David Rothkopf's blog

I had breakfast today at the usual table in the usual restaurant with a very smart journalist who works for a large salmon colored newspaper. We both had oatmeal because a guy just can't get enough soluble fiber. 

My friend said that at the moment the most over-used term in Washington is "defining moment." Of course, the reason the phrase-turning classes keep returning to this particular phrase is that they are cockeyed optimists. They keep believing that such a moment will happen and they will begin to understand who Barack Obama is. They don't want to have to grapple with the notion that he has already defined himself. They keep hoping that he is really will emerge from the chrysalis of his learning curve months in the presidency as the glorious butterfly of change everyone hoped he would be in the first place. The fact that there is precious little evidence this is likely to happen doesn't daunt them. They'll stick to their s.o.p. of doing the analysis they want and hoping that reality catches up to them sooner or later.

Personally, I'm getting a little worried. (Actually, I'm kind of perennially worried. Not as bad as my ex-wife who actually believed she was going to be hit by Skylab. But able to nonetheless find the cloud around every silver lining.) For months I have been going around saying this is a new generation of leadership, noting that Obama entered high school after Vietnam and his practice as a lawyer after the fall of the wall (that's the Berlin Wall, for you kids who don't remember). But so far, on key issues he has been acting like he isn't the first of a new breed but that he is actually the last baby boomer.

This may be due to the lack of creativity of some on his team who have ignored Rahm Emmanuel's famous admonition not to let a crisis go to waste and who have failed to carpe the damn diem to make this a transformational moment with regard to finance or health care. (The jury is out on foreign policy and climate.) But whatever the case, as recent polls have shown, the "yes we can" of the campaign seems have just been the prefix to "yes we can keep doing business as usual."

Still, all is not lost. Every day new opportunities arise for the President to have that defining moment and to demonstrate to critics that something resoundingly new is happening.

I was thinking of this last night at the big annual dinner for Conservation International, a terrific organization that has done the math and realized that when it comes to planets we have exactly one. Absent spares, they are focused on doing what we can to keep this one habitable. That was reason enough to show up. But the food was good and it was a great group of people. 

(It attracted a much better bunch than Michele Bachmann's latest effort to teabag America, the anti-health care rally that reputable news organizations said had 10,000 attendees and that Fox News said had 40,000. It says something about Bachmann -- no relation to 70s Canadian rockers Bachman Turner Overdrive except to the extent that we might all hope she soon joins them in obscurity --that at an event co-organized by a Republican Rep. named Steven King and bringing together some of America's most deranged wingnuts that she was the scariest person in attendance.)

Sitting not 20 feet from me at the CI event were Energy Secretary Steven Chu, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, actor Harrison Ford and many, many vegetarians. Chu gave the main address and by any traditional Washington standards the remarks were remarkable. On the one hand the speech lacked any effort at soaring rhetoric or even structure for that matter. His delivery was uninspired. The talk came with 30 or 40 often very complex slides. In other words, we got remarks from a Nobel Prize winning scientist who was interested in facts and thoughtful analysis. He was the un-orator and a welcome, refreshing and even urgently needed alternative to the usual DC gloss. The point: the climate crisis is real and that the President is committed to addressing it and that if we harness creativity, science and engineering we can solve the problem. Oh ... and if we don't the Chinese will get there ahead of us and they will be the be neficiaries of the first big tech boom of the 21st Century. 

Listening you thought, "that's what I'm talkin' about!" But then reality sank in when I saw Rep. Edward Markey, co-author of the House climate bill, walk by and all the prognostications of a weak deal on the heels of a cobbled-together face-saver in Copenhagen came rushing into my brain. This is the great issue of our time (you can debate the trajectory of global warming all you want...you can't debate what's happening to the polar regions or the glaciers of the Himalayas). And unless something changes we are going to fumble the ball forward in the hopes that we can pick it up at some point in the future.

Obama could change that. As Al Gore said today, he could go to Copenhagen. Indeed, he should go there. If he could go for the Chicago Olympics ... supporting what's little more than a global marketing scam ... then presumably he can go to show that something like saving the planet is worth the trip and even the risk that things won't all work out so well. Two-thirds of Americans under 30 see this as a critical issue. Only the boomers and older are undecided. The president needs to pick a team. Is he with the next generation or the last one?

