A focused Schieffer pushes Obama on Afghanistan
CBS News has been soft on President Barack Obama in its 60 Minutes interviews by Steve Kroft. But the network's veteran Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer Sunday won back some respect for the news division with a focused and vigorous quizzing of Obama.
Schieffer performed several of the basic interviewing tasks that Kroft inexplicably failed to do last Sunday during the 60 Minutes conversation. With only about 25 minutes of airtime, the host of Face of the Nation asked hard-nosed follow-up questions and even politely cut the president off when he tried to filibuster answers with campaign-mode rhetoric.
But by far, the wisest choice Schieffer made was to focus his interview at the start on the president's announcement late last week that he was sending more troops into Afghanistan. Given the economic crisis, it is perhaps understandable that the press did not pay that much attention to the announcement, but for those who can remember the lessons of Vietnam, it seems like a huge development.
Last week when I was running around to talk shows and writing in this blog about how I wanted Obama to be more like Lyndon Johnson (more governing and less talking about governing on TV) -- I did not mean the Johnson who destroyed his presidency and, by the way, messed up the economy with his out-of-control commitment to the war in southeast Asia.
But that is what Obama sounded like to me when he was talking about how some of the U.S. troops would only be training their Afghan counterparts for combat. It clearly sounded that way to Schieffer, too, because he came out hard-charging with questions for the president about his commitment of more troops to Afghanistan, and he took precious minutes at the end of his broadcast to do a stand-up outside the White House explaining the decision to focus on Afghanistan.
"When he decided to move more Americans into harm's way in Afghanistan, for better or worse, it became his war," Schieffer said of Obama. Schieffer closed by wondering whether Obama would look back one day on that decision from last week as a major turning point in his administration and legacy.
The questioning on Afghanistan and the related matter of whether or not we will follow terrorists into Pakistan and strike there was so pointed, that at one point, Obama said, "I'm enough of a student of history to know about Vietnam."
But he sure sounded like LBJ in 1965 when he talked Sunday about the Afghan Army as having "great credibility" and being "effective fighters" -- all they needed was a little "training" from the American troops. At least, Obama didn't use the 1960s's rhetoric of the U.S. soldiers and Marines only being advisers.
Schieffer did ask about others topics in a hurry-up offense kind of interview: Iraq, A.I.G. bonuses and the auto industry.
But he served his audience best Sunday on Face the Nation by focusing on what much of the rest of the press last week under-covered, the commitment of more troops and money to a war in Afghanistan and possibly Pakistan that many think cannot be won.
Categories: CBS, Cable and Network News, TV and Politics
Comments
A radical liberal by the name of Charlie Wilson was able to dupe the Reagan Administration into winning the cold war by properly equipping and training a group of afghan fighters.
Is Obama making the same mistake that Charlie Wilson did? Would we have to suffer winning yet another war?
Posted by: matt | March 29, 2009 1:55 PM
Mr. Schiefer is a nice man, a good journalist and story-teller. However, the notion that somehow he had the Prersident on a griddle begs the question. Using parallels to LBJ may also be questioned for historical accuracy. LBJ was the third president to inherit the war in Vietnam from his predecessors; Mr. Obama is no LBJ, while he inherited the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq he is trapped in the pattern all too familiar in US history since the end of World War I.
Americans can do themselves a favor by reading two time Medal of Honor winner USMC Gen. Smedley Butler's "War is a Racket" to understand who really pulls the foreign policy strings in the U.S. Presidents may have symbolic and constitutional powers, but they dance to a tune called by others.And so it goes.
Posted by: james jandrowitz | March 29, 2009 2:10 PM
Charlie Wilson may have been liberal, but it was the conservatives who left Afganistan is the ditch by not following through with what we had promised in the way of social and civil help. While true that victory in Afganistan is an oxymoron, ask the British, we need to focus on what we started, destroying the leadership of Al Quiada and that happens to be in Afganistan and Pakistan.
