” Obama insisted on as a requirement is, in fact, open-ended) — simply reflects that.

Michael,
Right, It wasn’t a criticism of your interpretation. I mainly wanted to highlight the excellent piece by Peter Baker. You do so much in highlighting excellence in photojournalism, there isn’t much of that for print in the blogosphere.
I actually liked that there was very little Congressional input. After all, he is the C-in-C and the heavy, heavy weight of the responsibility is squarely on his shoulders, and he feels it. I’d hope he’s nearly had enough of Congressional posturing and game playing, particular as it pertains to war. And, after all, the bushies never had a problem getting their war supplementals through Congress, without leadership “input” eh? Nancy and Harry didn’t quibble with the bushies, at least they were *at the table* here.
This was interesting I thought:

And the military needed to adjust to a less experienced but more skeptical commander in chief. “We’d been chugging along for eight years under an administration that had become very adept at managing war in a certain way,” said another military official.

Indeed so.
Also interesting was Lindsey Graham telling them “to settle on a troop number ‘that began with 3′ to win Republican support.”
But in light of Baker’s piece, I get more of the meticulous, serious nature of the meeting, “here’s what I’m going to do,” rather than depression. Just my own take.
Cheers.

James,
Fair enough. For me, I’ve transitioned to the point where my admiration for Obama’s seriousness, sense of responsibility and thoughtfulness — especially powerful as a prescription for Post Bush Traumatic Stress Syndrome — is more than cutting two ways. I think Obama tries too hard to keep, and satisfy everyone at the table at the expense of his own vision. Maybe it’s hard for a lot of people to see this relative to the Afghanistan process, but I think it’s comparable to his stance in the Health Care debate where he’s also suppressed his own vision at the expense of some ultimate psychological grasping for kumbaya.

First off, they all look haggard or hung-over. People in DC drink too much. But Obama’s decision to go against the grain, do opposite from what public opinion is, smacks of pure politics. His “surge” is so that Republicans can’t call him chicken in the 2010 elections. Keep in mind there is no enemy in Afghanistan and everyone at the table knows this. Terrorism is an idea and is practiced worldwide. You can’t tell who the army is that we need to kill to end the war. It goes on generation after generation. So staying in there at the cost of American lives is not going to bode well in 2012. This photo represents a high stakes game.

Michael,
In a way I don’t disagree with you, but the situations are entirely different here. HCR is entirely the purview of the legislative branch, but I do agree that Obama could have used his bully pulpit more constructively there. I blame the amateurish communications team for not developing a comprehensive strategy before it all got out of hand. But the Dems just have not, and will not, learn the very basics of political communication.
In matters of war, I think that his hearing everyone out and giving due consideration is entirely appropriate. As we all know, there are NO good options at this date. I don’t take that as grasping for “kumbaya” but in trying look at the long view, the broad view, and giving full consideration for the expense of blood and treasure, and the national interest. Baker’s piece had a compelling scene where the proposed strategy all came together and Obama sees “a ten year, trillion dollar effort that isn’t even in our national interest.”
There are too many “armchair generals” (and “peaceniks”) spouting off, none of whom have any expertise whatsoever either in war planning or in diplomacy and foreign policy. I think it is encouraging that Obama himself is fully aware of his lack of expertise in war planning. Would that we had that humble self-awareness among the top bushies so many years ago: Just stick our chest out and grunt! (Or, as I like to call it, the McCain approach.)
Baker’s piece is a study in how Obama went about making that decision — the one of NO good options — by studying by learning by listening but ultimately, it was HIS decision. “I want that curve moved to the left.” We’ll know how it turned out in due time, but will never know how the alternative approaches would have worked.
Thanks for the exchange. I appreciate it.
James

If there is NO good option, then why not take the option that will result in the least death, suffering, waste and destruction?
They all know this is wrong, and that is why they had to meet in a hidden shabby basement room to talk about it. It is why they all look embarrassed and ashamed.