And there couldn’t have been a more perfect vignette for the theme of our Sports columnist Mark Starr’s excellent piece on football as the metaphor for America. Starr argues that in the end of the day the gridiron doesn’t work as the organizing principle that captures who we are. We are just too complex a country, Starr writes, to be defined by any one sport. And after all the new President is all about basketball.

Petraeus is a man who captures the complexity of America, and who understands the complexity of the challenges the military faces in its struggle against terrorism. I watched Petraeus standing at mid-field at the start of the game and couldn’t help but think, he is about to toss a much more important coin in Afghanistan.

The planned troop surge in Afghanistan is a mission of chance in which he is hoping that it might help stabilize The Forgotten War. For the last six years, George W. Bush’s administration neglected the situation in Afghanistan, leaving the intelligence gathering and special operations to what was at best the B-team. President Obama has vowed to change course and double the number of US troops in Afghanistan. General Petraeus, as the head of Central Command, is completely supportive of the move and indeed had been pushing for it behind the scenes in the Bush presidency for a long time.

In the last six years, I have had a chance to observe General Petraeus up close. I was covering his 101st Airborne Division in Mosul in the first phase of the war; I met with him again in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas where he and his team re-wrote the military counter-insurgency manual, I was embedded with some of his troops during the surge in Baghdad in March 2008; and I interviewed him in Washington where he unflinchingly stood before congress and told a bitterly divided country that there was no military victory in Iraq to be achieved, only a “political solution.” The surge, he said, would be the only way for the US to help Iraq find that political solution.

And Iraqi voters who safely made their way to the polls this time walked in a path cleared by the successes of Petraeus’ surge. It was Petraeus’ military leadership that made yesterday possible, and that should be recognized in all the analysis that will be going on about the results.

Our two correspondents in the field, Tom Peter and Jane Arraf, have done an outstanding job keeping us up to date on the details on the ground.

Arraf, who is also there reporting for the Christian Science Monitor, is our regional editor for the Middle East. She brings to our coverage the eye of an experienced veteran who has covered Iraq since the US led invasion in 2003 and many years before that. Her Reporter’s Notebook today from northern Iraq is a fine example of what it is to gather ‘ground truth.’

So keep checking on GlobalPost coverage of Iraq for Jane’s big-picture, election analysis which will be coming in the next few days.

The voting in Iraq came on the last day of a month in which Iraq recorded its lowest levels of violence and killing since the US led invasion began in 2003.

According to the AFP, January’s death toll was down 42 percent from December, which was at the time the lowest figure for three years. Iraq is still a very dangerous place with a total of 191 civilians, soldiers and police killed during the last 30 days. Eight candidates were killed in the run-up to the vote. And some analysts have argued that the relative calm may also be simply because those insurgents and other groups still fighting had decided not to strike. Voter turnout was low at about 55 percent. Still, who could deny that Iraq is on the road to stability even if it is not yet there?
The country has undeniably seen a turn around since the execution of the surge strategy which was conceived by Petraeus, who more than any other military leader in America has the intellectual capacity and sheer stamina to confront the extraordinary challenges that lie ahead for the US and its diminishing role in Iraq and its new level of engagement in Afghanistan.

Whether Petraeus’ newly forming strategy to increase troop levels can succeed in Afghanistan the way his surge appears to be succeeding Iraq is, well, a coin toss.

It was Napolean who, when asked what kind of generals he wants, answered, “Lucky ones.”

Let’s hope Petraeus calls it right in Afghanistan.

And in one of the more powerful moments of the speech, he spoke directly to the world:

“…And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.”

And in this historic moment, as many as 2 billion people from every corner of the world tuned in or linked in via the internet to hear Obama’s words about the “hope” he promised to Americans, and the hope the whole world has that America might live up to its greatest ideals.

“Those ideals still light the world and we will not give them up for expediency’s sake,” he added with some edge in his voice and as the CNN cameras turned to President George W. Bush listening to words that seemed on some level directed at the outgoing administration.

