President Obama’s speech last night was — to state the obvious — a tough one to give. Just think of the many constituencies the president had to address: not only the American public, but the military who have been in need of some direction, the Democratic base, terminally cranky Republicans, the Karzai government, the Pakistani government, and Bozo the Clown to boot. No one constituency would be fully pleased.

We all know that President Obama gives a wonderfully inspiring speech. I had a hunch that this address would not fall into that category. Rather than inspiring the public to work towards a distant American nirvana (as he did in the March 2008 Philadelphia race speech), West Point was more of a sales job.

With all that in mind, I was looking for the president to discuss five major topics:

1. Make a case for why we were in Afghanistan.

2. Explain our forces’ mission.

3. Address how he would work with the Karzai government.

4. Clearly outline the strategy for Pakistan.

5. State his interpretation of an exit strategy.

To put a “grade” on it, I’d give the president 3.5/5. Here’s why.

First, I thought he made a compelling case reminding Americans of why we’re there. He spent the first several paragraphs going over the history of what led us to this point. That’s been the toughest issue for much of hard left to grapple with — America has clear national security interests in Afghanistan, and it is unfortunate, but necessary, to enact a robust strategy to ensure the country’s safety.

It’s a rationale that has been so difficult for some to accept. Writing in the New York Review of Books, Garry Wills says:

[Obama] said that he would not oppose war in general, but dumb wars. On that basis, we went for him. And now he betrays us. Although he talked of a larger commitment to Afghanistan during his campaign, he has now officially adopted his very own war, one with all the disqualifications that he attacked in the Iraq engagement. This war too is a dumb one.

But it’s not a dumb war. It’s a necessary one, and I struggle to understand why Mr. Wills has become so disenchanted with President Obama over this decision when even he acknowledges that the president campaigned pledging a “larger commitment” to Afghanistan. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

Second, I didn’t think the president went far enough in explaining the counter-insurgency strategy that American forces would be undertaking. To me, he missed an opportunity to explain that our forces are there to promote peace by protecting the Afghan population from the Taliban. So only half a point there.

Third, I was impressed with the president’s emphasis on working with and around the Karzai government. His particular emphasis on “Afghan ministries, governors, and local leaders” indicated the White House’s recognition that bypassing Kabul is an effective part to regional development across the whole country. A full point from me.

Fourth, the Pakistan strategy was certainly mentioned, if not emphasized, as one of the pathways to a successful disengagement. Sure, as the president said, we will “strengthen Pakistan’s capacity to target those groups that threaten our countries, and have made it clear that we cannot tolerate a safe haven for terrorists whose location is known and whose intentions are clear.” Yes, we know it’s necessary, but I have a nagging sense that the “how” hasn’t been worked out yet. The White House’s overture on a comprehensive partnership deal with Pakistan is encouraging, but only part of the solution – a half-point.

Ah, and finally, that exit strategy. I would have preferred that our exit from Afghanistan be measured in terms of progress, not calendar dates, which merits a half-point deduction. I think David Ignatius came very close to summing up my feelings:

Obama thinks that setting deadlines will force the Afghans to get their act together at last. That strikes me as the most dubious premise of his strategy. He is telling his adversary that he will start leaving on a certain date, and telling his ally to be ready to take over then, or else. That’s the weak link in an otherwise admirable decision — the idea that we strengthen our hand by announcing in advance that we plan to fold it.

For a speech that was sure to please no one entirely, I thought it was a brave attempt at explaining a tough, unpopular, but ultimately correct decision.

I just wrote this memo on personnel spending and the military.  Here’s the gist:

It’s not surprising that weapons systems draw all the attention when defense spending reform comes up. They translate into jobs that defense contractors spread cunningly across the nation’s states and congressional districts. But the “guns versus butter” debates between liberals and conservatives miss a key point. It’s not just weapons that drive defense spending through the roof — it’s the people, too.