Same is true with China and his upcoming Asia trip. On this front, I frankly think he is trending in the right direction. I think that Obama, to paraphrase foreign policy expert Elle Woods, recognizes that Asia is the new Europe. Furthermore, after decades of pundits speculating about this, I think he can make this real with a productive trip to the region this month. 

The key: the turnabout is fair play meeting of the year. After 10 months at least significantly defined by how the Obama Administration is dealing with the banking community, now the president has to go meet with his banker. They have a full agenda: a deal on climate, collaboration on Iran and North Korea, the coordinated soft-landings of our national currencies. Pay more than lip service to the importance of the relationships ... produce real progress on these fronts ... because actions really do speak louder than words ... and he passes another critical test when it comes to proving this administration is about something new.

Two final related points:

At a meeting I was at with a bunch of big institutional investors in Chicago this week, the scenario for world markets that many were most concerned about was that of a failed Treasury auction ... something they felt was more plausible now than at any time in memory. The aftershocks for the global economy would be pretty darn grim. Avoiding this nightmare is perhaps job one in the U.S.-China relationship at the moment.

And on the climate issue ... as on health care ... I am starting to become embarrassed to call myself a centrist. The folks in the middle are among the greatest obstacles to the kind of reform that is really critical to demonstrating it is no longer business as usual in Washington. (After the entire Republican Party, that is.) My only consolation comes from the fact that most of these people are not what I consider to be real centrists.  They are actually "middle-ests", splitting the difference between left and right. True centrists don't take both sides and divide by two, they use every tool at their disposal to advance the national interest, regardless of what labels might be hurled their way. 

In short, we need courageous, centrist, post-Baby Boom leadership ... and absent a defining moment or two in this direction, all the moments that have come before will do the defining. Fortunately, in times like these, potentially defining moments crop up with alarming regularity.

Ron Sachs-Pool/Getty Images

Dear readers:

I'm traveling through Nov. 2. As a consequence I will be unable to blog between now and then. Once I return, I will be focusing for the next few months on finishing my next book. During that period I will have to cut back on my writing for FP. I will therefore be cutting back to one regular column per week while I am working on the book. Oh sure, if circumstances demand, I might blurt the extra bit out every now and then. But in the meantime, I hope you will keep an eye out for the weekly postings. Thanks for your understanding.

And if I may be permitted one passing observation linked to my current trip: the new security facilities at Dulles Airport are something less than an improvement. Sterile, crowded, dehumanizing, they leave travelers with the unmistakable sense that if Sophie's Choice were restaged for the 21st Century. this is what the selection scenes would feel like.

For all the debate of Afghanistan and troop levels and strategies and the views of Generals McChrystal and Petraeus, there are two vital facts that have been ignored. First, we are missing the one general who is probably most essential to our ability to ultimately achieve our goals in Afghanistan (including leaving) and we are ignoring the army that will not only be most useful to that general, but also the army that happens to be the largest in both of our Middle Eastern theaters of war.

More troubling still is that the general could have and should have been appointed by the president and approved by the Congress many months ago, but the position has been allowed to remain open throughout a critical period. And the army is more or less entirely within the control of the U.S. government and yet we lack the proper mechanisms to command or control it.

Whether our goal in Afghanistan is counterinsurgency or counterterrorism, whether we are "all in" or "all out" (or something in between), whether we are there for the long haul or the short term, there are nonetheless a few things all can agree upon. We need a stronger central government in Kabul and to become stronger the government will need to better provide services, strengthen existing institutions and win the support of the Afghan people. Infrastructure and economic growth will be key elements of this success formula. As it happens, they are also key elements of the counterinsurgency strategy argued for by General McChrystal as they are essential to both winning hearts and minds and to sending a message that the option we support has more to offer each individual Afghan than do the options offered by the Taliban or by the war lords who favor the kind of perpetual tribalism that has left the country vulnerable and dissolute for centuries. In addition, without creating the conditions conducive to a strong Afghan government, we will have no one capable of Afghanizing ... which is to say, we can't leave without handing the baton to someone else.

