This strong opinion is all the more stinging because it comes not from the US President's usual vociferous critics but Bob Woodward, the legendary Watergate journalist who is normally scrupulous at keeping his views to himself.
"I believe in neutral inquiry," he tells The Daily Telegraph in an interview. "That is the core job of the journalist."
Nonetheless, if any writer is entitled to an opinion on the war in Afghanistan, it is Woodward.
He has just resurfaced from two years' immersion in the subject,
... which makes him an expert ...
having interviewed 100 officials past and present, major White House players -- many several times over -- as well as the president himself during top level deliberations on the conflict's future course.
The resulting book, Obama's Wars, is, as usual, an instant bestseller and an instant headline-grabber, chiefly because of the verbal fireworks and fractious policy debate among the protagonists in the US administration.
The book - his sixteenth - is impeccably unbiased but the author now seems ready for candour.
"The will to win is the X factor in lot of things - politics, war and journalism," he says. "It can mean a lot, just because in any contest, the psychological dimension is important -- it's the 'yes we can'," he says, citing Obama's vitalising slogan from 2008.
Asked directly if Obama has that "X factor", he checks himself and responds: "It's not clear."
"The troops feel it, the generals feel it. I think he is sincere and genuine but he keeps a distance, he keeps a distance from people," he frowns.
"He realises how dreary it [the war] is, and he realises he's been dealt a bad hand, but he can't walk away, and so he's committed but it's not the George [W] Bush kind of 'bring it on' commitment."
In Afghanistan the correct solution, he says, would begin with a much stronger mission statement.
"It would help the military and it would help the country. I get emails from soldiers over there and morale is high, they are focused on their [immediate] missions, but it's not clear to some of them where they fit into the bigger picture."
A former naval officer, he feels the troops have been let down. "We owe those people everything as US citizens, and it's not clear we are giving them everything we could and that includes the definition of the mission."
[Al Arabiya] It seems that it is the law of the jungle that is being followed. Israel is keeping Hezbullies on its toes with aerial surveillance, spies on the ground, warehouse kabooms in villages, and threats that it will launch a new assault. Hezbullies in turn is going after the March 14 Alliance, pursuing Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri and his cabinet, demanding the heads of the false witnesses, that were described as such by Hezbullies even before the disputed Hariri tribunal began.
What is clear, and has already been declared, is that Hezbullies is insistent on abolishing the Special Tribunal for Leb. This is a major demand, but what will Hezbullies offer in return?
Will Hezbullies try the suspects that are affiliated to the group and punish them? No.
Will it hand over its weapons in return for an end to the tribunal? Definitely not!
More importantly than this, does Saad Hariri even have the power to end this tribunal? I believe not.
In which case, why has Hezbullies entered this abrupt battle with the international tribunal, utilizing all sorts of threats and intimidation tactics, especially since the tribunal has yet to even reveal its list of suspects? The tribunal has not revealed the names of any of its suspects, nor the parties that it believes were involved in Rafiq Hariri's assassination.
Even if we assume that some members of Hezbullies will be named and accused, and documents will be provided proving their involvement, the trial will not go beyond those implicated, in other words the Hezbullies leadership and the rest of the party will not be implicated. This tribunal is not investigating genocide, as was the case with the international tribunal that dealt with those accused of war crimes in Bosnia. This is a criminal tribunal whose role will not go beyond announcing a list of suspects, as was the case with the Lockerbie trial where both the defence and prosecution were not allowed to accuse any figure that was not included in the designated list.
I asked a member of Hezbullies why the party was acting as if the international tribunal was the end of the world, and I received an extremely unconvincing answer. The Hezbullies member said that his party was afraid that the tribunal would cause a sectarian rift in Leb. I said, doesn't Hezbullies actions today represent the pinnacle of sectarianism, for they want to put an end to a tribunal investigating the assassination of a Sunni leader, and are pursuing Sunni leaders in order to achieve this; therefore does this not represent sectarian practices that are far worse than the international tribunal's pending decision?
A second person justified Hezbullies's state of panic and insistence on ending the tribunal as being in order to prevent any of its members being accused of assassinating Hariri, saying that regardless of whether these members are innocent or guilty, Hezbullies does not want to appear as a group that sells its members down the river. This is perhaps the only logical explanation that I have heard so far. Hezbullies now faces two options; it can follow Libya's example, handing over the suspects, defending them in court, and then refusing to recognize the court's decisions, like all civil defendants in the world. Alternatively, Hezbullies can act in the same manner that it has in the past, rejecting all extradition demands issued against its members, the most prominent example of this occurred with regards to Imad Mughniyah, who despite repeated demands for his arrest by Interpol was never handed over.
A third person I talked to said that he believed that Hezbullies was not a lion defending its cubs, but rather a sly fox claiming to be the victim in order to capitalize on the crisis. He argued that Hezbullies is not truly in crisis or a state ofpanic, and that it is simply attempting to push back its opponents and maximize its political gains. This is also an acceptable psychological analysis, especially considering that Hezbullies is a heavily armed paramilitary organization that has never recognized any international resolutions or domestic laws.
Finally, a fourth opinion is that the party is behaving according to its usual practice and is creating a crisis to serve the interests of another. However this is not a strong conclusion because creating a crisis involving the Lebanese Prime Minister would hardly be in the interests of any foreign party, especially as Saad Hariri has taken up the position of prime minister with the weakest prime ministerial powers in the history of Leb after he was forced to make a substantial concessions upon taking office. Therefore what more could he concede? Nothing!
Posted by: Fred ||
10/02/2010 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Al Arabiya] It seems that it is the law of the jungle that is being followed. Israel is keeping 
