Leadership, American Style

This picture portrays President Obama on his recent trip to Afghanistan.  With him is our ambassador to Afghanistan, the Honorable Karl Eikenberry, and the commander-in-chief of NATO forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McCrystal.  Nobody seems to be having any fun, but that they have big problems to solve there is no doubt.

I met Ambassador Eikenberry when he made a one-day whirlwind visit to Khowst.  It was a fun event, and I was within an arm’s length of the Ambassador for much of it.  Many of the Afghan Army officers with whom I worked knew Ambassador Eikenberry personally from his time working with fledgling Afghan forces, and he obviously recognized and remembered them fondly.  The Afghans knew the Ambassador as brook-no-nonsense commander who fired incompetent subordinates on the spot, but on this day he was in high spirits, stopping for pictures and chatting with everyone in sight–from generals to privates–while holding a variety of sensing sessions with security personnel, mullahs, and government leaders.