Obama’s Afghan meetings a public affair

President Obama’s weeks-long review of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan has turned the normally secretive process of deciding how many troops to deploy to a war zone and how best to use them into an oddly public affair that has been pored over day after day by television analysts, scrutinized by his critics and sized up by the nation’s allies and enemies.

As Mr. Obama presided over the fourth meeting of his war council in two weeks at the White House on Friday, even the enemy was trying to influence the outcome. While the White House sizes up whether the Taliban is a threat to the United States or whether it would re-create a safe haven in Afghanistan for al Qaeda, the group placed a statement on Web sites this week saying it does “not have any agenda to harm other countries.”

“That was a political message to President Obama in an attempt to change the terms of the debate,” said Peter Mansoor, a professor of military history at Ohio State University who served as a top adviser to Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command.

“You can see all sides ratcheting up the pressure on the president - more pressure than would perhaps otherwise be there if this process was going on behind closed doors,” Mr. Mansoor said.

The president has planned five meetings of his national security team that take place in the sanctuary of the Situation Room as he tries to decide whether to deploy tens of thousands of additional troops to execute a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, or to settle with a smaller military footprint and instead focus on surgical strikes against al Qaeda.

The White House has announced each meeting in advance, described who would attend, provided a public readout afterward to explain what transpired and even distributed photos. Beyond that, the positions being staked out by key figures, including his top military and political advisers, have swiftly made their way into the public domain.

Allies of the president have praised this process, saying it is the most sensible way for a leader to plot a successful course for such a treacherous mission. They see Mr. Obama’s insistence on a deliberative process as an unblinking approach to assessing the facts.

“I think that he is right to emphasize that he is taking this very seriously,” said Parag Khanna, a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation who served as a campaign adviser to Mr. Obama on Afghanistan and Pakistan policy.

It is what many on the left consider to be an anti-Bush view that facts, data, processes and intellectual, reasoned assessment should be the rule for decision-making, and not a reliance on gut or instinct, as President George W. Bush was often characterized as doing.

There is a pride inside the White House at the fact that Mr. Obama has led each of the roughly three-hour war council sessions, which have delved into granular detail on the different aspects of the war in Afghanistan and along the border with Pakistan.

But what is thoughtful consideration to the president is weakness to his critics, many of whom see him bowing to political pressure from his liberal base. Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer on Friday compared Mr. Obama to the tortured and indecisive Shakespearean character of Hamlet.

“Whatever this is, it isn’t leadership,” said Elliot Abrams, who served as a senior foreign policy adviser to Mr. Bush and to President Reagan.

“Leadership isn’t about how many meetings you hold in the Situation Room, it is about taking hard decisions regardless of what the David Axelrods advise you,” Mr. Abrams said, referring to the president’s senior political adviser, who has attended each of the strategy review meetings, along with other top political advisers.

In the picture of Oct. 2 war council session in the secure White House Situation Room, political advisers such as Mr. Axelrod and press secretary Robert Gibbs are present, but are sitting against the wall, taking notes, not at the table as part of the discussion. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who is intimately involved in the politics and policy of the Obama White House, has been at the table, but that is regular procedure for national security council meetings.

Mr. Bush often delegated information gathering so that he could play the role of “the decider,” Mr. Mansoor said, but was heavily involved in the review process that led to the surge of 30,000 troops to Iraq in 2007. There were fewer leaks, Mr. Mansoor said, but a vocal debate raged outside the White House gates.

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