Bad “Weather” between Obama and Karzai Forestalls Meeting

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.