Central to our ability to achieve these goals are the people in the U.S. government who are specifically organized to handle post-crisis intervention and reconstruction functions. Unfortunately, despite our regular need for such capabilities, we don't actually have a department or agency that is specifically built and sufficiently supported to achieve these goals. This despite the fact that such interventions have been among the most regular and crucial functions of the U.S. government for decades. Hopefully, Secretary Clinton's QDDR process will produce some recommendations to remedy this.

In the meantime, the next best thing we have is the U.S. Agency for International Development, a worthy but inefficient and often lumbering entity. Nonetheless, it is going to play a critical role in what we do in Afghanistan ... or it can and should play such a role. It also has related and vital roles to play in Pakistan, Iraq and other regions where state failure or state weakening create security as well as humanitarian risks. 

These are the things it has. What it doesn't have is a leader. It is now almost November and the new administration has failed to arrive at a candidate for the job everyone can agree on and who can pass the muster of the absurd vetting processes that now dog would-be senior officials and impede this government's ability to function. We came close a while back but the candidate withdrew his name. There is behind the scenes scuffling over this one, partially because there is a sense the agency needs to change and there is a division of opinion as to whether it should be more independent or more closely integrated into the State Department. (The correct answer is "b." The work of A.I.D. is a critical component of American statecraft and the levers of its function need to be controlled by America's chief diplomat.)

Whenever this missing general is brought on board however -- and one can only hope that it is very, very soon -- he or she is going to have to cope with another reality that is not fully understood by most Americans and which is vital to the function of the U.S. government and to our success or failure in Iraq and Afghanistan. And that is how we get to the phantom army I mentioned earlier.

That army represents the majority of people currently on the ground in those two countries on behalf of the U.S. government and is therefore the largest single force on the ground in our Middle Eastern theaters. It is the army of contractors that have become the Hamburger Helper of American military and diplomatic initiatives in our two current wars. 

One person who does understand this evolving reality is Middlebury College Professor Allison Stanger, author of One Nation, Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy. The book, now out from the Yale University Press, is a must read for anyone interested in how foreign policy really works in the 21st Century. And it reveals a reality that is radically different from what many expect. Stanger calls Iraq and Afghanistan America's first two "contractor wars" because so much of the work done in each country is being done by cadres of workers reporting not to the U.S. government but to the lowest bidder. She points that the lion's share of AID's budget actually goes to contractors -- that in effect, AID is essentially a contracting agency.

Stanger sees benefits to this approach -- getting the right people for the job, creating efficiencies -- and she sees weaknesses -- Blackwater, anyone? But the vital message of the book is that the system has undergone a massive change but our views of it and the strategies and tactics we apply have not. Nothing makes this point more clearly than the fact that the largest army on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan does not actually report up the chain of command ... or, for that matter, any coherent chain of command. Single capable individuals, like Richard Holbrooke, help mitigate this with energetic management of non-military operations ... but the Holbrookes of this world are few and far between and throwing czars at problems is no way to provide lasting solutions.

To achieve whatever success is possible in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and ultimately the Palestinian Territories and elsewhere is going to require that we address these two problems. First, find that missing general. Then, let's get down to the business of understanding what business we are really in ... and create the strategies and structures we need to make the most of what we've got.

DAVID FURST/AFP/Getty Images

Have they no shame? Have they no sense of responsibility?

Perhaps by now nothing that Wall Street does ought to shock us. After all, these were the people who told us to trust them with our life fortunes when even they did not know the risks to which they would expose them. These were the people who felt it appropriate to game the U.S. economy, force families into the street and then claim big bonuses for their actions. These were the people who told the U.S. government to stay out of their hair ... right up until the moment they needed a government handout. A when they didn't need the cash any more, what's their response? To kick the people who helped them back to the curb.

Come on, Baby! Didn't I show you the love when you needed it? Wasn't I there for you when no one else wanted you? You weren't so big and powerful then, but I gave you what little I had. I mortgaged everything I had to get you back on your feet. I crawled right into bed with you and held you all night long. And what happens the minute you get a little wind to your back? You're out the door and you don't even know my name!

