Smokescreen

(Part four in a series that began here)

When you want to know at least one side of the story of the political battles in Washington, Joe Klein is as good a source as any:

In fact, most of the hoo-hah about Obama's Afghanistan strategy review has been a matter of smoke and mirrors....
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Why, then, all the excitement and controversy? Politics, pure and simple. There is an effort afoot by neoconservatives, led by Senator John McCain, to paint the President as flaccid on national security. McCain has been going around for the past few weeks telling all comers -- heatedly, at times -- that Obama's strategy review is essentially a waste of time, that the President has to, has to, go with the 40,000-troop option in Afghanistan. The Obama Administration, unnecessarily defensive, added fuel to the fire by having National Security Adviser Jim Jones and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates obliquely chastise McChrystal for public lobbying.

Setting aside the absurdity of John McCain as leader of neocons, the idea that Republicans would love nothing more than to depict President Obama as soft on national security is undeniably true. (McCain himself is probably best described as a proponent of sufficient troops for the mission - his advocacy now is no different than his position on Iraq: Mr. McCain's "early and consistent call," which began in the fall of 2003, was long dismissed by the White House, which insisted that the president was following the advice of his commanders. Mr. McCain returned from each of his trips to Iraq arguing that the commanders needed more troops, and lambasted Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld as "irresponsible" for urging a quick turnover of the effort to Iraqis. If President Obama is upset at all by the Senator's current behavior, that's something else he and his predecessor can commiserate on at the next POTUS reunion.)

The political right, however, was ill-prepared to assault Obama using McChrystal as bludgeon. In fact, they had already begun a campaign to depict the general as the president's lackey, endangering the troops with politically correct ROE. This absurd narrative was just gaining slight traction when seemingly from out of the blue the "McChrystal vs Obama" theme became available. Attempts to reconcile the two perhaps hit their peak of absurdity with this depiction of General McChrystal as yet another Obamabot struggling not to be "thrown under the bus".

With so many on the right having knocked themselves out of the discussion early, it's hardly surprising that the political left was the side that took the bait offered with the leak of the general's Afghanistan assessment - and the 10,000 leaks from seemingly out of control anonymous "administration officials" that followed it - and jumped most eagerly into the perceived fray, defending their president (who had expressed neither opposition or discontent with his general, or even a desire for outside help in dealing with the matter) most vigorously from what they saw as a blatant attack by a career soldier who somehow never learned his place in the chain of command.

Now, however, they're discovering the error of their ways. And by golly, it's that mean ol' neocon McCain who was actually behind this whole thing!

Buried a little further down in Klein's piece (well below "two brigades, or 10,000 troops, will probably be sent to secure Kandahar city and environs, and two other brigades will be sent to train and advise the Afghan security forces.") is a little line you'd hardly notice...

Several of the principals involved in Obama's strategy review have told me that their ultimate position on troop levels will depend on whether a plausible government, newly committed to reform, emerges when the Afghanistan election process is finally completed.

Maybe you weren't even supposed to notice that. Just as no one was really supposed to notice this last August:

The timing of Gen. McChrystal's primary assessment remains in flux. It was initially due in mid-August, but the commander was summoned to a secret meeting in Belgium last week with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and told to take more time. Military officials say the assessment will now be released sometime after the Aug. 20 vote.

But it's the real story on what's been going on in Washington. Karzai, you see, aint' showin' the proper respects. Maybe he's even skimming off the top, and you let someone get away with stuff like that right under your nose, you look weak. And sometimes in cases like that you obviously got to lean on a guy. If he thinks you need him more than he needs you, then you got to send him a message, remind him who's boss. It's strictly business, see?

And maybe there are signs that business is working pretty good, or else you really would have seen a much bigger story surrounding the firing of the American representative to the UN Afghan mission over the issue of election fraud instead of odd comments like this:

With American officials increasingly accepting the idea that Mr. Karzai will be the next president despite a large number of well-documented irregularities in the election, Mr. Galbraith's stance put him at odds with both the Obama administration and the United Nations.

And nothing from the US Ambassador to the UN on the subject even as she did the weekend talk show circuit immediately afterward, and chatted about troop levels instead.

But who knows, maybe that story will turn out big after all. Maybe it was just briefly eclipsed by all the fixation on the story of a general who was over the line. (Something the general didn't appreciate one bit, I'm sure*.) Maybe Hamid ain't really got the message after all. But for now, at least now that we know the whole McChrystal vs Obama thing was actually just John McCain making trouble, we can get back to business.

Hellavagood game though - and every American got to play a part.

Previously: Smoke signals

* "...one tragedy of being an honest and decent person is that you will allow influential actors in your system of government to spread misperceptions of your presumed disloyalty precisely because you are loyal to the system."

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