'Sacred' advice from vets, kin

As he ponders war in Afghanistan, Obama hears from those who have sacrificed

The commander in chief hugged a grieving mother, telling her to be proud of her fallen son, a Marine killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan's Helmand province.

Lisa Xiarhos also had a message for President Obama: "Be strong and get the job done," she recalls telling him. "Don't back down. Send more troops. Support the ones that are there, and do whatever you can."

As Obama reviews U.S. strategy for the war in Afghanistan, meeting with generals, Cabinet secretaries and diplomats, he has received informal advice from those most touched by the eight-year conflict: the parents who sacrificed children, the spouses who lost their mates, and the soldiers who left behind limbs.

On Oct. 8, a group of wounded veterans went to the White House for a game of wheelchair basketball, laying their prosthetics against a fence before rolling onto the concrete court. The president marveled at their mechanical dexterity and then shot three-pointers with them. Twenty-five hours later, he was in the White House Situation Room with his war council to discuss a request for additional troops by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan.

Obama considers his interaction with disabled veterans and families of the fallen as "sacred," and he leaves the meetings "contemplative" about his overall war strategy, said Matt Flavin, director of the White House Office of Veterans and Wounded Warrior Policy.

The White House doesn't seek publicity for the private meetings, which often don't appear on the president's public schedule.

In some cases, parents have urged him to provide the troops with better equipment or more resources. Others are more reticent and shy from political discussion.

"I think he gets insight" said Flavin, a former Navy intelligence officer who served in Iraq, Afghanistan and Bosnia. "Some people offer advice, and he listens and he takes on board the experience."

None of the encounters has turned confrontational, aides say, and no relatives have asked the president to end the war in Afghanistan.

Still, public support for the Afghan fighting is waning, with 37 percent of Americans saying it was a mistake to send troops to Afghanistan, according to a Gallup poll released in September. In January 2002, only 6 percent thought the war was a mistake.

Former President George W. Bush met with "hundreds of families and hundreds of the wounded" from Iraq and Afghanistan, said Scott McClellan, Bush's former press secretary.

Some relatives urged him to stop the Iraq war. Some "looked the president in the eye and said, 'You make sure you finish the job,' " McClellan said. The meetings left Bush "emotionally drained" and "certainly had some effect" on his decisions, McClellan said.

Since at least the Civil War, when Abraham Lincoln visited field hospitals surrounding Washington, presidents have sought face-to-face meetings with the soldiers they ordered into combat, said Henry William Brands, a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin. At veterans' hospitals during World War II, Franklin Roosevelt, partially paralyzed by polio, had a natural bond with those disabled by war, though it didn't alter Roosevelt's policies, Brands said.

There's little indication that Lyndon Johnson's hospital visits influenced his conduct of the Vietnam War, said Brands, who was part of a group of historians who dined with Obama earlier this year.

"Generally, the visits simply confirm presidents' determination to finish the job the wounded soldiers have started" he said.

"These are things that presidents pretty much have to do, or they would seem unspeakably callous," said Fred Greenstein, a presidential historian at Princeton University in New Jersey. "At the same time, I don't think they are sheer PR."

Joined by his wife, Michelle, Obama met Lisa and Steven Xiarhos and their three surviving children Aug. 30 at a Cape Cod military base. Their son, Marine Cpl. Nicholas Xiarhos, 21, had been killed by a roadside bomb about five weeks earlier.

Nicholas Xiarhos had met Obama in February at Camp Lejeune, N.C., when the president announced his plans for withdrawing troops from Iraq. Obama wanted to meet the parents of the Marine, who had served in Iraq and asked his commanders to be sent to Afghanistan.

Obama addressed family members by their first names, offered his condolences and warned the children that this school year would be hard, she said.

Lisa Xiarhos, who voted for Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain in last year's presidential election, said she wanted the president to know that "we're 100 percent in support of the mission in Afghanistan."

"I know some parents, they lose a son or daughter in war, and they hate everyone, they hate the president, and they hate everything" she said. "We don't feel that way."

In March, Obama said he would send more troops to Afghanistan. He charged McChrystal, who was named in May as the new commander in Afghanistan, with undertaking a comprehensive review of America's progress in defeating the Taliban.

The president gathered his war council Sept. 13 for the first in a series of sessions on whether to increase troop commitments.

Four days later, the president heard about the need for more resources in a different venue. He had invited the family of Army Sgt. 1st Class Jared Monti to accept a posthumous Medal of Honor.

Before the ceremony, Paul Monti told the president in the Oval Office that troops on the ground needed more air support, relaying his son's conviction that Afghanistan is a war that needs to be won.

"If the troops are trained properly and they are given the proper equipment, I personally believe this is a battle we need to fight," he said.

Monti was also impressed that the president was "well-versed in my son's actions."

"It was very emotional," said Monti, a retired schoolteacher. The Obamas "put all of us at ease."

Questions about how to prosecute the war don't always arise in Obama's interactions with families or wounded veterans.

In the half-hour Obama spent on the basketball court with the Marines in wheelchairs, they didn't discuss political questions about Iraq or Afghanistan, said Gunnery Sgt. Marcus Wilson, whose left leg was amputated above the knee.

The veterans were more impressed with Obama's game. "He'll take the first shot, and he'll miss it, which is something I think he does intentionally," Wilson said. "And the second shot is nothing but net."

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