Afghan war poll triggers Obama political alarms

As President Obama concludes weeks of intense -- and increasingly desperate -- salesmanship on his keystone and embattled healthcare reform plans, a discouraging alarm arrived today that he may soon have to devote his selling skills toward a less interesting but more dangerous area of concern for him:

Secure parts of that country vote in a presidential election Thursday. And quietly coming through the bureaucratic defense pipeline is a request for even more U.S. troops, on top of the compromise 17,000 additional Obama approved last winter.

Current U.S. troop strength there is 62,000, scheduled to jump to 68,000 in coming weeks.

But today a new Washington Post/ABC News poll reveals that a majority of Americans now....

...believe that historically troubled land is not worth fighting for -- and only 24% back a troop increase. While 45% say the American troop commitment there should actually be reduced.

This indicates that even during a normally carefree summer vacation period (soon to involve even the president and family), the American public is apparently not buying Obama's Afghan argument, made as recently as his Monday speech to a VFW convention in Phoenix that echoed Pres. George W. Bush's argument for involvement in Iraq. (Full text here.)

There will be more difficult days ahead. The insurgency in Afghanistan didn't just happen overnight, and we won't defeat it overnight. This will not be quick, nor easy. But we must never forget: This is not a war of...

What's alarming for the liberal president, who recently approved an overall increase in the size of the Army, is that his bipartisan support on the war is quickly melting away. But the losses are mainly coming from among his own party faithful -- 70% of Democrats now say Afghanistan isn't worth it.

Bush trusted his military advisors, section9, and when they led the wrong way, he replaced them.

Once he found a General who shared in his vision of VICTORY, the Iraq war was won.

It wasn't "poor war management." It was a difficult, complex, unprecedented war situation, and he had to find a General who thought outside the box. And he did. And the result is that things that should not have been able to be accomplished, due to his leadership, Petraeus' leadership, and our incredible troops, HAVE been acomplished.

Please pray for our troops under this NON-Commander-in-Chief!

Absolutely!!! Every time I hear or read of another soldier killed or wounded in either Iraq or Afghanistan, my heart breaks for the families affected by this. It is a tragedy and travesty that American lives are being lost, under the command of that rat bastard commie pig 0bozo. I wish that every soldier would refuse orders to go into battle unless 0bozo proves his natural born citizenship requirements for president under the constitution. My nephew is in Iraq, and I think it is a horrible injustice that our soldiers should ever die while serving under this commie pig 0bozo. We have (or had) the greatest nation in the history of the world, whose freedom was fought & died for by brave soldiers. Our soldiers are still brave, but now are serving under a usurper sonuvabitch 0bozo. God help save our nation from this anti-christ bastard 0bozo!!!

The Bush administration has been criticized - and rightly so - for failing to communicate its strategic vision. The 0bama administration doesn't have one. The extent of it so far has been to handcuff air support by demanding that extra efforts (above and beyond the customary ones) be taken not to harm civilians, this in the face of known Taliban/al Qaeda tactics that include hiding behind them. That not only isn't strategy, it isn't realistic tactics.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record I'll repeat it here: the 0bama administration needs to provide the JCS with a set of reasoned, specific strategic objectives. What are we trying to accomplish there? "End the insurgency" isn't a strategic objective, it's the verbal description of an end state. "Establish peace" is worse.

"Hold province X while infrastructure Y is built and indigenous personnel Z are trained to do ABC" is such an objective. It is geographically distinct and has metrics such as a timeline built into it. We'll know whether we've accomplished it.

The real difficulty is that identifying this sort of objective publicly tells the enemy what we're after, so a certain circumspection is not necessarily a bad thing. But not having such an objective, while serving security purposes, serves no other purposes at all.

Where such objectives lead is another issue. One indicating an intention to defeat Taliban forces in the field must encounter the political complications of doing so in sanctuary areas such as Pakistan. Those complications must be met by our civilian government - that's why they're in charge of military operations under the Constitution. It's what we have a State Department for. It is a civilian decision and the civilians deciding must stake their careers and reputations on it. It goes with the territory. The responsibility CANNOT be delegated to the military.

It can be dodged, however, by politicians too incompetent, cowardly, or inexperienced to take on that aspect of the responsibilities of their offices. It does not consist of sticking pins in a map as LBJ and McNamara used to do, convincing themselves thereby that they were meeting those responsibilities. They were, in fact, evading them and a lot of men and women paid the ultimate price for that. It also does not consist of sighing heavily and blaming one's predecessor.

0bama and his people need to grow up, fast, and start paying attention to the aspects of the office that do not result in adoring crowds or glowing media hagiographies. For American servicepeople to die from the lack of fulfillment of this civilian mission is quite simply unforgivable.

Secure parts of that country vote in a presidential election Thursday. And quietly coming through the bureaucratic defense pipeline is a request for even more U.S. troops, on top of the compromise 17,000 additional Obama approved last winter. Current U.S. troop strength there is 62,000, scheduled to jump to 68,000 in coming weeks. But today a new Washington Post/ABC News poll reveals that a majority of Americans now... believe that historically troubled land is not worth fighting for -- and only 24% back a troop increase. While 45% say the American troop commitment there should actually be reduced.

Nice of the WP/ABC polls to show that 31 per cent either support current levels or have no opinion, or that up to 55% support either the current troop strength or an increase. :') Thanks neverdem.

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