President Obama and Afstan

My impression from his news conference tonight. It was all about "our" (i.e. the Americans') mission. A bit about "more effective coordination with our allies" but no mention of NATO--or any individual ally. A paramount goal is to get al Qaeda and bin Laden (remember the dead of 9/11):

...
With respect to Afghanistan, this is going to be a big challenge. I think, because of the extraordinary work done by our troops and some very good diplomatic work done by Ambassador Crocker in Iraq, we just saw an election in Iraq that went relatively peacefully and you get a sense that the political system is now functioning in a meaningful way.

You do not see that yet in Afghanistan. They've got elections coming up, but effectively the national government seems very detached from what's going on in the surrounding community.

In addition, you've got the Taliban and Al Qaeda operating in the FATA and these border regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan. And what we haven't seen is the kind of concerted effort to root out those safe havens that would ultimately make our mission successful.

So we are undergoing a thorough going review. Not only is General Petraeus -- now the head of CENTCOM -- conducting his own review; he's now working in concert with the special envoy that I've sent over, Richard Holbrooke, one of our top diplomats, to evaluate a regional approach.

We are going to need more effective coordination of our military efforts, with diplomatic efforts, with development efforts, with more effective coordination with our allies in order for us to be successful.

The bottom line though -- and I just want to remember the American people, because this is going to be difficult -- is this is a situation in which a region served as the base to launch an attack that killed 3,000 Americans.

And this past week, I met with families of those who were lost in 9/11, a reminder of the costs of allowing those safe havens to exist.

My bottom line is that we cannot allow Al Qaeda to operate. We cannot have those safe havens in that region. And we're going to have to work both smartly and effectively, but with consistency in order to make sure that those safe havens don't exist.

I do not have yet a timetable for how long that's going to take. What I know is I'm not going to make -- I'm not going to allow Al Qaeda or bin Laden to operate with impunity, planning attacks on the U.S. homeland...

About as, gasp, unilateral and Americo-centric as President Bush. Will Canadians notice?

An earlier post:

The "Americanization" of ISAF