THE SICK MAN OF ASIA:

Bob Woodward book details Obama battles with advisers over exit plan for Afghan war (Steve Luxenberg, 9/21/10, Washington Post)

Obama campaigned on a promise to extract U.S. forces from Iraq and focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan, which he described as the greater threat to American security. At McConnell's top-secret briefing for Obama, the intelligence chief told the president-elect that Pakistan is a dishonest partner, unwilling or unable to stop elements of the Pakistani intelligence service from giving clandestine aid, weapons and money to the Afghan Taliban, Woodward writes.

By the end of the 2009 strategy review, Woodward reports, Obama concluded that no mission in Afghanistan could be successful without attacking the al-Qaeda and Afghan Taliban havens operating with impunity in Pakistan's remote tribal regions.

"We need to make clear to people that the cancer is in Pakistan," Obama is quoted as saying at an Oval Office meeting on Nov. 25, 2009. Creating a more secure Afghanistan is imperative, the president said, "so the cancer doesn't spread" there.

If we accept that diagnosis, which is quite sound, then shouldn't he be dealing with Pakistan?

MORE (via Steve Jacobson):
Book unearths divisions over Obama war plan (ANNE GEARAN, 9/22/10, AP)

President Barack Obama's early attempts to seize control of a neglected Afghanistan war yielded a strategy that pleased almost no one and hasn't turned the tide of a conflict near its 10th year.

Just how contentious that plan has been, inside the Obama White House as well as outside, is captured in Bob Woodward's new book. The account exposes the roots of an Afghanistan exit plan driven more by politics than national security and shows the president worried about losing the support of the public and his party.

"I have two years with the public on this," Obama is quoted as saying at one point, referring to what the administration still considers a finite well of public patience.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 22, 2010 5:26 PM