It's people like this that guarantee there will always be country music, the blues and drunks in bars getting the lyrics wrong while they sink into their beers. You know what I mean, those songs like "You Done Me Wrong" or "I'll Never Get Over You (Getting Over Me)." Or maybe what I really mean are songs like "Dirty Pool" or "Chain of Fools." Songs about betrayal and abuse.  Muddy Waters:

Now look what you've done

You left me here, the lonely one

And all I could say, is look what you've done

A broken heart, a weary mind

And (just for a) few dollars baby, (every) time

I once had a dream, but now I have none

You've taken your love and see what it done

Oh sure, I never expected that the princes of Wall Street would actually change their stripes. I'm not talking about disappointment that they are not voluntarily foregoing the big bonuses for a year or two until the country is back on its feet. I'm certainly not suggesting that I ever truly expected them to use government resources to actually start lending again or to really take major steps to keep home owners in their homes. Taking smaller risks? Forswearing complex investment strategies that only benefit them while putting everyone else at greater risk? Expecting that would be like expecting a pride of lions to go vegan and open a nursery school for baby antelopes.

No, I just thought that they would do the right thing in the one way that it is surely in character, that they would say thanks in their own language, the language of money. But here President Obama is hosting a fundraiser tonight in New York City, right in their own backyard, and according to the New York Times, Wall Street is snubbing him, not forking over. In fact, according to the story, Wall Street donations to the Democrats are down since, oh, I don't know, back when the Democratic controlled Congress and the Democratic President were saving their bacon. 

Apparently,the Masters of the Universe have concluded that the same Dems that bailed them out are now actually considering reforms that might mitigate risk and save the taxpayers for having to dig deep into their wallets to ensure the Wall Streeters could keep sending their kids to Dalton and Spence. And so no more soup for you, Barack. 

Personally, I think they miscalculate. They finally may be undone by their greed. Except it won't be because they stole too much or blew up the international economy. It'll be because they stopped paying off the people who set the rules. And nothing puts a politician back in touch with his principles like a failure to keep up payments by the banker to whom he has mortgaged them.

So it is that the bankers of the most consequence at tonight's fundraiser at the Mandarin in Manhattan won't be the ones the news crews will be fussing about as they head into the $15,000 a plate gala. Rather they will be the ones who actually who don't show up ... and who, in so doing, "free" the President and the Congress to get aggressive about reforms in the way they should have been all along.

Perhaps that old Muddy Waters tune will go through the president's head tomorrow as he thinks back on his visit to the big city tonight:

Saw you last night, I was movin' around

With your new toys, paint the town

But it is ok, keep having your fun

Because someday, you'll pay for all you've done

And if you ask me, it couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of guys.

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

"Wait a minute..."

Those were allegedly the final words of Pope Alexander VI back in August of 1503. I was thinking of fat, old, syphilitic, corrupt, murdering, adulterous Alexander just this morning. This particular Pope, known before his papacy as Rodrigo Borgia, who had so many mistresses he makes modern America's politicians and talk show hosts look chaste by comparison, is also distinguished by the fact that he was the father of, among many others, Cesare and the notorious Lucrezia Borgia. (To give you a taste for the man, upon becoming Pope he annulled his daughter's previous marriage so he could marry her off in a lavish Vatican ceremony to a relative of one of the cardinals who supported his papacy even as rumors circled of her incestuous relationship with one of her brothers. And the Heene family thought they had what it takes to make a good reality show...)

I thought of old Rodrigo as I flipped through a pile of clippings that I had set aside during the past couple of days. I started collecting the stories last week. The first were clippings about the record round of financial community bonuses in the U.S. and in the U.K. Then, as all this was happening, was Goldman Sachs' CEO Lloyd Blankfein's FT op-ed calling for financial reform. As I mentioned before I found the juxtaposition uncomfortably calculated.

A couple days later, there was the story announcing that former Goldman Sachs' VP Adam Storch was being named Chief Operating Officer of the "new and improved" SEC enforcement division. I have no doubt that Mr. Storch is an excellent fellow and a perfect choice ... other than the fact that he worked at Goldman. Does anyone think about the optics of these things? Or more than the optics, do they ever consider just how genuinely inappropriate such a hiring might be?