It seemed an unmistakable part of the script for the day that there was an eagerness to say goodbye to the last eight years. Some of the choreography seemed straight out of Hollywood. Now-former Vice President Dick Cheney was in a wheelchair with a cane and a grimace. Did anyone else notice that he bore an uncanny resemblance to Mr. Potter, the mean old guy in the wheel chair from the American classic “It’s A Wonderful Life.”

But the essence of the speech was to go beyond partisan politics and the bitter divisions of the past. It was a speech about the fact that there is work to do:

“Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.”

And there is indeed an enormous task ahead. This presidency perhaps more than any in history comes with extraordinarily high expectations that Obama can indeed change or “reboot,” as he put it, the way America deals with the world.

And there are many observers who believe these expectations for change — from climate change to controlling AIDS in Africa, from terrorism to tariffs on trade — will be virtually impossible for the new president to live up to.

And based on the work of our GlobalPost correspondents in the field it seems that in many corners of the world, it was quickly becoming apparent that not every place in the world chose to bask in the warm glow that enveloped the Mall in Washington, D.C. where several million people gathered to witness history.

To gauge those expectations, GlobalPost’s 65 correspondents in some 45 countries have set out in this series “For Which It Stands” to listen to people in the countries they cover and to document what this day means for them. And all day they filed into what we call “Reporter’s Notebooks”, which are essentially blogs in search of a better name. Please check out the Reporter’s Notebooks on the GlobalPost site featuring correspondents such as Seth Kugel in Brazil, Miriam Elde in Russiar, and Caryle Murphy in Saudi Arabia.

And so these questions loom large before Obama as he enters the Oval Office: If he truly is the first global president, will his worldwide constituents be patient with his promise for change? And will he ever be able to live up to all that the world expects from the United States of America?

And he stated with clear conviction his view of how he will project American leadership in the world:

“To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West – know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your first.”

“To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect.”

“For the world has changed and we must change with it.”

At the stroke of midnight, we officially launch.

Welcome to GlobalPost. And welcome to GroundTruth.

This blog is a place where you can come every day to be taken behind the scenes of GlobalPost and hear about what our correspondents are working on and how they managed to unearth great stories.
Here I will be highlighting reporting from the field by our 65 correspondents who live in the countries about which they write. Every day they will be out there finding and reporting the kind of stories that are close to the ground and can enlighten you about the corner of the world they cover.

We call that “GroundTruth.”

Starting tomorrow, I will use the blog to provide you with a guide on how to navigate the site. I want to take you through how it works. There are “Dispatches,” which are our correspondent feeds from the field, and “Latitudes,” which are areas of coverage that cut across national boundaries and connect us all. The “Latitudes” are themes such as global health, climate change, diplomacy, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), cars and their relationship to the world, sports, and more. Each of them has a veteran correspondent assigned to them who you can follow week in and week out.

I also want to draw your eyes to the “Timelines,” which are on most of the country pages. Here we have tried to offer you the historical and current context that is required to understand the news. These ”Timelines” are interactive tools for you to have facts and the sweep of history at the click of a button. We’re very proud of these Timelines and we hope you will explore the world and its history through them. Twenty-five of them are up on the site now and more will be rolled out over the next few months.

I also hope you will take some time to view the “Go there” multimedia player that is located on our homepage. The lead video on the home page for our first day is titled “Afghanistan: An Accordion Journey” by Gregory Warner. Greg, a writer and freelance reporter for NPR whose work has appeared on This American Life and Radio Lab, combined his audio recordings for public radio with video he shot on his own to produce a GlobalPost multimedia essay that is mesmerizing and funny and ultimately a great story about a journey through Afghanistan. It’s exactly the kind of storytelling that we want to do here at GlobalPost.

This video is part of our series “For Which It Stands.” And there is a guide to the “For Which It Stands” series available for you to navigate what is a large body of work focused around a single question: “What does the idea of America mean to the world?” The series begins at launch and will culiminate with the inauguration of President Obama and continue through the first 100 days of his presidency.

In the coming days, I will go deeper into the series and the great writing, photography and videography that has gone into it.