Posted by: Robert McComas | March 29, 2009 2:28 PM
We must carefully review our international threat priorities, as our current level of national economic debt (100%+ GDP) restricts the number and size of our Military commitments (if we are prudent). Rather then stretching our financial/military resources so far, we need to retain a sufficient reserve for future emergencies.
The Afghanistan situation is more eerily similar to Vietnam in other unspoken dimensions than discussed. In historic reflection, our military strategy in Vietnam was heavily influenced by Opium harvesting, as well as the resulting downstream trade available from the then Golden Triangle. War provides an excellent way to disguise drug harvesting and delivery trafficking used to fund organized crime syndicates and clandestine global operations.
Today's Afghanistan supplies roughly 90% of the world's supply of Opium. You will recall that Opium harvesting increased in Afghanistan when we sent troops to there after 9-11, ostensibly to unsuccessfully capture Bin Laden. Just as in Vietnam, our continued Military presence there somehow hasn’t decreased this morally odious trade..
Afghanistan opium crackdown doing little, says US envoy:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/5032711/Afghanistan-opium-crackdown-doing-little-says-US-envoy.html
Afghanistan is also more related to our economic crisis than many realize,
because of a significant part of the huge, near Trillion dollar, international money laundering operations surrounding the trafficking. Downstream ethics aside, these pools of illegal money provide liquidity to the world's markets and to a significant extent supply and prop up the accounts of our own International and Investment banks. The unpredictable movement of these funds contributes significantly to market volatility and because it is concealed from the public, seldom factored into market risk evaluations.
Furthermore, it is because of the laundering and mixing of these liquid pools of black funds that powerful organizations fear making public and therefore prevents and impedes regulation toward greater investor “transparency" that is sorely and desperately needed to help restore confidence in today's financially damaged free markets.
We need to come clean from this sordid economic trade worldwide, as it is morally reprehensible and also contributes to worldwide human trafficking and other predatory schemes.
Finally, because of these factors, Obama's Afghanistan strategy may be more related to his primary perogative of economic stimulus than the American people realize.
My hope is that he will cease business as usual and forge a new moral high ground.
Posted by: Marshall Houston | March 29, 2009 7:17 PM
Z:
This was a fair interview; only one really biased ?, that of equating the mexican internal chaos and tying it to the NRA enraging discussion of banning semi automatic weapons. That ? shows you the Bob still is John McCain's golf buddy. But in total a decent interview, much better than John king, who you praise too much too often.
Posters Robert and James have the correct response to the appropriate and reasonable fear that Matt expresses.I remain amazed that the MSM (inc Shieffer today) has yet to associate the new Obama Afghan strategy to the best selling non-fiction work The Cups of Tea by Greg Mortensen. I am sure Obama has read it and like myself muttered to himself that Mortensen and his school by school, town by town delivery of education for both boys and girls is the way to win the war of minds with Al Queda and these 7th century fundementalists. How Bush managed to lose the international PR battle to men so far out of time is the ? too many of the MSM has ignored for so long. So I guess that I should not be too surprised to see the MSM misses the greater subtlety of Obama's Afghan planning to date. Schiefer was a traditional skeptic schooled in the Vietnam frame, but he has yet to widen his vwpoint beyond that frame and recognize the stronger subtler policy that I believe Obama has in mind. To me Barack looked tanned, rested and ready!
Posted by: Tony Joe from Baltimore | March 30, 2009 12:18 AM
i think scieffer is doing the right thing with regard to this issue.
Posted by: james z wilson | July 4, 2009 7:39 AM
Someone should be asking the tough questions. Afghanistan is such a fragmented county and I am pretty sure we would not get a whole lot of support. Probably just push the terrorists more across the borders.Then what? I would rather spend the money on economy and heathcare issues here. This could be worse than Vietnam.
Posted by: Sherry T. | July 5, 2009 10:18 AM