As many Americans countdown to President Obama’s address tonight on an expected troop surge in Afghanistan, TIME correspondent Steven Gray pivots to another war — a very different war — in a post on the national outlet’s Detroit Blog published earlier today.

Which war would that be? The one devastating urban America.

Grey’s urban war-zone focus is, of course, Detroit. Undeclared and under-resourced as it might be, this conflict is no less deserving of the president’s attention, Grey argues. And with a nod to Obama’s south side Chicago community organizer roots, he writes that Obama is clearly the man for the job.

If there’s any president who can lead this country into an honest conversation about what’s needed to resolve the poverty and hopelessness that drives much of the crime ravaging cities like this one, it is Obama.

The best part of this thought-provoking post, however, is the reporting that Grey weaves in. In one instance, he relays a frank comment from one of city’s top law enforcement officials that effectively connects the seemingly unconnected Kabul-to-Detroit dots.

“We pay attention to foreign terrorism – as we should,” Kym Worthy, the top prosecutor in Wayne County, Mich., which includes Detroit, told me Monday night. “But we need to focus on the terrorism that consumes Americans’ lives everyday: robberies, rapes, homicides.” In Detroit, Worthy observed, “people are literally afraid to go out their houses to open the door and get mail. That’s unconscionable in America.”

Grey, a New Orleans native and Howard University grad, calls that “The Other War,” adding that “most of the casualties are black and male.”

With an editorial flourish at the end of the post, Grey lays out what strikes me as a fine idea for another presidential push — sometime after tonight’s Afghanistan announcement:

What should we expect Obama to do? He should deliver a major address from Detroit or New Orleans and articulate his vision for American urban policy – and, then, fortify that rhetoric with substantive, sustainable initiatives.

Like everything else, I guess that probably has to wait until after health care reform, among other competing priorities…