Vice President Biden gave an emotional speech to a group of “Gold Star Families” on Friday, those who have lost a loved one in the military, at an event commemorating Memorial Day in Washington, D.C. The vice president told attendees about the death of his wife and daughter when he was 29 years old and tried to assure those who have lost a family member in war that the memory of their loved one will one day bring “a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eye”:

BIDEN: Looking at your kids, most you have kids here, and it was the first time in my career, my life, I realized someone could go out and I probably shouldn’t say this with the press here — but it’s more important, you’re more important.

For the first time in my life I understood how someone could consciously decide to commit suicide. Not because they were deranged, not because they were nuts, because they had been to the top of the mountain and they just knew in their heart, they never get there again, that there was never going to get — there never going to be that way ever again. That’s how an awful lot you have feel.

There will come a day, I promise you, and you parents as well, when the thought of your son or daughter or your husband or wife brings a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eye. It will happen. [...]

So, hang onto each other. Hang onto each other. And I can’t tell you, I can’t tell you how deeply the five of us on this stage feel about the sacrifices you’ve made for this country. That doesn’t — that doesn’t fill the black hole. You should know only 1 percent of you have fought these wars and much less thank God than 1 percent of those that fought the wars are going through what you’re going through.

We owe you more than we can ever, ever repay you. As I said, my prayer is that that smile will come sooner than later, but I promise you it will come. God bless you all and my God protect our troops. Thank you.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow aired a clip of Biden’s speech:

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Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney has been all over the map on Afghanistan. He’s gone from wanting to withdraw U.S. troops as quickly as possible to preferring to wait until he gets elected to come down on a position. Despite Romney’s consistent inconsistency on Afghanistan, his campaign website states that “[w]ithdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan under a Romney administration will be based on conditions on the ground as assessed by our military commanders” — what is essentially an open-ended commitment.

Last night on CNN, Republican congressman Dana Rohrbacher (CA) — who’s been in a tete-a-tete lately with Afghan President Hamid Karzai — criticized Romney’s position. “I totally disagree with the governor,” Rohrbacher said:

ROHRABACHER: We should be looking for ways to get our troops out of Afghanistan at a quicker pace, not at a slower pace. We shouldn’t be committing ourselves to another 10 years of military involvement in Afghanistan and we can do that if we worked with all of the Afghan leaders rather than just trying to put all of our eggs in the Karzai basket and trying to force everybody to accept his power.

BLITZER: What Governor Romney says there should be an open-ended U.S. military and financial commitment to Afghanistan. He doesn’t like the timelines, if you will, but he’s even more aggressive in making sure that U.S. troops stay there to bolster that Afghan government and make sure that there’s security there. … What I hear you saying is you disagree not only with President Obama, but with Governor Romney, as well.

ROHRABACHER: I totally — yes, I totally disagree with the governor. If that is indeed his position I would like to talk to him about it.

Watch the clip:

Republicans in Congress have long been at odds on Afghanistan and a poll out last month found that a majority of Republicans say the war there hasn’t been worth fighting. Perhaps that’s why Romney won’t take a firm position and instead wants to kick the can down the road.

By Colin Cookman

President Obama and other heads of state from NATO and the International Security Assistance Force met in Chicago over the weekend, where they laid out plans for an “irreversible transition of full security responsibility” to the Afghan security forces. Although no decisions have been made about the further reduction in U.S. forces past this fall, the alliance has now formally committed to shifting its combat forces to a supporting role by mid-2013, ahead of the withdrawal of most troops by 2014.

Many uncertainties remain — most immediately the status of negotiations with Pakistan over the reopening of NATO supply routes, and the funding plan for the Afghan national security forces over the coming years, which forms the biggest portion of an Afghan government budget that is still highly dependent on international donors. But pressing Afghan leaders to take responsibility for their country’s future, and for the ensuing political compromises and reforms that will be necessary to sustain the government in a way that does not require large-scale international intervention, is the right course for both U.S. interests and for Afghanistan.

As my colleagues Caroline Wadhams, Brian Katulis and I argued in our recent policy paper, a transition strategy that promotes Afghan’s stability over the medium to long-term requires the U.S. to prioritize diplomatic processes that can work to resolve the political disputes at the heart of the Afghan conflict — rather than pinning the country’s future on the cohesion of its regular and irregular security forces. Although media coverage in the run-up to the summit focused primarily on troop levels and funding pledges, it appears that President Obama focused his bilateral conversations with President Karzai on these issues, and the summit declaration includes strong language in support of reconciliation, good governance, and the importance of transparent presidential elections.

With the news that the United States’ ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker, is likely to step down soon, his successor will face the challenge — alongside the other branches of the U.S. government — of making sure that these commitments are not left on the summit drafting table. This effort will require renewed focus from the U.S. and its partners to ensure free and fair elections for Karzai’s successor in 2014, to support an inclusive reconciliation process, and to hold the Afghan government accountable for its management of international donor funds. The international donors conference in Tokyo scheduled for this summer will be the next major opportunity to hold negotiations on this issue on an international scale. NATO and its allies have laid out an increasingly detailed plan for the transition of security responsibility in Afghanistan, but more work will need to be done to develop the processes of political reform and reconciliation that can ultimately support a durable end to the Afghan conflict.