Of course, that's a rhetorical question. Some people do think about it. Just not people doing the hiring in the administration. Hence the articles in my pile of clips about the big bonuses that senior advisors to Tim Geithner got from big Wall Street houses prior to signing up to help devise the plans to "fix" Wall Street. I know some of these guys very well, consider them friends, consider them eminently qualified to be doing their jobs ... and yet, something gnaws at me about all this, an insensitivity on the part of the people who were putting together the administration team about what was really at stake in the financial crisis. It seems they felt the issue was more fixing the immediate problem than it was fixing the enduring problems in a system that once again has Wall Street executives lighting cigars with hundred dollar bills while unemployment hits record levels (see Mort Zuckerman's strong piece on this in today's FT) and home foreclosure are forcing former homeowners to live on the streets as never before. In any event it seems like they were really stopping to ask whether something big had changed ... or needed to.

Paul Krugman gets it, has all along and has written about it again in today's Times. Frank Rich, in yesterday's Times wrote a column capturing some of the anger that people feel about the power of Goldman and the other big banks and the utter unwillingness of Washington to do anything other than offer the occasional talk show tsk-tsk in response to the current return to profligacy (or the return of big lenders like Citi and Bank of America to losses after a momentary, bailout induced spate of profits). 

Meanwhile, John Harwood in the Times writes about Larry Summers' wise silence on sensitive economic questions while failing to go further and ask why it was that this week's tsk-tsking assignments went to Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, and Valerie Jarrett -- successors in function to the troika that once ran Ronald Reagan's White House (James Baker, Michael Deaver and Ed Meese). On the one hand the question is interesting because it leads one to other questions, like why the folks from the president's morning economic briefing who are being most prominently rolled out are not actually the ones who are the economic professionals? Could it be that the administration political brain trust feels the economic team has lost too much credibility by their minimalist, go-slow approach to reform? I think that would be a miscalculation because the future effectiveness of Geithner and Summers will depend on their being seen as the architects of substantially (and accelerating) reforms.

(Of course another question raised by the appearance of the Big Three on the Sunday shows is whether or not the administration really is being some so Office-of-the-President centric that it is all head and no arms and legs, kind of like one of those big-brained creatures from outer space or our future that we were led to believe would evolve from societies that didn't require physical exercise. The critique, provided to me this weekend by a prominent diplomat who has lived in Washington a long time, is that the administration has no trouble coming up with ideas or giving speeches but it has yet to put an effective implementation apparatus in place. It is kind of the Marvin the Martian model of governance.)

That particular aside aside, the pile of clippings grew this morning with the Wall Street Journal noting in its particularly "fair and balanced" way that the criticism of Wall Street from Emanuel and Axelrod was more tempered than in the recent past, suggesting that at least as far as the newspaper of record of the financial community was concerned, the White House wasn't too het up about all these fat pay checks. Apparently swine flu worries us but an epidemic of swinishness does not. At least the Journal seems to hope so.

And so, reflecting on all these clips, I started thinking to myself, is it capitalism? Could Michael Moore be right? (That seems so unlikely...) It's troubling to me, a dyed-in-the-wool practicing capitalist. And I'll have to admit I am still a long way from coming to a good answer about just how we have gone wrong and what needs to be done to fix a system that is producing greater inequality than ever and that is so apparently corrupt that even those from whom you expect big reform have either been co-opted or, alternatively, are simply reluctant to toss these particular money changers out of our particular temple (the small "d" democratic one). 

But my first instincts are what brought me back to good old Pope Rodrigo the Base and Repulsive. Because it strikes me that the issue isn't capitalism per se. Because 21st Century Wall Street is to capitalism as Pope Alexander VI was to the teachings of Jesus Christ. There was a connection but it was remote and observed more in the breach than in the honoring of the essentially good underlying ideas.

And that's where I take some comfort. It's not that we need a new economic ideology. We're just in dire need of a Reformation. (Although I for one could do without some of the wars, inquisitions, and public executions of the last one.)

EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images

Like many people in the foreign policy community, I've been spending an inordinate amount of time grappling with the issues associated with Afghanistan. I have been reading newspaper reports, listening to interviews and testimony, weighing the assessments of experts. It is a tiny microcosm of the process that is taking place within the highest levels of the U.S. government right now with a couple differences. First, I don't have access to classified reports (although for the most part my experience has taught me to approach these with great caution.) Second, I don't have to worry about the politics of the decision I reach -- internal or external. And third, and most importantly, my opinion really doesn't matter. I'm up here in the cheap seats -- the blogosphere being the "noisebleed section" of the political arena -- and we all know that a stadium full of people shouting their opinions just sounds like cheering or booing and isn't much more nuanced than that.

