Afghanistan: Mixed Administration War Signals
Jules Witcover

Afghanistan and the U.S. commitment to send additional troops there (c) Paul Tong
Afghanistan Troop Surge
(c) Paul Tong

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates en route to Afghanistan yesterday (Tuesday) declared "we are in this thing to win." The man who also ran the Pentagon in the latter years of the Bush administration thus fed again the notion that its stay-the-course policy remains essentially in place.

Gates had already underscored that impression by telling Congress after President Obama's announcement of a quick-fix strategy that the July 2011 date for the start of a U.S. troop withdrawal would be "condition-based." That is, it would depend on how the war was going, just as was the case in the Bush years.

Such observations will bring little comfort to Democratic liberals in Congress who might have been mollified by the president's inclusion in his surge of 30,000 troops of a timeline for pulling them out only 18 months or so down the road.

Gates' reassurance may be just a matter of semantics, tempered by reference to continued American economic and rehabilitation aid to Afghanistan as the shooting diminishes. But it also conjures recollections of George W. Bush's predictions of "victory" in Iraq and Afghanistan that are yet to be realized.

The clear intent of Obama's speech at West Point was to convey that in Afghanistan, as in Iraq, his objective was limited to bringing stability to each country, rather than achieving the overblown nation-building goals of the previous administration.

The wisdom of such an approach has been confirmed by what is still happening in Iraq. On a day the Iraqis finally reached agreement on holding parliamentary elections signaling political progress, five bombings in Baghdad, including a suicide attack, claimed at least 121 lives. Contentions that the Bush surge of 2007-08 in Iraq finally brought "victory" to the long U.S. effort there have a hollow ring.

Regarding Afghanistan, it is hard from Obama's new 30,000 troop surge and Gates's caveats on a flexible withdrawal timetable not to conclude that Gen. Stanley McChrystal has gotten just about what he asked for months ago.

His original call for 40,000 more American troops apparently will be realized by pledges from NATO allies of at least 7,000 more, plus Gates's disclosure that Obama has given him the flexibility of adding another 3,000 U.S. support forces as he deems necessary.

Increasingly, Obama's plan for Afghanistan, delivered with his customary persuasive skill, looks like an accommodation to both the military challenge there and the political challenge at home, with an eye to slipping public support for the war and continuing disappointment in Obama among liberals in his own party.

As has been the case since the new president took his oath of office 11 months ago, Barack Obama has been by necessity the nation's fire-fighter in chief, striving to put out the conflagrations already raging on his arrival.

It's small wonder, as he attempts to wind down the American military presence in Iraq, that he's trying to quick-fix the commitment in Afghanistan with his own troop surge. His attention is badly needed at home to tackle the economic distress that has elevated American joblessness to prime public concern.

Even as he strives to push his year-long campaign for health-care reform across the finish line in Congress, the stubborn plight of the unemployed has replaced that issue as the chief barometer of presidential approval. Other mild economic indicators of recovery aren't likely to move the needle in his favor unless America generally is put back to work.

The groundswell of relief that greeted Obama at the close of the unpopular Bush presidency has long since dissipated as the reality of governance has confronted him head-on. Whether or not the two carryover military burdens deserve now to be called Obama's wars, they are his responsibility now, along with the economy he inherited.

His early decision to press on anyway with his own agenda for change ruled out any possibility of a first-year honeymoon. Harry Truman's famous desk sign proclaiming that "The Buck Stops Here" was never more appropriate.

Obama Playing Nice With China
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When President Obama visited China, he had a good case to make to his hosts that he was trying to see things their way. He'd recently declined a meeting with the Dalai Lama in Washington and said that he wanted a strategic partnership with China. What did he get for his troubles?

On Foreign Policy Front Consider Obama Lucky So Far
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Barack Obama has had an exceptionally lucky first year. All newly elected U.S. presidents arrive in office hoping to avoid the unforeseen foreign-policy crises that upend their domestic agendas. President Obama has avoided the foreign-policy blowups that push an administration off balance. His luck isn't likely to last. Here's why ...