Last month, Afghan President Hamid Karzai denied Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) entry into Afghanistan because, a spokesperson for the Afghan government said, the California congressman “speaks against the good of Afghanistan and tries to interfere in our internal affairs.”

Rohrabacher reportedly tried to push Karzai to incorporate warlords into his government and urged the Afghan president to institute a “federalist decentralization of power.”

Last night on CNN during an interview with host Wolf Blitzer, who was incensed that Karzai blocked Rohrabacher from entering Afghanistan, Karzai said he wouldn’t be changing his mind on the issue:

BLITZER: So you’re not going to let him back into your country, Dana Rohrabacher?

KARZAI: Definitely not.

BLITZER: Ever, ever?

KARZAI: Until he changes his [inaudible], until he shows respect to the Afghan people, to our way of life and to our constitution. No foreigner has a place asking another people, another country, to change their constitution.

Blitzer asked Karzai about “the concept of freedom of speech.” “The freedom of speech is good,” Karzai said, adding, “But the freedom of speech with regard to other countries is another issue.” Watch the clip:

Rohrabacher complained last month that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “should have stoop up” to Karzai, whom he referred to as a “prima donna,” and fought to get him into Afghanistan.

President Obama and the U.S.’s NATO allies, meeting at a summit in Chicago, committed to a complete withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan by December 2014. The withdrawal will be coupled with the “irreversible” handover of security responsibilities to the Afghans next summer.

A declaration from heads of state at the NATO summit emphasized that the handover will be completed by the end of 2014 but that NATO member countries may remain in a training and advisory capacities:

By the end of 2014, when the Afghan Authorities will have full security responsibility, the NATO-led combat mission will end. We will, however, continue to provide strong and long-term political and practical support through our Enduring Partnership with Afghanistan. NATO is ready to work towards establishing, at the request of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, a new post-2014 mission of a different nature in Afghanistan, to train, advise and assist the [Afghan National Security Forces], including the Afghan Special Operations Forces.

In remarks delivered at the summit today, Obama emphasized the progress made in Afghanistan during the U.S.’s decade-long war. “Our forces broke the Taliban’s momentum,” said Obama. “More Afghans are reclaiming their communities. Afghan security forces have grown stronger.”

Public war weariness has been a growing pressure on the White House and NATO member countries as Europeans and Americans express frustration with the long war and the associated human and financial costs. While NATO forces will maintain an active presence in Afghanistan through 2014, France’s new president, François Hollande, announced that France would withdraw troops by the end of the year.

Standing next to Afgan President Hamid Karzai yesterday, Obama recognized the sacrifices made by both Afghans and Americans over the past ten years. “[President Karzai] recognizes the enormous sacrifices American troops have made,” said Obama. He added, “We recognize the hardships that Afghans have been through during these many many years of war.”

The New York Times published a piece on Sunday charting President Obama’s “journey to a shift on Afghanistan,” as the article’s headline reads, and claimed that the president did not consult the generals when deciding on pulling out the “surge” troops and the overall withdrawal plan. “The generals were cut out entirely,” the Times’ David Sanger writes, later adding that Obama ordered the withdrawal after “no debates with the generals.” The article also has a quote from an unnamed adviser:

“I think he hated the idea from the beginning,” one of his advisers said of the surge. “He understood why we needed to try, to knock back the Taliban. But the military was ‘all in,’ as they say, and Obama wasn’t.”

Of course the neocons are now pouncing on the president. “This is breathtaking,” Mitt Romney adviser Max Boot writes, “The commander-in-chief at least has an obligation to solicit [the commanders'] views and take them into careful consideration.” Right-wing Washington Post blogger Jen Rubin piled on today too. Obama “actually doesn’t all that much care if we ‘win’ or not,” said Rubin, who also quoted AEI’s foreign policy leader Danielle Pletka saying Obama “just as hates the word ‘victory.’”

But did President Obama really choose to ignore his top commanders’ advice when making his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan? A spokesperson for House Armed Services Committee chairman Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA), a strong critic of the president on national security issues, told Politico’s Austin Wright that the Times story was most likely “inaccurate”:

“McKeon is reserving judgment,” Claude Chafin, a spokesman for the HASC chairman, tells Morning Defense in an email. “The report is so dramatically at odds with recent communications between the committee, commanders on the ground and senior administration officials that it must be inaccurate.”

A “senior defense official” also told Wright that “[t]he suggestion that the White House and the Department of Defense haven’t consulted closely on the major decisions on Afghanistan over the past three years is simply incorrect.”

