Andrew Exum on the Charlie Rose show (UPDATED)

Starting in about twenty minutes here in DC on WETA (PBS affiliate), Exum talks with Rose about his experience over the last month on GEN McChrystal's assessment team in Afghanistan.

I just filmed a long interview with Charlie Rose for tonight's show. I'll be talking strategy in Afghanistan and sharing observations from my trip.

We've managed some traffic, but we ain't on TV.

Depending how bored I get (and how much Jim Beam I drink), I might live-update while watching.

2301: Interesting: Ross Douthat's name is pronounced "DOW-thut." For some reason I always figured it was "DOUBT-hat."

2303: I have the exact same suit that Exum's wearing. And Charlie Rose just pronounced "Abu Muqawama" correctly. I think he's the first talking head that I've heard do that.

Exum says that the assesment process since President Obama's inauguration has been "pretty coherent." Then he tells us that we set policy before determining a strategy. Really?

2305: Two vital U.S. interests in Afghanistan are 1) denying transnational terrorists use of territory to strike at the U.S., and 2) prevent Afghanistan from destabilizing Pakistan. Interesting to hear him elaborate the second interest while noting that the President is focused on the first.

2308: "Good news" is that no enemy elements present an "existential threat" to the government of Pakistan at present.

2310: Exum says that he has no "equities" involved in Afghanistan, and that one of the things that the outside, think-tank folks had to offer to the assessment team is that they could speak without worrying about saying the things that their bureauracies want. Hmm.

First I'm hearing of this: Tony Cordesman feels very negative about the Afghanistan enterprise.

TELEGENICS UPDATE: Ex seems to have eliminated his annoying habit of bobbing his head up and down while his interviewer is speaking. Performance thus far seems confident and polished. Now let's just hear something interesting.

2315: Rose: "Is everything you've just said an indictment of the strategy of the last eight years?" Exum: strategy, leadership, and resourcing have all been failures up to this point.

Idea of a "fighting season" in Afghanistan is goofy -- "there may be a season where they shoot at us more," but even in winter Taliban's influence campaign is in full effect.

Exum says as a former Army officer, he finds the way that McKiernan was dismissed to be disappointing. First I'm hearing of that one.

2318: Exum gives a shout-out to the WSJ's Yochi Dreazen (also, like Ex, a Penn grad).

2320: LTG Rodriguez "may have a tougher mission than GEN McChrystal." Um, ok. Not sure I really understand that one.

Re: the laws of land warfare: "You may be technically correct, and operationally ineffective -- operationally stupid." If you kill civilians, you'll be operationally ineffective, etc etc. "Killing civilians pushes the goalposts farther away."

2323: When America wages counterinsurgencies, we "usually do it as a third-party." Usually? I guess he's watching his words because of the Sioux, or something.

"In Afghanistan, we've got a real problem with interest alignment." I think it's fair to say that's true in Pakistan, too -- probably more true. It's like everyone suddenly discovered this when Biddle wrote an article about it. Hasn't this been obvious for a long time? Don't we know that there are a lot of host nation political leaders who are more interested in maintaining power and its attendant benefits than eliminating corruption or otherwise stabilizing the country?

2328: August of 2010 a good time to gauge progress, according to Exum. Be interesting to hear what exactly we're meant to have accomplished in that time.

And here we've got a reprise of CNAS's Triage: "a good measure is to what degree we're able to protect the people of Afghanistan." So a "good short-term metric" is a negative metric, according to Ex. Not sure I have tremendous confidence in a vague measure like that, which is consistent with my general disappointment with the CNAS report.

Better: "gauging success a year from now" will be based on level of civilian casualties and the capability -- not just number -- of trained Afghan security forces.

2330: Defeat looks like parts of Afghanistan being made inhospitable to government authority. We're a long way from that happening, says Ex. But then again, "in counterinsurgency, if you're not winning, you're losing." Isn't there some contradiction here? Aren't we losing by a thousand cuts already?

Rose asks if we can be successful without a change in tactics by the Pakistani army. Exum responds that a reduction in safe havens across the Pakistani border is essential to success in Afghanistan. Ruh-roh. Pakistan thinks that the elimination of Afghan safe havens (and/or Afghan-to-Pakistan militant flows) is essential to success in its own counterinsurgency. Or maybe we'll just squeeze the balloon from both sides and everyone will squirt out into Baluchistan.

Now Ex is being asked whether McChrystal is Lee or Grant, which is a freaking idiotic question and a meaningless waste of time. Ex says "I wish I knew the answer to your question because it would save us a lot of time." Really? If we knew whether McChrystal was Grant or Lee? What, because we'd know whether he was a winner or a loser? Uh, ok.

Welp, that's it for Exum. And I'm not gonna live-blog Ross Douthat, who I've got to be honest kind of creeps me out a little bit with his ideas of Republican ascendancy in the working class and his odd, over-manicured goatee. So that's it for tonight.

UPDATE: Jari thinks I was dogging Ex a little hard, I guess, so here's the disclaimer/hedging that I posted on his site:

I didn’t think I was being super-critical or anything, but I guess it looks a bit like that when reading back.

Let me just say that doing interviews is hard, being recorded is hard, and being on camera is even harder, so any criticisms about delivery or presence or any of that stuff is pure BS on my part.

I think maybe the so-called “strategy” that Ex discussed might’ve been more satisfying to people who aren’t particularly fluent in the subject, seeing as the whole “protect civilians” thing might’ve seemed more novel and substantial to them.