Still, as with any discussions concerning whether or not and how to conduct a war, this is a debate that has a strong sense of urgency about it. It also involves a host of really interesting questions about what our real objectives are, about whether this is a counter-insurgency or a counter-terrorism operation, about how victory can be measured, about who our real allies and enemies are, about how much cost we are willing to bear, about what the role for NATO should be, about how to deal with a corrupt, dysfunctional partner in Kabul, even about more fundamental issues such as how do we ultimately keep ourselves safe from terror, whether we can ever be successful at nation-building, and whether there is even truly a nation to build in a country like Afghanistan that is really (much as Iraq is) a confection of the minds of British imperialists that overlooks ancient tribal realities.

To those who say that the Obama administration should not be reconsidering a strategy it announced only last spring, my reaction is that's nonsense. We should constantly be reviewing our strategy based on the changing situation on the ground and the ebb and flow of other external priorities and factors. To those who say that the process has gone on too long, I also say, that's ridiculous given the human stakes involved.

But I am among the group concerned that the final decision may be tainted by factors that should not come into play when forging a strategy. One factor is campaign rhetoric: The president should not be locked into a course of action because of what he said as a candidate. Another factor is momentum: It is hard to reverse any enterprise as massive as this operation in Afghanistan. Another factor is fear of perceptions of an internal rift: I am on the record as feeling that General McChrystal went too far in publicly arguing his case and I feel the President should not be cowed into nudging the needle one jot in the direction of escalation of our involvement because he is unsettled by the political consequences of subordinates who didn't get their way. I also fear the impulse some have to seek an answer that will make everyone happy. In this case, it's just not there.

But the more I grapple with this problem in my own head, the more I feel like we are collectively falling victim to a fatal heuristic trap. After 9/11 nothing was more important that getting the terrorists that committed the act or making America safe from future attacks. This turned Bush as it would have turned any president toward Afghanistan. When he made his weird wrong turn toward Iraq, it led some among his opponents to argue even more vigorously that Afghanistan should have remained our top priority. This had two advantages: It immunized them from critiques they were "soft on terror" or "weak" and it was supported by a certain logic. Barack Obama and most Democrats were among this group.

When Obama came into office therefore, his mandate was to switch from Iraq to Afghanistan and we began to ramp up our involvement there. It became "his" war. It was the "war of necessity." The more involved we got there, the more "important" the debate about our strategy there became. The issue grew to the point that it is common to see reference to Obama's decision on whether or not to increase our troop presence there as the most important foreign policy decision he will make this year.

It might be. But that is different from saying that Afghanistan is actually important itself and different from saying it is really important to the interests of the United States. In fact, the reality is that there are few measures indeed by which it can be honestly argued that Afghanistan warrants the attention it is getting or the resources we are devoting to it.

National Security Advisor Jim Jones was quoted as saying there may be only 100 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The terror threat has moved elsewhere. Almost every country in Afghanistan's immediate neighborhood can be argued to pose a bigger terrorist threat. It can be argued that we don't want the Taliban to come back into power in Afghanistan. First, of all, that our departure would produce their return is by no means a certainty and it is a view shared by many in Afghanistan. Next, again, they are actively sponsored by elements in Pakistan and their fate is really driven from there.

For sure the biggest security threat in the region is not Afghanistan but Pakistan, a country careening toward the possibility of being divided by civil conflict. The core of the threat is Pakistan's nuclear arsenals and anyone tells you the U.S. knows where the weapons are and is confident in their security is just outright lying to you. Pakistan is the home to terror. Pakistan is the 170 million person nation on the verge of chaos. Pakistan is the nuclear threat. Afghanistan is only relevant relative to Pakistan.

Does that make Afghanistan important? Only if we can use it as a base from which we can contain the threats posed from within Pakistan. But the reality is given the terrain in the mountains on the border, we have spent eight years proving that we can't really do that. And our friends in Kabul are running such a bogus government that it is unlikely they will prove to be a useful aid in such matters anytime in the foreseeable future. Thus, if Afghanistan is only relevant as far as it can help deal with threats in Pakistan and it can't really help very much with those, it is actually not that important.