According to its official budget, the Defense Department will spend $533.8 billion in 2010 in the following categories:

• Personnel: $136 billion
• Operations & Maintenance: $185.7 billion
• Weapons Procurement: $107.4 billion
• Research & Development for Weapons and Technology: $78.6 billion
• Other: $26.1 billion

The personnel figure, however, doesn’t come close to capturing what America is really spending on defense personnel. According to PPI’s calculations, the real price tag is much bigger: $301.1 billion each year, 121 percent higher than the Pentagon’s figure. In other words, if you want major savings in defense spending, cutting weapons systems and the ever-elusive “waste, fraud and abuse” won’t take you far enough.

Eugene Robinson is a wonderful writer with whom I quite often agree.

But if such a talented, astute observer of the American political landscape hasn’t deciphered why we’re in Afghanistan, and that those costs are worth bearing, then the White House better prepare for an all-out charm offensive once the strategy and troop-level decisions have been made.

In Robinson’s most recent column, he laments:

Sending more troops will mean more coffins arriving at Dover, more funerals at Arlington, more stress and hardship for military families. It would be wrong to demand such sacrifice in the absence of military goals that are clear, achievable and worthwhile.

And what goals in Afghanistan remotely satisfy those criteria?

…

As long as our goals in Afghanistan remain as elusive as they are now, Obama shouldn’t be sending troops. He should be bringing them out.

As I’ve argued countless times, though 2009’s America has grown long-tired by the seemingly endless wars, there is - and will continue to be - compelling national security reasons to remain in Afghanistan and adopt much of General Stanley McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy.

However, that’s not the point of my post.  Rather, it’s that I expect the White House to soon announce another deployment of some 30,000+ troops to Afghanistan, and President Obama must be prepared to explain American security interests as he sends more Americans into harm’s way.  Distracted, I imagine, by the endless health care debate, the president must soon do a better job of selling the public on his administration’s latest controversial decision.

In a February address to a joint session of Congress, President Obama promised to “cut Cold War weapons systems we don’t use.” By signing today’s $680billion defense authorization bill, it’s remarkable at how well he succeeded.

Trimmed from the budget are more F-22s fighter jets, VH-71 presidential helicopters, and Air Force search-and-rescue helicopters.  In short, we own an acceptable quantity and/or quality of these systems to achieve their stated missions, freeing money money that could more efficiently be spent elsewhere.  The simple message comes down to this:  In the middle of two major military deployments, spending on weapons we don’t need makes America weaker because we’re short-changing those involved in our current fights.

The president has made a solid first step in breaking the iron triangle of defense contractors, congress, and the Pentagon.  However, the war is hardly over.  If you want to dunk your head in a buck of cold water, read Winslow Wheeler’s reality check- he quite compellingly argues that:

In 30 years on Capitol Hill, I never saw Congress mangle the defense budget as badly as this year. Despite that, I see signs that we might be on the cusp of a change for the better.

This past week, as the Senate debated the Department of Defense (DOD) appropriations bill, a tiny bipartisan group of senators stood up to fix an important part of the gigantic mess in our defenses. This minuscule bunch lost at every turn when the votes were counted, but for the first time I can remember, senators revealed previously unrecognized aspects of their colleagues’ appalling pork-mongering — and took action against it. In the process, a few supremely powerful senators who have been corrupting the process were exposed as contemptible frauds. Now, if only the press would notice.

The issue at hand is a new tactic in budgetary slight-of-hand.  Sens. Inouye (D-HI) and Cochran (R-MS) have lead a group of Senators in raiding the “Operations and Maintenance” account - a little-noticed fund that pays for things like pilot training and basic equipment up-keep - to pay for home-state weapons projects that even the military says it doesn’t want.

Reforming the weapons acquisition culture is like turning an aircraft carrier 180 degrees.  The White House and Secretary Gates have started, but the next several Pentagon budgets will show us where we really are.

It looks like the White House is circling in on a new strategy in Afghanistan that focuses on protecting major population centers like Kabul, Kandahar, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Herat, Jalalabad, and a few other large villages.