Moreover, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan at the time Obama announced his withdrawal plans in June 2011, Gen. David Petraeus, said then that, while he did not recommend the plan that Obama ultimately decided on, he was indeed consulted:

“I provided assessments of risk. I provided recommendations. We discussed all of this again at considerable length. The president then made a decision. … And so that’s how I would layout the process that took place, the very good discussion, this was indeed vigorous. All voices were heard in the situation room. And ultimately the decision has been made. And with a decision made, obviously I support that.”

So no, Obama did not decide to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan without consulting his top military commanders.

By Colin Cookman

The United States, NATO allies, and dozens of partner countries will convene in Chicago this weekend to plan for the transition of greater security responsibility in Afghanistan to the Afghan government, as well as the future of the alliance’s capabilities, partnerships and priorities beyond the Afghan conflict.

As my colleagues Caroline Wadhams, Brian Katulis and I argue in a new Center for American Progress report released today, the U.S. and NATO commitment to transition is the right path for U.S. interests, but the agenda at Chicago appears to overlook issues of Afghan political reform and reconciliation that will be crucial for Afghanistan’s long-term stability.

Current transition plans center on the training and rapid expansion of Afghan police and military forces, as well as irregular militia groups. But these forces remain dependent on external funding, and a strategy that hinges on their cohesion and capability to continue battling insurgent rivals carries real risks — particularly as insider attacks threaten the ability of U.S. and NATO trainers to partner effectively with these units going forward.

Further, Afghanistan will undergo its first major transition of power in 2014, as President Hamid Karzai steps down from the position he has held since the earliest days of the post-Taliban interim government. The highly centralized formal Afghan presidential system offers few other institutional positions in which a broader coalition of political interests can easily share power, increasing the risk of instability that was seen in the wake of past fraud-ridden elections in 2009 and 2010 if action is not taken to broaden participation and ensure the independence and credibility of electoral authorities.

And while reconciliation efforts with the Taliban appear to be currently stalled, a process of negotiated settlement with a broad range of Afghan factions will ultimately be necessary for the country’s future stability. The participation of neighboring Pakistan at the Chicago summit is a welcome opportunity to renew these discussions at the regional level, but suspicions remain on all sides. Through both international forums and direct diplomacy, the U.S. and the Afghan government will need to engage in confidence-building measures that can kick-start this process and show that negotiations can deliver a better outcome than continued conflict.

As the Afghan government’s primary sponsor, the U.S. and other international allies have a responsibility to hold it accountable for its pledges of political reforms and reconciliation outreach efforts, and to ensure that the security commitments the U.S. makes in Chicago and through the newly-signed strategic partnership agreement are not a one-way street. A transition to greater Afghan responsibility is a necessary step for the normalization of the country’s internal politics, relations with external partners, and the eventual end of a now decade-long war, but much more work needs to be done to prioritize these political and diplomatic steps, at Chicago and beyond.

The New York Times published two articles this weekend highlighting the disarray that is Mitt Romney’s foreign policy positions. Romney not only appears “out of touch,” for example, on his Russia policy and “all over the map” on the war in Afghanistan, but also, the former Massachusetts governor has demonstrated a “perplexing pattern,” the Times reported, of being at odds with many of his own foreign policy advisers.

Moreover, seeming to concede President Obama’s dominance of national security issues this campaign season, a Romney adviser told the Times that Romney isn’t interested in talking about foreign policy. “Romney doesn’t want to really engage these issues until he is in office,” the adviser said.

And there’s good reason. Romney’s inexperience on foreign policy and national security issues has dogged his campaign with confusion, ignorance and private and public disagreements among Romney’s campaign advisers and surrogates:

AFGHANISTAN

Romney has been “all over the map” on Afghanistan. As the Washington Post reported late last year, Romney “has not explained what he thinks the U.S. mission in Afghanistan is at this point and what would constitute success.” And keeping with his adviser’s above statement, Romney said in a major foreign policy speech that he’d wait until becomes president to “order a full review of our transition to the Afghan military.”

Romney also says that the U.S. should not be negotiating with the Taliban, a position that puts him at odds with his top national security campaign surrogate Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), his own advisers and even former top Bush administration officials. “Romney’s supporters and foreign policy advisers argue that after a decade at war, the only option is a political settlement,” the Times noted.

IRAN

Romney said that if Obama is re-elected, Iran will get a nuclear weapon. “If you elect me as president, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon,” he said. That line “caused some of his advisers to cringe” the Times reported this weekend. But overall, again, Romney has no real policy on Iran that differs much from the current administration’s approach. Romney has proposed much of what Obama is already doing. The Times noted that “when pressed on how, exactly, his strategy would differ from Mr. Obama’s, Mr. Romney had a hard time responding.”

But Romney does occasionally ramp up bellicose rhetoric on Iran which prompted a former Israeli Mossad director to say the former Massachusetts governor “is making the situation worse” with Iran. Romney has ignored what the IAEA, U.S. and Israeli intelligence think about Iran’s nuclear program and his campaign advisers even attacked the Obama administration for public discussion of the consequences of attacking Iran.

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