Bad News

President Obama does not intend to decide about sending additional troops to Afghanistan until he is satisfied that the Kabul government can work effectively with the United States, an aide said today. "It would be reckless to make a decision on U.S. troop levels if in fact you haven't done a thorough analysis of whether in fact there's an Afghan partner ready to fill that space that U.S. troops would create and become a true partner in governing," said Rahm Emanuel, the president's chief of staff.

Did Emanuel not read today's earlier blog?

The administration's stated reason for dithering - fraud in Afghanistan's Aug. 20 presidential election. What? Didn't the administration's generals and diplomats on the ground, not to mention United Nations observers, see the election mess coming? Was the Karzai administration's cupidity and corruption overlooked or ignored during Obama's original review and revision of his predecessor's policy?

Perhaps BO did not carefully think through his March Afghan policy, or does not have confidence in McChrystal, or Holbrooke. But the likely answer - it is now politically inconvenient to follow through on that policy given the increasing number of antiwar Democrats.

What a mess BO is getting us into. The Russians, Chinese and most of Western Europe will publicly applaud this sensitivity of decision making, while snickering backstage. Whatever decision Obama reaches on Afghanistan, his credibility and leadership have been badly wounded by his continuing public display of indecisiveness, the very condition we predicted all along.

Even before the Nobel announcement, liberal American columnists were sounding increasingly skeptical about the man they once supported with such enthusiasm. Richard Cohen wrote in the Wash Post that the president "inspires a lot of affection but not a lot of awe. It is the latter, though, that matters most in international affairs where the greatest and most gut-wrenching tests await Obama."

We understand in detail the far-left apparatus in charge of the Democratic party but we cannot understand why reasonable folk continue to be taken in. They're going to get all of us in a heap of trouble.

Robert Craven