What's the conclusion? View all our actions in Afghanistan relative to our real interests in the region, which are for the most part in Pakistan. To the extent we can position ourselves in Afghanistan in ways supporting cross-border activities into Pakistan and that gives a rapid deployment capability should the worst happen there, fine. Give them aid. Encourage them to stabilize. But recognize that we shouldn't have an extended military presence in a place that is not actually that important to us -- especially if most experts think our likelihood of success with regard to military objectives in the country is in the slim to none range.

As periodically happens in American life, we are engaged in a furious debate about the wrong issue ... and our failure to recognize this is certain to have negative implications for our ability to deal with what should be our real priorities.

MICHAEL KAPPELER/AFP

Secretary of State Clinton went to Russia to discuss the possibility of putting sanctions on Iran. The Russians pushed back hard and publicly. The State Department weakly responded that they hadn't come to Moscow looking for anything in the first place.

The Iranians taunt us with their open nuclear ambitions and we don't have much to credibly offer in the way of sanctions (see above) and so we find ourselves grasping at straws in terms of an international dialogue with them. We are forced to take proven liars at their word because there is no realistic Plan B.

The North Koreans do as the Iranians do. They taunt knowing there will be no meaningful retaliation, especially if they dangle the possibility of progress with negotiations even as they flaunt the spirit of those negotiations.

Our ally in Afghanistan bald-facedly steals an election because he knows he has us over a barrel, believing we need him more than he needs us and that in any event, we won't punish him for his indiscretions. Our reaction is grumbling and strong language and planning for him to remain in his misappropriated office.

On Afghan policy there is an all-in, all-out debate and it increasingly looks like the president will split the difference between both sides. David Ignatius writes in today's Washington Post:

Obama's deliberative pace is either heartening or maddening, depending on your perspective. Personally, I think he's wise to take his time on an issue in which it's so hard to know the right answer. But I worry that the White House approach will soften the edges so much that the policy itself will be fuzzy and doomed to failure.

On the Hill, again the difference is split on health care and the Baucus plan backed by the administration doesn't meaningfully address the core concerns that triggered the debate about health care reform in the first place -- issues like universal coverage or the need to substantially reduce health care spending or the need to get the books to balance.

During the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh, at a lunch as the meeting drew to a close, the Chinese walked in and demanded that a paragraph in the final statement on climate change be cut. Everyone in the room was gobsmacked and stopped eating while the Chinese representative blithely consumed his lunch. One of those present asked, "Where were the Americans? Why was there no pushback? The Europeans were furious."

Peter Feaver wrote for FP an article chiding Hillary Clinton for not having taken a bold stance, making an issue her own thus far. Quite apart from the fact that I think his analysis was faulty, the reality is that the tough stances come from above, the president is the one who draws the lines in the sand. As far as decisive administration's policies are concerned, the title of her book on the subject might read, It Takes a President.

Right now, even his strongest supporters -- and I count myself among them -- are worried that much as Abe Lincoln was the great rail splitter, Barack Obama may become known as the great difference splitter. A former senior official, active on the president's campaign sat in my office just yesterday worrying aloud about whether this is just learning curve behavior or whether we are drifting toward Jimmy II. There is a place for deliberation and compromise in the quivers of wise leaders, he argued, but there is also a need to be decisive and sometimes to push to fulfill a vision or defend an ideal or an interest.

There are real merits to being the no-drama Obama of campaign fame. But in a world in which the Chinese or the Iranians or the North Koreans or Republicans or wings of the Democratic Party are inclined to push as hard as they can until they meet real resistance, it's fast coming time for the president to show he is willing to lose some friends and even some battles to defend his principles or the national interest. It can be a fist of steel in a velvet glove, resolve born of reflection, but there are a lot of supporters of Obama worry that he is a man who sending a message that there are no consequences for crossing him. On Afghanistan, on health care reconciliation, on his upcoming trip to China, on climate, there are chances looming for him to show that he knows what he wants and that he is willing to fight for it. I'm hopeful this is the moment he really will start to come into his own as president.

It was recently reported that Obama's favorite phrase is "Let me be clear." I think the response to that of his concerned supporters would be, "Please do." It's the path that is most likely to have them once again singing, "Mild thing, I think I love you."

