Is it British Week in the Washington Post? After Brown-Truman yesterday comes a piece from Anne Applebaum noting a growing divide in political culture between the US and UK.

What jumps out is the throwaway line that Brown and Obama ‘barely speak to each other’. Plus the observation that Obama’s positions on Afghanistan would be considered ‘far right’ in Britain — or should be, as we’ve pointed out many times before.

It all sounded so simple during the campaign. There was nothing wrong with Afghanistan that couldn’t be sorted out by ditching the idiot Bush for a president who knew what he was doing and who would not be “distracted” by Iraq.

That was then. Now Obama faces a situation that every day becomes eerily more like the one that confronted LBJ 45 years ago.

Your commander in the field tells you that without more troops the war is lost. You doubt whether pouring more men in will bring victory and are frankly desperate to get out. You could probably weather the resulting political firestorm by blaming your predecessor for the mess you inherited.

But you cannot afford to quit because of the effect, both psychological and material, on neighbouring territories.

Obama is stuck. He cannot honourably stay in Afghanistan without giving the general the forces he says he needs. But if he gets out, the effect on Pakistan could be catastrophic.

Barack Obama, hero of the anti-war left, and now a prisoner of the hated Domino Theory that gave us Vietnam.

Much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the Guardian this morning over climate change. It seems that the Obama administration doesn’t like the Kyoto treaty any more than its predecessor did.

So the whole thing wasn’t Bush’s fault after all? Ah well, not so fast. It’s still all the Republicans’ fault, according to Jonathan Freedland, who somehow manages to admit one minute that ”it was not Bush who killed the Kyoto treaty in the US. The Senate rejected it by a margin of 95 votes to none” and in the next breath characterise its opponents as “Republican headbangers”.

The new administration is kicking the sainted Kyoto treaty into the long grass. Score another one for the Obama-Bush doctrine.

UPDATE Re-posting the Van Jones piece here to escape the spammers:

What week-long controversy say MSM viewers as Van Jones quits

On Tuesday night’s Hardball, the scales finally fell from Chris Matthews’ eyes about the bogus enthusiasm on the left for the war in Afghanistan.

Matthews: ‘I believe that what Barack Obama, who I support generally, did in this campaign… was back into this policy. I think he wanted to say he was for some aggressive action against the enemy because he wasn’t for the Iraq war.’

Bang on, Chris. You’ve just admitted your hero committed himself to a war he didn’t believe in just to make himself look tough. What are you going to do about it?

Here’s the video. Matthews’ guilty confession comes right at the end.

Is anyone surprised by the lack of appetite for the Afghan war shown in the latest ABC-WaPo poll?

As we’ve said before, Obama and his party have, all along, been faking enthusiasm for Afghanistan to give themselves political cover for opposing Bush on Iraq.

Now they’re stuck with it.

What’s more, some commentators are starting to notice the silence of the anti-war movement. As Cindy Sheehan says, it should really be renamed the anti-Republican War movement.

And she has an interesting story to tell regarding press coverage of her activities since January 20.

I’ve been protesting every time I can, and it’s not covered.  But the one time I did get a lot of coverage was when I protested in front of George Bush’s house in Dallas in June.

Robert Fisk in the Independent excoriates Gordon Brown for his Catch-22 style justification for staying in Afghanistan (’We can’t pull out having taken so many casualties, so we’ll stay in and take more casualties, each of which will then be another reason why we can’t pull out’).

Fisk also takes a swipe at George W Bush in the process.

But one man is strangely absent from Fisk’s gallery of shame: the man who spent his presidential campaign cheerleading for the Afghan war and whose first act as commander in chief was to throw another 20,000 troops into the fray.

Don’t mention the war? Don’t mention Obama.

When mayor Ken Livingstone introduced the congestion charge in 2003, the US embassy refused to pay, claiming it was a form of local taxation and foreign diplomats were therefore exempt.

Inevitably this was portrayed as typical Bush era arrogance.

So with a new Obama-appointed ambassador in residence, one Labour member of the London assembly, Murad Qureshi, wrote to the President asking him to reverse the policy.

His letter is an absolute must-read. Check out the fawning references to the “mean-spirited decision taken under your predecessor’s administration” and its “ignoble attitude” and “unfortunate tone”.

“I know you are seeking to introduce a new era of international relations with your Presidency, one based on decency and mutual respect,” he goes on, “and in that spirit I respectfully ask you to . . .” You get the idea.

Sadly, it seems that in between his very decent and respectful bombing of Pakistan and continued detention of the Gitmo prisoners, our hero has told Mr Qureshi where to go. The policy on the C-charge stands.

Score another one for the Obama-Bush doctrine.

Here’s what we wrote yesterday about the Bill Clinton mission to North Korea coming just two weeks after Pyongyang’s attack on his wife:

It looks suspiciously like an attempt by the North Koreans to humiliate Hillary by demanding to deal with her husband. Little do they know it’ll just make her look good because the MSM will play it as Hillary deploying her great asset.

Maureen Dowd is suspicious too. “Maybe,” she writes, “it was some clever North Korean revenge plot, giving the limelight to Daddy to punish Mommy.”

But the MSM is in full cheerleading mode. The Associated Press: “Score one for the tag team.”

And the New York Times manages to note that a) the North Koreans asked for Bill, and b) they asked for him around the time of the Hillary spat, without joining the dots.

Or rather it draws the opposite, innocent conclusion about North Korea’s motives: “Mr. Clinton’s trip to Pyongyang came just two weeks after North Korea issued a harsh personal attack on Mrs. Clinton . . . The episode evidently did not stop consideration of sending her husband as an envoy.”

A big, big win for the Clintons and for the Obama ethic of diplomacy and engagement.

This Associated Press report can waffle all it likes about ‘courtroom-prison’ complexes and ‘hybrid’ systems but the end result is the same: the president who campaigned against the ‘internationally reviled’ Gitmo detention centre is not closing it down, he is transferring it to the mainland.

Take a bow, Karl Rove.

The Washington Post has a new series starting today with extracts from an election study: The Battle for America 2008 by Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson.

Should be a good read. Monday’s instalment focuses on Sarah Palin.