I’ve been critical of Obama’s communications on Afghanistan and Pakistan, mostly because I think he’s trying to avoid taking ownership of a policy that he very much owns, at the risk of undermining much-needed public support for the war.

But there’s no avoiding the issue today, with the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan both in Washington. So far, Obama’s laid low, having Hillary Clinton do the heavy lifting with two (!) press briefings on the matter. But that is scheduled to change this afternoon, when Obama delivers remarks at 4:15 pm ET. Considering the importance of the issue and the need for clarity, I would expect Obama to take questions from press on the subject – in fact, it’s pretty inexcusable if he does not.

At issue is how much the Administration will back the two country’s embroiled foreign leaders. The Administration’s message – as carried by Clinton and Robert Gibbs – appears to be a tad more optimistic than I expected, with Gibbs declaring that Obama believes “the Presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan understand … threats exist.”

This is a bit of a shift since Obama’s statements on the campaign trail, when he was highly critical of the Karzai government. In an interview with CNN in July, he said “the Karzai government has not gotten out of the bunker and helped organize Afghanistan and government, the judiciary, police forces, in ways that would give people confidence” – a rather poor choice of words considering the regular assassination attempts on the Afghan president.

I’m also curious to see if Obama references his own trip to Pakistan in 1981 while he’s standing next to the Pakistani president. Strangely little is known about what would have been an unusual and formative trip for an American to take back then. In fact, we probably wouldn’t even know that the trip occurred if Obama hadn’t slipped mentioned of it during a secretly recorded fundraiser last year (the same fundraiser where he criticized “bitter” gun owners and churchgoers).