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While we here at FP don't recommend eating disorders as an effective weight control technique, sometimes it's hard to pass up the canapés at those fancy Washington parties -- like GQ's "50 Most Powerful People in DC" cocktail blast at 701 last night. 

Of course, GQ's party had its own built-in trigger of the gag reflex for most Washingtonians: their names weren't on the list. (I talked with one of GQ's writers as she was working on the list, a conversation I enjoyed right up until the moment it was clear they didn't think I was list-worthy. As for the final product's, um, curiosities see FP's earlier take. But, Leon Panetta ahead of Hillary Clinton? Tom Donilon on the list, but his boss Jim Jones off it? Various worthy but random journalists and bloggers and not Tom Friedman or David Sanger? The Sidwell admissions director ahead of the GDS admissions director? Insiders know the truth ... even as they all hungrily pour over the list looking for their own names and those of their allies, enemies and worst of all, their friends.)

But when a glossy, man-perfume scented equivalent of a long hairy finger down your throat isn't readily available, then knowledgeable Washingtonians know there is always another place they can turn, the Capital's naturally produced form of Serum of Ipecac. Just follow the news until you develop the acute reaction to hypocrisy that is certain to launch away your own indiscretions in one or two turbulent but satisfying moments.

For example, here's a recipe for Capitulimia drawn from just what's going on around town today:

Take just one dose of insurance companies trying to suggest in print and broadcast advertisements that after years of making indefensible profits from literally killing people and destroying families with their policies (the one's they didn't actually deny to those who needed them), it is they who are actually looking out for the interests of Americans in need of health care.

Add one 30 second American Petroleum Institute commercial in which they actually argue that the pending climate bill might hurt consumers by producing more highly priced gasoline? After their record? While they should actually all be hovering in their basements waiting for the class action suit from the planet for selling a product they have known for years was destroying it?

Then sit down and take a listen to say, Rush Limbaugh complaining the media is making spurious, emotional, and uninformed attacks against him ... and that "the media" has too much power. The media? Who is he? Where does his power and obscene wealth come from? Appearances to the contrary, he is not a manatee sunning on a rock. 

If that hasn't done it, listen to one-time supporters of the havoc wreaked by the Great Decider's impulsive and catastrophic policies in Iraq or his ineffective blundering in Afghanistan as they criticize President Obama for actually taking some time to work out a sensible adjustment to tackling the mind-boggling challenges posed in the AfPak region ... challenges that were altered by the recent elections embarrassment in Afghanistan.

Or listen to Republican legislators responsible for the biggest deficits in American history and the collapse of the American economy, attack President Obama for doing what had to be done to clean up their mess.

Not there yet, go to Amazon.com and pre-order not only the Sarah Palin book but the upcoming books from President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Hank Paulson, and Karl Rove. Then think about the millions that will be generated by these books. (In New York State, I seem to recall once upon a time in the days of "The Son of Sam" they passed a law blocking criminals from writing books allowing them to profit from retelling the tales of their wrong-doing. These aren't criminals, of course ... well, not all of them ... but what are we to make of millionaires who gutted the American economy making millions from telling us all how they did it?)

Still on the verge of relief but not quite cleansed? Well, pick up a paper and read about the fact that roughly $140 billion in compensation will be paid out on Wall Street this year, a record beating out the last peak year of 2007. (And while you're at it, flip back to the FT from a day or two ago and read Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein's call for more industry reform and ask yourself: was placing this oped at the time the bonuses were going to be announced just a little cynical? Do they really think we're going to fall for that kind of grade-school spinning -- even if he did make a number of good points.)

There, that ought to do it. Feeling better now? Lighter on your feet? Angry but empty? No need to thank me. Just another public service from your virtual friends here on the Internet who will always do what we can to ensure our Washington readers are ready for another day of making the rounds from the Four Seasons to the Palm to the usual receptions sponsored by the likes of the American Foot Odor Institute and the National Alliance for Getting Children to Make Their Beds. And for the rest of you outside the beltway, with America's health care system unlikely to be high functioning any time soon, it's probably a good idea to drop a few pounds and get into better shape. 

And here's our hint for turning what could be an eating disorder into a sustainable diet: just keep watching those headlines -- they're the world's most effective non-addictive appetite suppressant. If you follow Washington without losing your appetite, you're not paying attention.

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