National Review Online
Obama has "friends"in Afghanistan
Pres. Barack Obama’s speech today was the first step toward making the Afghan war politically his own.
He couched his commitment to the war accordingly,minimizing it as much as he could manage while remaining consistent with the central thrust of his speech,which was dedicated to explaining why we need to devote more resources to the fight. About this necessity,the president is exactly right,and on this day,at least,his much-vaunted centrism,which has never shown up in the domestic arena,was on display.
“We are in Afghanistan,” Obama said,“to confront a common enemy that threatens the United States,our friends and our allies,and the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan,who have suffered the most at the hands of violent extremists.” Exactly so. To defeat this enemy,Obama argued,we need the “comprehensive” approach of a full-scale counter-insurgency — encompassing security,governance,and economics — rather the narrow counter-terrorism strategy some of his advisers favored. That minimalist strategy would have risked making all of Afghanistan into the equivalent of the tribal areas of Pakistan,where al-Qaeda operatives go unmolested except by the occasional Predator strike.