For months, I’ve been blogging about the process of our launch from my journey around the world this fall recruiting correspondents to the count down in the last few days as our web development team and editorial staff worked almost around the clock to be ready for this launch. And we are ready.

We are officially launched as of this moment, but our ace web developer Jason Oliver of Mochila actually pushed the button to transfer over our beta site to go live on Saturday night. It was precisely 11:11 PM EST on January 10. 2009 when he began the propagation of the GlobalPost.com domain name, or URL, to the web.

As a heavy snow fell silently over Boston, the physical act of launching the site was only represented by the clattering of a keyboard and Jason’s announcement, “Okay, I just hit the button. We’re live! Congratulations.”

Both candidates addressed the idea of how they will seek to restore America’s standing in the world. Eight years of a George W. Bush presidency, both candidates agree, has undeniably damaged the reputation of America in the world. And so in the fall of 2008, these questions seem to resonate across the debate and across the world as it watches this debate:

What does America mean to the world?

How do we present ourselves to the world?

And what does the world think of us?

Vietnam defined itself against America. It’s birth narrative as a modern nation came in resisting an American invasion. Ho Chi Minh ’s Vietnam defeated America through patience and persistence and an unrelenting belief that it could shake off a leviathan like America with its B-52s and its Agent Orange and its ground troops and its sense of destiny.

And so Hanoi is an interesting dateline from which to observe the first debates in the presidential election in the United States at a time when America is involved in yet another fateful struggle in a distant land. This time it is the hardscrabble deserts of Iraq rather than the jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam. But what the history of our involvement in Vietnam teaches us about Iraq hangs in the air over this election, particularly with the presence of Sen. John McCain as a candidate. The debate moderator Jim Lehrer even raised the question directly for McCain.

I spent some time today at a small memorial for McCain that stands on a promenade around the lake in the center of Hanoi where his fighter jet crashed as he carried out a bombing raid on a power plant in the major city of the north of Vietnam. The memorial is an abstract piece of art that pictures a US Airforce pilot suspended in a parachute and looking down at the wreckage of a plane.

All around this memorial was a modern city going about its business. There were families resting on a Saturday morning along side the lake, and young people playing fierce games of badminton and elderly couples practicing tai chi. A mighty river of motor scooters and bicycles flowed past with the sound of beeping horns and the low, grinding hum of traffic.

One young woman who works as a political reporter for a Vietnamese news agency had this take on the debate in a casual and background conversation I had with her: “There are many people in this country who like John McCain because he has a connection to this place. He knows the war here. He knows Vietnam. And he will be connected with us. But there are a lot of young people who think that it is Barack Obama who understands the world. They believe that Obama is the best leader to see that America needs to improve its image with the world. So a lot of young people are voting for him.”

Another young man who had just graduated with a degree in computer science from Hanoi Open University put Vietnam’s relationship with America in sharp focus. “We want to work with America and not for America… We see America on an equal level. I think Barack Obama understands this and I think he understands the world and how America figures in the world.”

Tomorrow I leave for Jakarta, Indonesia where Barack Obama lived and went to elementary school as a boy. I will arrive in the largest Muslim country in the world at the height of the festival celebrating the end of Ramadan. And it seems a wild — and fitting — coincidence that I am traveling from Vietnam where McCain has a deep connection to Indonesia where Obama has roots in his extraordinary American journey that goes from Kansas to Kenya through Hawaii and Indonesia and elsewhere.

I leave Vietnam having finalized a deal with a solid correspondent, Matthew Steinglass. I also completed the necessary meetings with officials from the Foreign Ministry to officially apply for a news bureau in Vietnam. Just like in China, we will be breaking new ground as the first international web-based news organization to open a bureau. While here, I also deepened our relationship with Mr. Tuan at Vietnamnet, the leading on-line news agency in Vietnam. We have vowed to work together in the future and he is planning on attending a pre-launch gathering we are holding in mid October for our board of advisers and our investors and a close circle of editors, reporters and writers who are connected to our mission. In Jakarta, I will continue signing up more correspondents and then push on to Delhi from there for the final leg of the trip.

The journey continues.