If endorsed, it would adopt the major elements of General McChrystal’s proposed counterinsurgency strategy, albeit it on a more limited scale that perhaps acknowledges  40,000 additional troops aren’t enough to effectively pacify the entire country.  Or, as the NYT put it:

At the heart of this strategy is the conclusion that the United States cannot completely eradicate the insurgency in a nation where the Taliban is an indigenous force — nor does it need to in order to protect American national security. Instead, the focus would be on preventing Al Qaeda from returning in force while containing and weakening the Taliban long enough to build Afghan security forces that would eventually take over the mission.

This strategy would certainly prevent the Taliban from regaining control of the country, thereby denying Al Qaeda the petri dish it needs to reconstitute an ability to attack the United States.

Furthermore, this is a realistic approach about what we can achieve, even with increased - but finite - resources.  It may simply not be a sensible use of resources to deploy tens of thousands of American forces to Helmand, a massive southern province that has 20 percent of the land, but only three percent of the population.

However, the fundamental question for me is would this strategy effectively cede control over large swaths of the country to the Taliban where al Qaeda elements could re-enter and rebuild its abilities.  One senior administration addressed that point, saying, “We are not talking about surrendering the rest of the country to the Taliban.”

But under this scenario in Helmand, field commanders would compensate for the lack of a full-time troop presence by keeping pressure on insurgents with drone strike, aided  intelligence from local populations about pockets of Taliban.  But by ceding control to the Taliban, we could be alienating the local population — the eyes and ears necessary to target the drones.

And finally, a potential side-effect of protecting select urban areas is that as the only stable regions, they might be flooded by rural villagers that don’t want to live under the Taliban.  Would this increase the burden on troops to the point that their presence has diminishing returns as the cities swell with refugees?

Consider me cautiously optimistic, but nervous.

The State Department is involved in a massive project - the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review - that is designed to address a serious “funding imbalance” between the civilian and military institutions involved in American national security.

Says Anne-Marie Slaughter, Director of Policy and Planning at the State Department and in charge of the review,

This is not an abstract planning exercise that goes into a report and sits on a shelf,” she said. “It’s a planning exercise that does connect to the budget, that’s very important, but the implications go far beyond the budget. The budget is the tool to implement what we’re going to come up with. This is really what I think secretaries of state should be doing, which is a kind of farsighted look into how the United States is going to implement its foreign policy agenda in the 21st century.”

It is designed to roughly model the Pentagon’s Quadrenial Defense Review, which similarly connects threats to strategies to resources to budgets.

What’s more, it’s exactly what the State Department needs - with a budget hovering around $40billion, or well less than 10 percent of the Pentagon’s, it’s quite fair to say that in 2009, Foggy Bottom is responsible for well more than 10 percent of the national security of the United States.  Now it just needs the bureaucratic proof to justify that need to Congress.  Et voila - the QDDR!

Will Marshall and I have a piece up over at RealClear Politics on Dems and Afghanistan.

Here’s the upshot (read the whole enchillada here):

President Obama faces tough decisions on Afghanistan, but his party is on the hot seat too. Afghanistan is the first real test since Vietnam of Democrats’ collective ability to manage a major armed conflict. Just how to do that is the subject of an intense internal debate. Whatever the strategy, his party must avoid a convulsive split that would cast doubt on its ability to secure the country. Last March, Obama said his goal is to prevent al Qaeda from launching attacks on America. His handpicked commander, General McChrystal, is asking for up to 40,000 additional troops for a counterinsurgency campaign to achieve the president’s goal.

…

Let’s be clear: We’re not arguing that Obama should make his decision based on a desire to “look tough” on national security. We’re saying Democrats ought to think long and hard before forsaking a war that Obama has defined, both during the campaign and as president, as necessary to Americans’ security.

Obama and his party have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to consolidate a new progressive governing majority. But to do that, they must govern effectively. That means offering coherent and credible strategies for American safety, and the stamina to stick with them. For his party no less than for President Obama, Afghanistan will be the acid test.