Update: President Obama made a surprise trip to Afghanistan on Friday but is said to have gotten stuck on Bagram Base and could not meet face to face with Hamid Karzai.
The press is saying that Obama cannot get to Kabul because of high winds and fog, making it impossible to fly helicopters to the capital.
But CNN is saying that police in Kabul are saying that “the weather is fine.”
But Bagram is a short automobile ride away from Kabul, and what this snafu tells you is that the US does not even control the area between Bagram and Kabul sufficiently to risk putting the president in an armored vehicle to go overland.
Or, maybe there was a behind the scenes tiff that made a face to face meeting diplomatically impossible (see the next entry). This interpretation is given credence by the cancellation even of a teleconference between Obama and Karzai.
I don’t think this is going well.
High winds AND fog ? Hm.
Might as well hang around Bagram playing cards and waiting for the weather to change…not getting much done at home anyway.
I’m reading that they did have a telephone conversation.
President Obama is destroying his Presidency by this crazy needless war, but war and more war is what he is evidently set on.
Looks pretty certain that Karzai refused to see Obama. After what the US has been putting out about him its in one way hardly surprising, but still takes balls.
Also maybe reflects on Obama’s standing though – he’s looking more and more Carterish. Somebody must pay for the snafu – if its not Karzai, or whoever was responsible for setting up the visit, then it will be Obama.
I wonder — was this maybe a singular manifestation of the “fog of war” I hear so much about?
This might be an over-interpretation. If you look at the press conference given on the plane to Bagram — link to j.mp — Gibbs stresses that this was a holiday trip to see the troops and the purpose wasn’t to see Karzai, whom Obama saw a couple weeks ago in Lisbon. Gibbs’ reaction to the bad weather report en route suggests they might have been happy for the excuse to get out of an obligation.
I borrowed some of your text for a post at my blog… link to chamblee54.wordpress.com.
Thank you.